BENGALURU: From classmates to band mates, Rohit Gandhi and Anil Prasad have come a long way. Calling themselves Argenil, they are all set to leave for the United States of America for the next two-and-a-half months where they will be performing in major cities of the country, along with British producer Troy Henry, better known as Troyboi. With influences from artistes like Big Gigantic, Goldfish, Troyboi, Griz, Nghtmre, the duo consider their music to be Hindustani trap with the use of Indian instruments.
“We’ve been waiting for over five years for this moment and it feels unreal. And what’s crazier is we’re touring with TroyBoi. We’re going to take India to the world,” says producer and percussionist Gandhi, who did a showcase earlier this year.
For guitarist and DJ Prasad, for whom it’s his first visit to America, he admits that “life doesn’t get better than this”. “We’re lucky to be a part of this team who’s helping us take India to the world,” he says, adding that they’ve merged their love for performance, production, trap, and hip hop, and decided to form “our own live act duo, doing things out of the box.”
The two started playing together in college, and continued to perform as a duo despite others dropping out of their band. “We even wanted to go to the same engineering college so that we could work together. That didn’t work out, but we figured that our styles are similar. Both of us knew we wanted to work on electronic music with hints of Hindustani music,” says Gandhi.
Incidentally, while Gandhi started learning music at a young age with his mother, and often performed at temples, Prasad only got initiated into music in pre-university when Gandhi suggested he join his band and perform for a competition. With only four months in hand, Prasad enrolled for guitar classes. When the two went on to win the competition, they decided to stick on.