Boiler Room Bengaluru - a Tale of Two Cities

Relentless days, restless nights

Boiler Room's fourth edition was a party of two halves, a mirror to the fragmented experience of the city. The party itself was split much as days and nights in Bangalore go. The first half (the “Day”) raucous and aggressive, the second (the “Night”) hypnotic and lonely.

Being the poster child of a techno-optimist country, Bengaluru positions itself on the cutting edge of enterprise and imagination. A city that rewards and facilitates adventure and serendipity with little regard for precedent — a neo-liberal meritocratic haven, poised to redefine the future of a hopeful new India. The logic is simple - the faster you are, the better you are. This can be extrapolated to Bengaluru's entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole — newer, better, faster technologies that replace what came before, in order to create material change. The facilitators of this techno-optimism are products of an impossibly competitive education system premised on outrunning those around you, to achieve mobility for yourself. They enter the city accustomed to its ruthlessness and competition.

Most "Days" in the city are spent furthering this techno-optimism in return for massive disposable income, previously unseen freedom and the rumour of infinite upward mobility. This is, admittedly, intoxicating. Most "Nights", this intoxication prohibits the examination of the systems supporting it. 

To achieve this mobility and the riches that come with it involves loneliness, burnout and desperation that remains unresolved. It exists deep under the covers, and when confronted, is aggressively dismissed, relegated to "collateral damage" in pursuit of greater riches. Boiler Room Bengaluru mirrored this city — the allure of the pot of gold at the end of a grey rainbow. 

The first three sets — Raka Ashok, Kandy Kuri and DJ ADHD were literal and fast, just as "Days" go. Raka Ashok and Kandy Kuri, both longtime residents of the city and ecosystem, were attuned to the hunger of this audience. Their sets were cycles of "I'll do you one better", with each track imbibing the aggression the audience was accustomed to. A city whose more recent residents' circuitry is wired to pugnacity and outwardness, took to the breaks and bass-laden sets without second thought or invitation. The selections respected this and were stripped of all pretence - the dpm (drops per minute, a metric someone in the crowd introduced me to) was through the roof. 

Assuming that these would be "warm-up sets" was rooted in a chronology of dance music culture of ole, where the BPM gradually rises through the night and eventually crescendos. In its enterprise and at the party, there was an intentional and effective rejection of this precedent. The desire for disruption, visible along every trafficked street in the city had made its way to the dancefloor. Raka Ashok's inclusion of the "What ra Sudeep" sample against a frantic breakbeat only 30 minutes into the party summed up these sets best: loud, in-your-face and unrelenting. 

The first two sets revealed the relationship between "Days" in Bengaluru and a need for speed, as well as a digitally constructed perception of the rave. Boiler Room, through their robust documentation and sprawling network of sponsors, promoters and venues, pioneered the digitilisation of the rave, heralding a digitally constructed global rave monoculture, intensely visible in Bengaluru. This was best evidenced by a group of 5 youths who were immovable from their spot behind the DJ. Acutely aware of the value of that real estate (immortalised by the Fred Again guy who pressed the cue button while dancing, @peopleofboilerroom and the countless reels of "crazy reaction at Boiler Room"), these lads had rehearsed gun fingers, chiselled stank faces and mime-like skits in the hope of achieving their fifteen minutes of second-hand internet fame. In fleeting moments, their act appeared genuine, in most others, they represented a trope on the far end of the rave spectrum, but one that is growing in strength: clout-chasing, self-involved and detached from the authentic self-expression that the culture was borne out of. There were a surprisingly high number of sober people clad in sunglasses, blissfully unaware of their more hedonistic connotation yet assuming that they accompany leather, rings and glitter as seen in a grwm (‘get ready with me’ video). Across genders, it was clear that attire was sourced purposefully and dedicatedly for the event through drop-shippers and Instagram thrift stores with refined marketing algorithms. 

