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<h1 class="right">Kalim Patel [who prefers to go by his childhood nickname Khushi] owes the beginnings of his career in music to his being an obedient son. The guitar lessons he took young because his mom told him to, eventually led to songwriting and playing in bands in his late teens and early twenties. His foray into production came soon after, driven by the realisation that most of what came out of the recording sessions with his band sounded disappointing to him. He broke up the band, as a twenty-something musician often tends to, and learned to make records himself, experimenting, failing, and making sounds he finally didn’t completely hate. The process reaffirmed that production was a core part of what he wanted to do as a musician, and things snowballed from there. In 2019, Khushi became a Grammy-nominated producer, working with James Blake on ‘Assume Form,’ a swooning, grand gesture of love interspersed by features the likes of Travis Scott, Rosalía, André 3000, and Metro Boomin. With the release of his debut album in 2020, Strange Seasons, of visceral, introspective ballads, he now has two indie records in the works, in addition to his collaborations as a producer. On a late January afternoon, Khushi joins producer Sid Vashi on a cross-continental call to discuss experimental production, plugins that work like black magic, and the paradox of choice.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid Vashi: Your name here on Google Meet reads Kalim. What do you go by, Kalim or Khushi?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi Patel: My government name is Kalim, but my parents nicknamed me Khushi when I was young because they felt Kalim wasn't soft and squishy enough for a baby, whereas Khushi definitely is.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: And what do you find yourself going by?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: Khushi.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: And Patel, are you Gujarati?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: My mum is Gujarati, and my dad is from Essex, in England.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: That's an interesting combination. Cultural influences from everywhere: Indian on one side, British on the other. How does that impact the music you make?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: It's interesting to think about. There's actually quite a strong British Asian music scene in the world. People like Jai Paul and…</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: Cornershop.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: Cornershop, yeah. Ben Khan. There seems to be some magic in that combination, even when the music doesn't necessarily channel different styles directly. But in the last few years, when I started producing for this artist called Paravi in LA, who’s American-Bangladeshi, we started using more traditional elements, tablas, and Indian rhythms and vocals.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: I find that when using traditional sounds, part of it is representation, putting the sound out there. But a large part is also how you do it.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: For sure. We made this song called ‘Golden Child’ together, and in a way, you wouldn't necessarily know a tabla was used. The main riff is a tabla, but it sounds like it could be a guitarist playing this repeating, driving riff. Later on [in the song], there are more obvious tabla fills, which I really love as well. It becomes a driving pulse for the whole song that you wouldn't even necessarily know is there. I don't like when fusions sound too obvious or forced. I think it's best when it happens naturally, and the elements fuse together rather than trying to force them in as a concept.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes, especially among artists in the diaspora, there's this need to drop in Indian elements as a form of personal identity, but it's not necessarily doing what exactly the song calls for.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: Yeah, definitely.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Sid: I think it's happening more and more where people are organically bringing those elements to their sound. Is that something that you ever explore in your own music?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: I did have a sitar in an intro of one song. But you know what? Not a ton. I would say no. As of yet, there hasn't been an awful lot of crossover, really, because most of my influences growing up have been Western pop music.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: I listened to your most recent album and really enjoyed it. Especially the song that's called 'This Is, Part I' with almost that kind of jittery vocal sample rhythm.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: Oh yes. That was thanks to a plugin called Permutate.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: What does that do?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: Well, it does all sorts of dark magic. Permutate is so good that sometimes I feel like it deserves writing credit on songs. It was a friend and musical collaborator, James Blake, who put me onto that plugin. It's a weird one. Half the time, it makes sounds that you don't even understand. You turn it on, and it's spitting out weird, random, horrid sounds. I'm just flicking through presets and twisting buttons, hoping for the best, and then suddenly, it spits out magic. For instance, I hummed in this line, a kind of long melody, and I pitched it up and then put it through Permutate, which is what gave it all of that rhythm, and chopped it up to make something completely different. And that's how that song was born, really.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: That's awesome. It's so fun to use randomised technology. It takes whatever preconceived intention you might have and allows you to surprise yourself.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: Yes, it's beautiful. The thing about modern music-making as the musician or producer is that you feel like you're at the end of a long line of incredibly creative, talented people, and you're working with their tools and their presets or sounds or effects, and it's kind of a collaboration with people you've never met. They've just fed you these gifts that can then spark things in your imagination, and it's fantastic.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Sid: That leads to another question. How do you go about starting an idea for a song? Do you have a certain manner in which you try to start, or is it just random?