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Journalism of Courage
In India’s growing independent music scene, alternative voices often carve out their own space. Among them is New Delhi-based artist Sijya, 32, who has been shaping a musical language of her own – one that is built more on texture and instinct than melody. Her sophomore EP, Leather & Brass that came out on September 12 under One Little Independent Records — the same label that Björk has called home for nearly four decades now, is experimental, personal and at the same time deliberately heavy.
“I didn’t think a music career was possible,” she said. Although Sijya took some basic guitar and singing lessons as a kid, she had never really performed. “Before this EP, I was just messing about… But now I am doing it with intention,” she says with a smile. She is the first Indian artiste to be signed to a UK label.
Music wasn’t always the plan. Trained in graphics, Sijya found her way into Delhi’s electronic music community while working on the album art as a designer. “As a graphic designer, I’m very comfortable with software. It is something I fully understand. So when I discovered I could make music on a computer, I adapted to it quickly,” she recalled.
Her background in design lingers in her sonic palette. “I think I respond to sound texturally, aiming to make an audio canvas. I don’t think in traditional music school terms of chord progression and arrangements,” she says. It is no surprise then that Leather & Brass thrives on layers of distortion, glitch, and noise.
The title for the album is not a metaphor produced from thin air. Leather and brass are materials she grew up around. She reclaims them as sonic symbols — dense, raw and industrial. “I wanted the songs to sound like old machines — noisy, gritty but heavy,” she says.
The EP’s tracks grew through several cycles of experimentation, often changing mid-process. I only want to crash (the first track) and Why do you fight me were first conceived as skits – interludes meant to bridge the album — but later evolved into full songs. “That happens often. I plan skits, but they end up becoming songs,” she laughs. Why do you fight me was only supposed to be instrumental with bass and keys, but she decided to add the drums later, which took it from an interlude to a full-fledged song.
With the track Safe, she aimed for impact. “The song has a long intro and then a big bass kick. I told my mix engineer that I wanted to feel that kick like a slap in the face,” she recalled. With the track Tabla, it started out as a joke to do something South Asian like everyone else but turned into something more sincere. Recording engineer Jay Panelia played a crucial role, working alongside Sijya to strip digital synths of their sterility.
Her lyrics, though minimal, cut deep. She said, “I have always found it difficult to write lyrics. I am more of a numbers person. With this album, I have tried to be okay with the fact that I am not really a words person.”
The cover art for the album is a manipulated photograph from Sijya’s childhood — taken by her father during a family outing somewhere on the Jaipur highway. As a child, she had “corrected” the print with whitener, erasing the decorative streamers that her father had put, which she mistook for an error. Rediscovered during the lockdown, the picture became the visual anchor for the EP.
Sijya’s EP defies an easy definition. She wants to keep it intuitive and abstract. She insists that the meaning should not be dictated but felt. And in her search – for texture, for a sound that feels like her own – Sijya has carved out a space that is distinctively her own.
