Meet the electronica and hip hop producer from Ranchi who was inspired by a Bhutanese Dzong

Juggling between two different worlds, Ranchi-based Rishabh Lohia works for a construction firm by day and as a hip-hop producer called Mellow Turtle by night. He has released 2 EPs with socio-political undertones and an album in less than a year. The most recent one is called Dzong and is paving the way for Jharkhand’s indie circuit.

Born in Ranchi, Lohia was sent to Mayo College, Ajmer for his education, where he joined the school band at 13 as a guitarist. The band’s music was influenced by the likes of AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and Foo Fighters. Even later, Lohia was always keen to make music in a studio but he pursued a degree in Economics from the University of Bristol instead.

It was, according to Lohia, a terrible time. “Going from a school where I was surrounded by friends to having almost no friends [in the United Kingdom] was hard,” he said. “That’s when I started digging deep and heard everything from Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf and BB King to Junior Kimbrough.” The loneliness motivated him to start playing music again – apart from the blues, Lohia also liked electronica, jazz hop, trip hop and downtempo artists like Morcheeba, Thievery Corporation, Gramatik, and Chinese Man as well as jazz artists like Django Reinhardt, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk.

Post-UK, he returned to Ranchi and joined his father’s construction firm. “It was a very confusing time because all I wanted was to be making music,” he said. That was when Lohia composed his first song called Banaras about how it felt being back in Ranchi. “The song made me believe that I could compose and sing as well. I was looking for a studio to record and came across Jayant Doaraiburu, with whom I recorded the song. He then asked me to collaborate on an EP, which was how Elephant Ride came about,” he said.

Lohia began producing at home more seriously and invested in a better home-studio setup. At this time he met another local producer-rapper Sumit Singh Solanki or Tre Ess, who had rapped on a few songs in Elephant Ride.

“Tre asked me if I wanted to work on an EP,” he recalled. “We recorded the whole EP called Blues off the Ashtray in 21 days in my room! Tre used to get some drums he made and I’d put some guitars, synths, samples and bass on them. The next day, he’d come with the full structure and his lyrics and I’d write my own lyrics after listening to what he had done. Tre is a big inspiration. He is a freaking genius,” said Lohia.

Through their friendship, Lohia said he also understood more about Jharkhand’s many crises. Tre’s conversations and lyrics that have a strong socio-political stance about Jharkhand and being a Jharkhandi producer.

For their latest collaboration Dzong which is a full-length album, Tre wrote the lyrics for tracks like Dzongkha and Mojo Park and also produced the entire album. “In Bhutanese, ‘dzong’ is a fortress that serves as a religious, administrative and social service centre all in one,” Lohia said. “I loved that concept and I also love Dzong architecture. I believe I have an administrative side, a spiritual side and a social side to my being and through this album, I try and express all of them.”

The state of affairs in Ranchi are dismal for independent musicians. “The indie scene in Ranchi is non-existent,” Lohia said. “No venue wants us to play original songs, they want only Hindi songs or covers of old English songs.”

For his personal quest to change things, Lohia has adopted a village through a non-profit called Friends of Tribal Society – this means he will sponsor the school at that village for an entire year, in the hope that it will become a “clean, self sustaining, harmonious, spiritual and happy place.”

“I also sell clothes and fruit bearing trees to generate extra income,” he said. “Whatever I collect goes towards the development of the village.”