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: You know what? It does start in different ways. Often, for me, it has started with the song, which means I'm sitting and working on an instrument, either a guitar or piano, and writing chords. But then, other times, it starts with an instrumental beat that either I've made or someone else has made. If you start writing the song and then you come up with something you really love, then the challenge is how do we produce it into a wonderful sounding record? Then, the opposite challenge is when you have an amazing instrumental, and then you try to make a song that lives up to how good the instrumental is.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: Which one do you find more challenging?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: I find starting the song first more challenging in a way because I think I've come up with songs that I love, but then I struggle sometimes to find the production and the right arrangement choices that feel like, okay, this has done justice to this song. I think I can just easily get haunted by the sense that, oh god, this could be imagined a million different ways, or maybe it could be arranged totally differently in a way that would serve the song even better. Meanwhile, when you start with a strong instrumental, the moment you get a good song, it's basically done.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: I find the latter more challenging. I always feel like I'm ruining the instrumental.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: Well, I know what you mean. It takes time to get it right; sometimes you can put vocals on something, and it doesn't sound as good as it did before.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: Once you progress in terms of production skills, being able to do a wide range of sounds, do you encounter being overwhelmed by choice when deciding how to produce a song you're writing?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: Yes, definitely. I think it's the gift and the curse of modern music-making that we have these incredible machines nowadays in laptops that have whole studios packed inside this tiny space, and it's all at our fingertips. It is incredible and very inspiring, but at the same time, it can be overwhelming. Sometimes limitations can be a gift to creativity, to have certain parameters for your creativity to work within. It reminds me of listening to an interview with Paul McCartney where he was talking about how he preferred the start of The Beatles' career when they didn't have an awful lot of money and they could only afford studio time for three hours or something, and they'd go in and record two songs and bang, it'd be done. He was comparing that to the end of their career, where they had tons of money and could just sit around in the studio all day, but it became a lot more aimless. One thing to say on that, though, is that even though he might prefer the early way, you can see what having that expansiveness does. The Beatles' career obviously led to a lot more incredible music they wouldn't have been able to make if they had just had three hours of studio time. But extending that on from the start of The Beatles' career towards the end until where we are now, we're at the extreme of that because we don't even need studio time now. If you have a laptop, an interface, and a mic, then your whole life can be studio time, which is, again, a gift and a curse. It's just about finding that balance between expansiveness and singularity.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: I think a lot of producers fall into the trap of sort of deliberating over minute details and focusing, reiterating. With that said, then, how do you sort of go about making choices?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: The answer is really just instincts. I mean, it might even be personal taste, but what you're drawn to, what you're excited by, what feels right for you. My friend and I went away into the desert for a week, and we would play this game where we'd both separately write down random combinations of instruments. Sometimes, they'd be very traditional, like guitar, piano, drums, or something, but other times, they'd just be completely random, like oboe, sitar, trombone, just whatever. We then scrunch them up into a piece of paper, throw them in a hat, and then just pull them out at random and be like, okay, we've got one hour to make a piece of music using these instruments, and that was really great. For instance, for my next album, one of the things I kept in mind palette wise, was that this next album is going to be more of my indie record, and the drums are all going to be natural sounding drums and, for the most part, it's natural sounding instruments. That's quite liberating in a way because it sounds almost like a paradox that narrowing down your options can be liberating.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Sid: In terms of the palette for your next album that focuses on more natural drums, where did that choice come from?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: It came about, I would say, quite naturally, as a means to organise the various different songs I had into something that felt cohesive and had a certain togetherness.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: Let's talk a little bit about intention with regard to your music. What are you trying to achieve, or what are you interested in?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: I actually got to a point recently when I finished my album and then looked at it in a playlist and was like, you know what? I think this is maybe two different albums because one is more indie, and it has this youthful, innocent energy to it. I think it would be more impactful to have those all together as a group. It's a recent reflection of me. With the indie album, the focus is just on the songs. It's just a lot of songs that I'm really proud of, and I think they are really strong songs to their core. Then, with the album after that, I think there's more honing in on production and more unusual sounds. I think lyrically, it reflects me more broadly as a person. Yeah, but generally, with my music, I just want to strike at something fundamental. I want to be as honest as I can and give as full a version of myself as I can without getting stuck in my own mind because sometimes it's quite easy to end up putting yourself in boxes or being like, this is what I present to the world, so I'll just keep doing that. When, in fact, there are so many different sides to us that often get neglected or hidden away. So, I think progressively, I would just want to bring a fuller and fuller picture to the light.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Sid: Yeah, it's interesting to think about. I'm a doctor. I work in psychiatry. We talk a lot about ego defences and dealing with things. One thing in art that is invaluable is the opportunity for sublimation, for taking a feeling or an idea and translating that into a healthy outlet. The ugly sides of yourself they're feeling. They exist within you, but they need to go somewhere. Speaking of what you're saying, all the sides of yourself, you find that you explore things in music that you don't necessarily let out into your personal life.