Bollywood breakdown

>> Catching Hadji & Lmo's subcontinental drift

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Until now, the Indian breakbeat sound, based largely in London, England, has come in two shapes. There's the heavily politicized side of Asian Dub Foundation and Fun-Da-Mental, and there's the deep, spiritual approach of Talvin Singh and Badmarsh & Shri. The resources come from traditional music, while the pop side of Indian culture, last heard to any degree in the often-cheesy bhangra sound, has remained dormant.

Not any more. Based right here in Montreal, Hadji & Lmo (know to their parents, cousins, uncles and such as Simon Kumarapeli and Amar Lehari) are kicking off the North American scene, and the accent is on fun. Like fellow Montrealer Ram, they look not to hallowed ragas but to Bollywood, the massive Indian film industry, for inspiration and material.

"They opened the doors," says Lmo of the London scene. "Without them, there'd be no room for us. They're all good, I guess, but it's different from what we do. We're not poking fun, per se, but we're trying to have fun. We're saying, look at it in the way these movies are. There's humour, dancing, singing, whatever. We don't have any politics behind our music. It's about partying and having a good time."

Bhangra never hip-hopped like this

Although cousins (in the formal sense!), the two only met half a decade ago. D.C.-boy Lmo, an established hip hop producer down his way, had been kicking around the idea, since about '90, of fusing Indian sounds with choicer beats than those of bhangra. A visit to Montreal hooked him up with local kid Hadji (yes, it's a Jonny Quest reference), in whom he discovered not only a long-lost relative but also a like mind. Sharing a taste for the rougher side of dance music--raw U.S. hip hop and hard-ass U.K. drum & bass--the pair elected to, in the parlance, "fuck shit up."

"We clicked right away," says Lmo. "Not just musically, but in our mentality, just the way we are. I'd been producing for a long time--hip hop, mostly, and dance music, house, breaks and all that shit. As we started to dive into it, we were thinking, Let's do some real shit. I let him listen to some stuff I'd done, and he goes, 'You're an idiot! Fuck hip hop, let's do this!' We had the know-how to do it right, we both have played out, we both know what the stage is about--that kind of stuff."

It was the first Montreal appearance of ADF, now a good four years ago, that really lit the fire under their asses. "It was intense," recalls Hadji. "To see that in Montreal--sold-out show, 600 kids, anti-racism booth set up--to see five Indian kids come and rock Montreal that fucking hard, man, that was deep."

Now tight with ADF, the boys also point to Indian Ropeman as another figure they want to big up. "He's the in-house sound engineer for the Skint label. He's done Fatboy Slim and everybody. So this Indian kid, the unknown engineer guy in Brighton, is now coming out as an artist. You see him in his white fur coat, standing next to a big red sign saying Asian Lover--fuck, let's go. Let's turn everyone on to him.

"Instead of thinking there's some Indian scene happening, why not just turn people on to the artists who are good? Because there's piles of crap out there. Have you heard that group Joi? I don't like it. It's ain't hard-hitting at all."

Literally "the bomb"

Hard-hitting is where Hadji & Lmo are at. "Did you see the South Park," asks Hadji, "where the kids go to a flute competition and discover the 'brown note'? That's the one that's so low it makes you shit your pants the second you hear it.

"I'm sure there's really a brown note. In World War II, they were trying out sonic bombs that could level buildings. Sound is physical, right? It's all about moving air. That's why when you listen to the Hadji & Lmo shit, it's so thick. If you don't have the right system, it'll sound like shit and blow up your system. It's done like that on purpose."

Need proof? Check their debut musical six-pack Indian Style, on the locally based Wikkid label, home also to the Urbanauts and others. Bangin' beats and bumpin' basslines serve as the bed of basmati onto which the lads have poured a killer masala of Bollywood soundbites, looped, tweaked and twisted.

A self-contained universe, Bollywood churns out more celluloid every year than Hollywood, and often has a larger audience. "It's the biggest thing in the world," Hadji says of the Bombay-based film scene. "The coolest, too.

"To make those six songs, we had to watch 200 movies. I mean, how much did we know about it? Think, with the American stuff, if you're trying to jack up on Hollywood movies, how can you keep abreast of everything that's coming out, what's good and what's shit? You gotta go and watch it, really. Especially if you're looking for audio samples. It's got nothing to do with the story, the stars, nothing. They come out of the blue, in the weirdest of places. You have no choice, you have to watch the whole thing, and these movies are three hours long."

The process proved a thorough education for Hadji and Lmo. "We knew nothing going in. The guy behind the counter's looking at as like we were crazy. 'What are you jerks doing here? What, are you casing the place? You wanna rent movies? Ha ha, $20 membership for you, asshole!'"

They oughta be in pictures

Some 600 hours of couch time later, the boys know their shit, casually tossing around names of stars, directors and "playback singers," movie-tune chanteuses who are as popular as the actors themselves. Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan are the two songbirds the fellows favour (their voices recur all across the disc), and with whom they hope to work before too long. If Shiva smiles on them, they're Bollywood-bound.

"They need music," says Hadji, "because every film they make there is a musical. We've got uncles, in the States and over there, who are in that business."

"Since the Indian breakbeat scene came up, in these last five years," says Lmo, "there's been a change in the movies, too. There's more Western influence. Look at the clothes. They're wearing DKNY. Never saw that before. They have the Indian side locked down, the dance sequences, the full dress, all very traditional. But they like the Western influence, which is what I see in the movies now.

"The idea is, we were born in America, so we've got the hip hop, the dancehall, all the music from the club scene. They want that, in a sense, but until now they've just been ripping it off from the '80s, Gloria Estefan and so on. That'll be the approach--we can write that stuff as originals. The same feel, maybe, but with the Hadji & Lmo touch. That way we can work with these artists directly on future records, we hope."

Hadji & Lmo's Bollywood Top 10

1. Bombay "The most intense Indian movie I've ever seen. It's about a Hindi guy who falls in love with a Muslim girl. It's based around the Golden Temple riots and the Canadian plane bombing and all those events that led to Gandhi getting capped. You don't see Hindi films like that."

2. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai "One of the most popular movies ever made, it's just a good story, a comedy-musical. It's got college girls in short skirts. What more do you need?"

3. Dil Se "It's like the Indian Love Story, basically. Every song, almost, was a hit, so it's got Alka and Udit all over it."

4. Fiza "This girl spends the entire film looking for her dead brother, who turns out not to be dead at all. Everyone knows it, because it's in the trailers, so I'm not giving anything away."

5. International Kalidha "That's, like, International Killer Society. A bunch of guys and girls with guns roaming around killing people for money. It's amazing. Wicked."

6. Soldier "It's about this rogue soldier who gets kicked out of the army, but he's actually been framed. He has to do all this manoeuvreing around. Lots of guns, good shooting scenes, lots of violence."

7. Raja Hindustani "He's the baddest taxi driver in all of India, man. He picks up a nice girl and drives her around for most of the film. She's a hottie looking for where her parents fell in love. Good scenery and nice girls."

8. Mafia Raj "Indian Mafia, eh. What more do you need to know? Just guns, guns, more guns, some curry--and drug deals gone wrong."

9. Bombay Boys "A bunch of guys hanging out in Bombay, partying all day and all night. For some reason, it's got this underlying homosexual theme. Don't ask me what's up with that."

10. Dil To Pagalhai "That's just a big dance movie, man. Big dance numbers, all traditional, like what you see on the screen when you come to one of our shows."

So how and where do you get this stuff? Easy. "Just ask for them by name," the boys suggest, "at your local Indian dépanneur."