*Aside on trying to deal with the sobriety: a tactical visit to the bathroom to find something that had accidentally made its way into my shoe threw up a rude surprise: all bathroom stall doors had been removed, and each bathroom had two attendants lurking at all times*

While technology dominates the "day" literally through knowledge work and time-zone hopping, even liminal spaces in a day - commutes, chai/sutta breaks, and exercise - are occupied by digital consumption, in this case, dictating both what the rave should look like and what you should look like at the rave.  

DJ ADHD, who succeeded Kandy Kuri, fell victim to this perception of the rave. He closed the "Day" segment of the party, half a year on from his India debut at the Magnetic Fields Festival. Track for track, his Boiler Room and his Mag Fields sets had massive overlap, but their performance was as disparate as could be. 

Playing a sought-after timeslot (1:30a - 3a) at the largest stage at Mag Fields meant that the mature-ish and un-sober-ish audience could make sense of his "European" house set - smoother and happier and more vocal. The audience's patience afforded him allowed a gradual assertion onto the set, building into the infinite night of the festival. But the digital construction of the sonic aspect of rave events, such as Boiler Room, happens through the same modality as for fashion and dance — short-form video. This reduces DJs to participants in the attention economy, requiring them to play with more drops, quirkier edits and less space. This required DJ ADHD to short-circuit the gradualness for brute force, providing a fitting end to the "Day" segment of the party. 

The transition to the second half of the rave, or the "Night", was unsubtle. Kohra established the tone for a cold, dark, lost evening in the city in the first few minutes of his set. The viscerality of the first half was quickly replaced by an inward metronome that only grew more anxious. Kohra's set was sparse and biting, with darker percussion, and pitch shifts providing a metallic quality to his hour-long set. Hardly conducive to the finger guns or two-stepping as the previous sets were, Kohra zombified the audience into a body that swayed and nodded silently. There was visible discomfort and confusion, especially when layers began getting unstripped, often with only a kick drum and a hi-hat playing as the mix continued. Kohra provoked an audience ravenous for being subsumed by their surroundings into examination and questioning of what it meant to be in the club, rave and moment. Sunburn Union's tiered architecture provided a unique vantage point - from 3 floors above, the packed dancefloor was more unified than at any other point in the night. Unified by their collective unease with of music that required effort to respond to, and not a limbic reaction as other sets did. 

This jagged segue is all too familiar - a comedown from the incessantness of a workday to a sober, empty home. Evenings in Bengaluru are similar - offering an environment away from the workplace to examine, yet being unable to do so. To begin questioning inordinate salaries, cultish founders, privatised loneliness et. al. is an overwhelming ask, especially when conditioned and ingrained into believing that Bengaluru is the pot of gold at the end of a youth of penance. At best, we rationalise structurally competitive systems and jobs as the India growth story, our knowledge work jobs as some LinkedIn buzzword, and a failing social fabric as personal incompetence. And after this piecemeal, superficial rationalisation, we forget. 

After Kohra's anaesthetising, AK Sports and Anetha attempted to resuscitate. The result was an enraptured audience that took to the density and speed of their sets with much ease. The "Night" was back to its raucous best - fuelled by frustration pent up during the forced introspection of Kohra's gnawing set. The overwhelming hardstyle meant an opportunity to forget once again— except it was a more forced variant of forgetting. It was an attempt at reclaiming agency over the unease of darker sounds, an overcrowded dancefloor and a realisation of the finitude of the night. An acceptance of this reality (and a wilful obliteration of introspection)  then led to an even more visceral reaction. Both AK Sports and Anetha's intense brand of techno led to bedlam, with swaying and nodding replaced by a more volatile, aggressive collective frenzy —shoving and vigorously throwing fists into the air. This exaggerated response showed itself at the rave through movement but shows itself every day through substances, doomscrolling and situationships. Most attempts at exerting meaningful change for oneself are met with a drastic overcompensation with the hope of quashing the thought. Any opposition to the techno-optimist eat or be eaten narrative is so jarring that it renders indigestion, and is expunged at any opportunity. 

As the night came to a close, the forgetting had done its job - it had successfully justified any discomfort and suppressed any inquiry. All cracks that were threatened were taped over, and on things went. Bengaluru's incessant days remain unchecked by insipid nights, and it continues to dance between forgetting and finding itself.