LALIT

A founding member of the global interdisciplinary artist collective Xiao Ma Party Controllers, Lalit was a seminal presence in NYC’s underground music scene since 2012. Known primarily for their work as the DJ/vocalist VVEISS, Lalit has also composed, written songs, and performed in ensembles such as the hardcore punk band Rollers, math-jazz duo O-NAMI, ambient drone group The Firmament, DJ duo Alias, and other cross-genre collaborations within the American avant-garde and dance circles. Lalit’s prolific involvement as an innovator in the realm of dance music and queer rave community-building has led them everywhere from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Berlin, Bogota, and now to Southeast Asia. At the forefront of Yangon's burgeoning dance music renaissance, Lalit worked closely with the Red Room team to conduct DJ workshops, educate on safer-space policies, assist the release of local artists' work with mixing/mastering, and expand the city's musical horizons and historical knowledge through their influential style of DJing, production, and mentorship. Grounded in experiential studies of both the ancient traditions of Indian classical music and the futurist vision of techno, Lalit’s musical practice dives deep into the extremes of metallic industrial noise, coiling harmonic synthesis, vocal poetics, and compounding polyrhythms, juggling the notions of structure and liberation from the same. Every offering from Lalit speaks to their appreciation for the rich and sometimes hidden interconnections across family trees of music genres and diasporas around the world. Depending on the set and setting, their sets move unpredictably yet artfully through the most treacherous hard techno, hardcore, jungle, and tek, creatively blending in pop, hip-hop, club, footwork, and south/east Asian anthems to envelop the dancefloor in a time-warping, border-crossing fever dream. When on stage, Lalit is as devoted to keeping you sweating as much as they are sure to keep you guessing what’s next.