A sequel of sorts to Finders Keepers’ sprawling Solla Solla compilation, Ilectro transports us to the totally ’80s phase of Tamil pop’s Crown Prince, Ilaiyaraaja. Baffling in the best way possible, it imagines a world where emerging strains of synth-pop and electro merge with the mad-for-it soundtrack music of Kollywood.
Or as Finders Keepers founder Andy Votel once told the Red Bull Music Academy, “This one-man wide-winged pop-culture vulture has been indiscriminately ravaging and regurgitating global pop for over 40 years, and made some of the most joyous, existential and euphoric electronic South Asian pop music to ever grace the dancefloors, picture houses, wedding parties, concert halls and discotheques of Tamil and Malay-speaking countries and beyond. With a portfolio of 4,500 recorded songs under his belt, it might seem humanly impossible by the standards of today’s Western pop perfectionists and procrastinators to achieve what this mutable multi-instruMENTALIST has already done. Perhaps it actually IS ‘humanly impossible.’ He’s a deeply religious man, without vices or venom, and has a strong preservationist tendency towards traditional Indian music. But Ilaiyaraaja is no enemy of technology. He is friends with the robots.”
Take that, Daft Punk…
