Wild City #194: Derain

Wild City

Not a lot of mixes can leave a lump in your throat – less so, within a minute of them. Enter Derain’s mix for Wild City, which picks at fresh wounds of our collective consciousness with the opening echoes of Aamir Aziz’s poem ‘Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega’. The quintessential verses gained their importance through the poignancy with which they encapsulate all the emotions and tragedies surrounding protests against the discriminatory Citizen Amendment Act and the unjust retaliation they received which shook the nation at the start of the year. Derain adds just enough spacious harmony to augment that poignancy and remind us with great impact that justice is still missing and the perpetrators of injustice are yet to answer for their actions. How then would you follow an opening like this with music? Fortunately, Derain’s own music carries just enough ambient chaos to respectfully carry Aziz’s anguish forward, disintegrating the verses into their abstract emotions and mood which he then connects all the way to New Zealand teen Takunda Muzondiwa’s speech ‘Dear Racism’. Ankit Chugh, the producer and the co-founder of New Delhi-based label and management TAABIIR, donned the moniker Derain to put an end to his ever-profound explorations as Cubewano, Talk In Math and Karv. Throughout his journey as an artist, Chugh has never lost the ability to cue the listener for introspection into darker corners of our beings. With his Wild City mix, Derain makes us sit with our recent memories of paralysing pain and empathy, while offering catharsis to bear it with by recontextualizing numbers by the likes of Nicholas Jaar, Kareem Lotfy, New Delhi-based artist FILM and lesser-known gems like Imka, and makes them fit the solemn mood of the mix. For tracklist and more information: http://www.thewildcity.com/mixes/17679-wild-city-194-derain