MUMBAI: All right, this is big. After bringing dance music icons like Modeselektor, Kode9, Hudson Mohawke and Kenny Dope to India, the world-travelling Red Bull Music Academy turns its attention eastwards to Japanese house music legend Soichi Terada and Nick Dwyer, one-half of Weird Together, for a three-city India tour in August 2017.

Multi-city tour will feature gigs in Bangalore on 16 August (The Humming Tree), on 18 August in Delhi (Summer House Café, Hauz Khas) and on 19 August in Mumbai ISDI Parsons, Lower Parel (Session) and Summer House Café (club night), alongside Red Bull Music Academy Sessions in Bengaluru  and Mumbai. While gigs will be held in all three cities, Red Bull Music Academy sessions will be held in Bengaluru and Mumbai only.

Featuring wide-ranging discussions between Nick Dwyer and Soichi Terada, the sessions will give attendees a taste of what a day at the Academy actually feels like, with lectures, free exchange of ideas among participants, and mutual inspiration. The sessions will also include a screening of episodes 1, 2 and 4 of Diggin’ in The Carts – a pioneering documentary series exploring how Japanese video game music became a global, cultural phenomenon – and a Q&A with the director Nick Dwyer. The Mumbai leg of the tour is in partnership with media arts festival, Eye Myth.

The legacy of video game music from Japan

The sound of video games and the composers behind them is the common thread between the acts for this Red Bull Music Academy tour. Having been ‘discovered’ in 2015 – courtesy of his Sounds From The Far East compilation on an Amsterdam-based label, Rush Hour – Soichi Terada’s charming take on house music caught the ears of dance music fans across the world. The album was widely celebrated as one of the year’s most essential reissues.

Through the 80s and 90s, Terada, along with a handful of other Japanese producers like Shinichiro Yokota, cooked up his own melodically rich slant on house music. Ranging in style from personable and fun to more moody and soulful, Terada has a broad sound palette that is full of humour and real character.

DJ and radio host Nick Dwyer in 2014 wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Diggin in The Carts’ documentary series, which focused on the global impact of Japanese video game music. The documentary spawned a radio series, which debuted last year on Red Bull Radio. You can listen to it here:

Dwyer’s duo Weird Together represents a seamless blend of organic music discovery and collaboration. Ethiopian jazz records, a contemporary club from Ghana’s streets of Accra, plus dance music from the Caribbean and South America found their way into the studio to give birth to this eclectic act. On this tour, Dwyer will also play out little-known gems from Japanese video game music that, for the most part, has rarely been heard outside of Japan.

Red Bull Music Academy will host the next edition of its month-long music workshop and festival series in Berlin from 8 September to 12 October 2018. After touching down in cities across the globe, including Tokyo, New York, Melbourne, Cape Town, Paris, São Paulo and Montréal; the Academy returns to the place where it all began back in 1998 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Music-makers from all over the world are invited to apply for the Red Bull Music Academy 2018 until 4 September 2017.