The Beat Is On

As another party season rolls around, GQ gets the inside dope on the Indian (and Indian-origin) DJs and producers serving up the biggest bangers and dominating the rave and hip-hop scenes, in India and abroad. (Bonus: All the gear you need to make your own viral cuts).

- Kerry Harwin

NUCLEYA REACTION

GQ spends an afternoon with Udyan Sagar, behind the secret gates of India’s dance music phenom

As my scooter eases up to the location that I’ve been sent, I stop, unsure, and make a call. There’s no indication of an address and the two-storey Portuguese-style house, all pillars, grand windows and balconies, with two German cars parked in the driveway, differs from what I’d imagined.

But, of course, this is Nucleya’s house. The man headlines Indian festivals, plays at Glastonbury and Electric Daisy Carnival, and his music features in big-budget Bollywood films. The palatial estate where he lives with his wife and son – rented, while he develops a larger and more secluded property – shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.

Up to a point, I also know Udyan Sagar to be an individual so concerned with his privacy that he has his parcels delivered to another address. When I first interviewed him in 2013, a time when he’d just left the more experimental electronic duo Bandish Projekt and was putting together the electrodesi album that would be Koocha Monster, he came across as shy and modest. Since then, every chat and chance meeting with the unassuming artist has only reinforced that impression. Nucleya, the leading light of Indian electronic music, has a personality more likely to be associated with a solitary gardener than a superstar DJ.

“I have many different sides,” Nucleya tells me, almost as soon as we’ve begun our conversation. We sit in the airy bedroom, overlooking the river below and he’s at pains to point this out – so frequently, in fact, that we chuckle at the catchphrase by the end of our conversation.