“The harmonium I use was gifted to my grandfather by his friend 45 years ago, and then he gave it to me,” says Kolkata musician Nilotpal Das. “I started playing when I was around 14. It’s really old and worn out, with an old sound to it. I wanted to experiment with how I can make drone sounds with it.”

The instrument appears in modified forms in his expansive, sometimes noisy, droning electroacoustic compositions. Another side of Das’s production is a collision-heavy club output that takes cues from “dubstep, noise, jungle, drum ’n’ bass” among numerous other sources of inspiration. Das works under his own name and the alias Bios Contrast, which “comes from the Greek word bios, meaning life, and contrast, which also means against life – I don’t really like the name but I’m stuck with it”.

As to how he decides which name suits each release, he leans into the confusion: “The stuff I put out is like a mixed bag, much like [Japanese video game designer] Hideo Kojima. I feel like now my stuff shouldn’t make sense all the time and that’s good, in a way I’ll have more artistic freedom.” His main tools are his laptop and Ableton, which he runs almost everything through. “My club tracks are mostly sample-based, and I also use harmonium samples,” he explains. Alongside soft-synths and samplers on his drone and ambient pieces he plays “guitar as well, but not as good as the harmonium. It’s been two years of playing the guitar – I used it with a bow like a string instrument. I also have a violin, but I play the guitar as a violin.”

Here, he curates a special Wire mix in advance of his new album SSAC42, which will be released on 27 June by Infinite Machine.

Tracklist

Aphex Twin “Nightmail [London 14.09.2019]”
Deftones “Engine No 9”
Madvillain featuring Quasimoto “Shadows Of Tomorrow”
Wadaiko Matsuriza “Oni-mo-naku (Even A Demon Cries)”
Baatarjav “Tsuur”
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das “Crossing The River”
Caterina Barbieri “Math Of You”
Bios Contrast “Silence”
Death Grips “Lost Boys”
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das “Gondho Jhaater Chule”
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das “Club Warfare”
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das “everyth1ng 1n l1fe (feat K_anti)”
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das “ap0calypse 42”
Lucky Ali “Ek Pal Ka Jeena”
AR Rahman/Lata Mangeshkar/MG Sreekumar “Jiya Jale”
My Bloody Valentine “Soon”

In The Wire 495, Bios Contrast talks in more detail to Misha Farrant about his game designer’s approach to composition. You can buy a copy of the magazine in our online shop. Wire subscribers can also read the article in our online library.