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Khushi: Definitely. Even in art, it can be easy to fall into a pattern of subconsciously presenting a version of yourself that you want to present. But I think it's also important to present sides of yourself that you're more reluctant to present because that's often going to be the most honest stuff. I have a few new songs that I'll play to people, and it's part of my ego, which is just cringing so hard when I play because I'm like, no, this is embarrassing. But at the same time, I think some of those songs are also the most lyrically potent and strong songs that I've written because they're just honest about different aspects of being a person or ideas you had of yourself that maybe don't match the reality or grandiose delusions or whatever it is.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Sid: Do you find that when you do have those sorts of songs that seem like they're a part of you that you're reluctant to show to other people? Did other people who know you find those songs surprising?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: It's a good question. Yes and no. I think it's true that I'm quite honest with my close friends about what I'm feeling, so probably most of them aren't blindsided by it, but it's still maybe striking to hear it put in a song. One of the most beautiful functions that art can play is that if you make something you put a raw, vulnerable part of yourself into, it can connect with someone else who maybe thought, oh, God, I thought no one else felt that way. And that's one of the most beautiful, connecting, nourishing things about artistic expression.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: It reminds me of something that an author, David Foster Wallace, said about the function of fiction, which is to make people feel less alone. But I think that's true of most art forms in some way; it is an expression of some experience.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: That's for sure, yeah. I mean, it's like that cliche of people being like, oh, talking about how Radiohead sounds depressing. Yeah, it's true that Radiohead lyrics aren't happy-clappy a lot of the time. But for me, it's not depressing; it's life-affirming. Because it helps to know those dark thoughts or feelings you're dealing with are shared with someone else, especially when they're expressed in such genius forms.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Sid: I'm also a big fan of Radiohead. One thing I noticed is that some Radiohead albums have a specific palette in a way, especially the most recent, A Moon Shaped Pool. But some albums are more eclectic than others. I tend to enjoy both. But do you have a preference in terms of uniformity in a project vs. eclecticism and in today's market?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: Well, I think I like both too, to be honest, because there are some albums that I think of, like Bon Iver's first album, for instance, which is a very strong, stark, stylistic statement, and there's a clear palette. As a result, maybe it is even more impactful when artists come out with such a clearly defined sound, like The Strokes' first album. But I think it also may be true that some of my favourite albums are very eclectic, like Abbey Road, for instance.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Sid: For your next two albums, are you going for a kind of uniformity or kind of eclecticism?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: Well, I think part of my decision to separate the project into two albums is a desire to get a bit more stylistic coherence, especially because some of the songs I wrote are from a different stage of my life; they are some of the strongest songs I've written. But they also come from a different version of me, and I kind of think they deserve to stand on their own, just as the songs that are more reflective of the most recent version of me do. And I think the indie record will be more stylish and coherent. The more recent one, in a way, will be more eclectic. I'm excited for both of them.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sid: Sound-wise, what are you pushing yourself to put out? For the next two albums and in the future.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Khushi: I think for my own albums, the indie ones, it's less focused on production and more focused on songwriting. The production will just be more understated. On the albums after that, it's about the idea first and foremost, but there's probably more experimental production or unusual sound stuff. And then, with different artists I produce for, every artist will challenge me in a new way, or I feel like I don't end up learning things or growing. It also feeds back into my own solo stuff. Being a producer of others helps me produce myself better. I do mix my own stuff, but I think in this next album, I'm actually going to have it mixed by someone else. There's a great guy in LA that I know, Jon Castelli, who's lined up to mix the album, and he's amazing. And it's funny, actually, because I played him a bunch of stuff I produced for this artist called Monica Martin and this artist called Ruthie in England, both incredible. And then I played him some of my own stuff. And that was when he offered and said he wanted to get involved in mixing my album, which was great. He also said that I mix their stuff a lot better than I mix my own. And that was interesting because I think maybe with my own, I just don't have as much objectivity. There are a lot of artists who've inspired people. James Blake is one of them, and Bon Iver is another. There's a bunch who went away and made their first album or their first couple of albums totally on their own. And I think they've probably influenced people a lot, but I think even now, they sort of feel there's such beauty in collaboration and the eventual cross-pollination of ideas. And I found it can just get lonely and miserable just sitting behind a laptop on your own, year after year after year. I mean, probably a certain amount of my job is inevitably going to be me behind a laptop on my own, but I think it's also important just to balance that ratio out a bit. So, I try to work more and more with other people because it's just good for you as a human. It turns music-making into a social event where it's an energetic exchange between people. And even if there are moments of tension or disagreement, it's worth it, I think. So much of the music we love historically came out of whole teams of people taking care of different roles. And whilst it can be cool just to wear all the hats and do everything and have that singular vision, I think after a while, it can also wear you down. I think there are an awful lot of incredibly wonderful, talented people out there. Why not go out and work with them?</h1>

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