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Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

Play it cool Youth is open to any music as long as it sounds chic

Hunched over their instruments, a band of 20-odd musos, soused in attitude and wearing a far-away arty look, wispy beards, and dressed, if one may call it that, in faded jeans and caps, feel their way on guitar and percussion instruments to music's deep heart. - for an `honestto- the-marrow' sound. The instruments weep and laugh, strain and sing, strut and dance. "Hey! Listen listen. Feel me, guys! Get in more chaotic, messy feel." The sound galumphs up the peaks, skitters along valleys and finally settles into a cheery sequence spawning a lush reverb- honest and raw. "Get in emo, more emo man!" Funky, gut socking tunes with psychedelic edge whoosh from the permutations of various riffs and combinations of influences. "Cool dude! It's fun to get up a tune and place it on record. Let's Youtube this."

Part technology, part style, part genre, and part stick-your-tongue-out at digital chic, lo-fi aesthetic is a tinker's dream, an amateur's Disneyland, a hacker's Wild West and a high-brow's pain in the you know what.

The transition from analogue to digital recording and reproduction involves sophisticated equipment. With computer programs and digital technology, music has been made more polished and slick, mostly bereft of real-world feel. "Sterile music, all the big label albums sound same," gripes Rajesh, a computer geek experimenting with low-end software without annoying filters. "Where are the hums, dissonance, clicks, buzzes and bleeps? We aren't just interested, but passionate about this," gushes his friend Hema, who religiously follows MTV fetishes. "You can feel the effects of lo-fi in every field," she adds.

High-tech and high-cost equipment from studios and labels muffled the muse of the artist and designers, and the `authenticity' of the art was lost. In response to this, musicians started recording on old equipment that makes the music more authentic and in tune with their vertiginous flights of creativity. "Lo-fi really connects us to the roots of music," says Rakesh, a computer science student whose favourites are Mountain Goats and Bingo Trappers. (The term `lo-fi' refers to low-fidelity of audio recording and reproduction in which there is distortion, background noise, whereas hi-fi refers to `high-fidelity', in which all the distortions are tamped out digitally, producing a sound that is crisp and clean.)

"If you have an idea, if you an ear for the sound of the train whistle over the hill, not the run-of-the-factory stuff," exhorts a fiddler, "then lo-fi is for you."

"People love lo-fi as much for the art as for the no-frills medium it offers," says Sunil, a web designer who employs simple HTML code and colours to deliver maximum emotional punch. Then there are fi- nancial constraints that leave designers little leeway for indulgence. "It costs hell to maintain these things with all bells and whistles," he adds. "In music, everything for that matter doesn't have to be great as long as you play it real good," says a wise punk.

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