Trash talk with a difference

Mullick's music features multiple influences including hip-hop and dub

A three-track EP that Mumbai-based musician and producer Abhimanyu Mulli­ck aka Manyu has released is titled around a basic and staggering problem Mumbai has been battling - garbage. Everything is Garbage talks about how everyone has their own version of what garbage means, while also referring to the surface-level layer of waste all around the city. "Someone's gold can be someone's garbage, and another person's garbage can amount to gold for someone else," says Manyu, about the bass-heavy electronica tracks.

The 29-year-old musician, who used to sing in a rock band called October in Delhi before he left for California to study audio production, came to Mumbai in 2015 and started living with his childhood friend and producer, Arnav Singhal. He's the one who egged him on to start releasing his originals. "The end of 2018 was a phase when I noticed that everyone around me was going through some sh't or the other, dealing with anxiety and work. And even when it came to the climate or politics, everyone's perspective was that it had gone to the dogs. You think things can't get worse, and then they do," he explains.

Also, the fact that living in Mumbai is not an easy proposition had an added impact. "The city can chew you up and spit you out if you can't keep up. That was on my mind when I was composing the tracks. The point is, you can either let the garbage get to you or you can change your perspective," Manyu, who also works as an audio engineer, adds.

While he still has a soft corner for melancholic tunes, he aims for an introspective track rather than something that's a nightclub banger. And though his songs have had a clear influence from the electronica he was exposed to in the US, you can still hear strains of his Hindustani classical training as a child, along with dub, hip-hop and classic rock influences. "Every genre has a formula now, especially if it's computer-based because you see
the grid and fall into the trap of a pattern. Also, releasing three-song EPs makes more sense today due to the short attention span of listeners," Manyu shares.

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