From DIY DJ Decks to Listen Out: Meet Indian-Australian Genre-blurring Electronic Producer GURPAAL

Genre-blurring electronic producer GURPAAL (Gurpaal Bains) doesn’t like squeezing his electronica into any sort of box. (Yep, even those ice cream containers your South Asian mother reuses for her tikka masala.) 

His sound is simply a culmination of his lifelong love affair with electronica. There’s a dollop of house, a dash of techno, a pinch of indie dance, a spoonful of UK Garage, and then a smidgen of trance, for good measure. But, as GURPAAL explains, his music isn’t “exclusively limited to any one of those”. 

The Brisbane/Meanjin-based South Asian Australian’s sonic world transcends borders and genres, connecting us to a deeper, richer experience. And as long as his music makes you feel something, Gurpaal Bains is happy.

Following his critically acclaimed debut EP Calling, GURPAAL returned this year with his second EP, Magnify—darker, moodier, more brooding—blending melancholy and euphoria in whatever the producer-equivalent of a Nutribullet 900 is. It’s a kaleidoscope of sounds, and this Indian-Aussie is a melodic mixologist. 

Let your eardrums, earlobes and ear hairs shake to GURPAAL’s emotionally-charged EP now. And learn about GURPAAL’s origin story (better than Batman’s), owning Little Street Studio in Fortitude Valley, and reclaiming his name in this wide-ranging conversation with Brown Boy Magazine. 

Our conversation has been edited for clarity and concision.

Brown Boy Magazine: Who is GURPAAL? Being UK-based, Brisbane-based, did you move around a lot as a kid? What was it like growing up?

GURPAAL: My family is originally from a small village in Punjab, India. I was born in the UK, and we moved to Australia when I was 13. Dad was born in India but moved to the UK when he was around one year old, and Mum was born in the UK. It was my great-grandparents who made the move to the UK from India. So, you could say that I’m a third-generation immigrant. 

I’ve been quite fortunate career-wise—my parents have been mostly very supportive of my choices. That definitely doesn’t mean I wasn’t super nervous telling them I wanted to drop out of my Master of Architecture to pursue a career in music, but they took it pretty well. 

For them, it’s less about what I’m doing and more that I’m working hard and dedicated to whatever that may be. There’s definitely the expectation to work hard and make the most of the opportunities that they and their parents have afforded me, but I’m also very glad there is that expectation.

BB: Your last EP was critically acclaimed by some big names in Aussie music. You won the Listen Out competition last year. And you’ve worked with some huge artists (Golden Features, Lastlings, RÜFÜS DU SOL, and more). Tell us a bit about your new EP Magnify. What emotions do you want us to feel?

GURPAAL: So, Magnify is my second EP, and the follow-up to my debut EP, Calling. To me, it is the natural extension of my first body of work, taking some of the themes and emotions explored in Calling but doubling down on the intensity and diving into them a whole lot deeper. This body of work has a darker feel than the first, and I feel there’s more intention and weight behind it. I really wanted to take what I had learned in putting out the first EP and push myself further production-wise, too.

There are definitely some feelings of melancholy and euphoria in the EP. I really like playing with the contrast of the two, and that’s a theme that runs throughout the first two EPs. But really, as long as it makes the listener feel something—I’m happy.

BB: How did you get started in music—writing it, producing it, collaborating with artists? How’s the journey been over the last few years?

GURPAAL: My earliest memories of music were listening to my parents play records at home—lots of 80s synth-pop. It was always on, at home, in the car. So, I definitely think that shaped my musical taste.

As for my start in music, that’s a bit of a funny one. Around grade 11, I was listening to a lot of dance/electronica and really started diving into DJing. I remember asking my parents for some terrible JB Hi-Fi decks as a birthday or Christmas gift, but they politely declined, as most brown parents likely would. 

So, getting pretty obsessed with it, I started working out how I could start DJing without access to any equipment.

I somehow worked out that I could build a fully functioning MIDI controller that could control Traktor (DJ Software) as my year 12 ‘school project’ for Technology Studies. It was a fully working 2-deck and mixer setup with a built-in sound card and some tacky LED lights (obviously) that packed away into a briefcase. Basically, all you had to do was plug in a laptop (with the software), plug in some speakers, and you were good to go.

From there, I began DJing at house parties and somehow got paid with this MIDI controller. It’s kinda laughable looking back now. But I managed to save up enough money to buy some actual decks, and it became a bit of a thing. So I did that for a few years into university and then took up a position at Oh Hello, a nightclub in Brisbane, looking after their bookings and events, while also DJing 2-3 times a week. I had a lot of amazing times and opportunities working there, getting to book, host, and warm up for incredible acts and artists.

After quite a few years of DJing, it wasn’t really fulfilling me anymore creatively. I realised I wanted to express myself more by writing my own music. It was a good five to six-year journey of sticking myself in front of Ableton nearly every day, literally starting at the basics to get to where I am now. It’s nice to get to a point where you feel comfortable in your skillset as a producer and artist, but it definitely wasn’t always like that, not for a long time.

BB: When you’re not working on your musical project, you’re running Little Street Studio in Brisbane. What prompted you to launch it, and how’s the journey been? What advice do you have for other South Asian Australians keen to launch their own business?

GURPAAL: I just really wanted to be more music-focused, almost full-time, to truly dedicate time to writing music. I’d acquired a fair amount of equipment over the years, spending all my DJ paychecks on synths and music gear. So, I decided to build a space in Fortitude Valley to use as my studio and share with like-minded people and the local and national music-making community. 

I’ve really loved the Little Street Studio adventure. One of my favourite things has been launching the music production school and starting to teach. It’s super cool to see people at different stages of their journey, going through many of the same things you had to and being able to help guide and push them along a little quicker.

My advice for other South Asian Australian kids is if it’s something you can’t stop thinking about, you’ll find a way to make it happen.

It’s not easy at times, and to make things work, chances are you’ll have to work twice as many hours, but as cliché as it sounds, if you truly love doing it, it doesn’t feel like work most of the time. Don’t be left wondering, ‘What if?‘—give it a red-hot go. <3

BB: There’s been a lot of talk about names in Australia lately—especially since Amar Singh was named the 2023 Australian Local Hero. What made you change your artist name to your own name? And what prompted you to go by aliases, to begin with?

GURPAAL: That’s a crazy story about Amar Singh, but I feel this stuff used to be the norm (possibly it still is). I had a math teacher who, for a full two years, couldn’t (or would refuse) to get myself and another brown kid’s names right, often calling us each other’s names (we looked nothing alike). But yeah, I definitely copped it as a kid, too. You see many brown parents trying to prevent this by giving their kids more Anglo-friendly names, which is almost something I think I might have wished for as a kid, but I’m so thankful it’s not the case now that I’m a little older.

Initially, I never considered my own name as an option for my musical project. Not sure if this was because it was something I copped a fair bit of shit for growing up, or that I wanted to use some kind of alias, or a combination of both, but it just didn’t really occur to me to use GURPAAL. It was only when one of my best friends repeatedly hassled me to consider using my own name, and my creative director and manager pushed for the same, that I started to consider it. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made, but I did feel a little nervous changing the socials over for the first time. 

Looking back now, it’s the best thing I did, and I couldn’t imagine the project being named anything else.

We have such a beautiful history and culture, and our names and language are such an intrinsic part of that. But, I think sometimes, growing up in a place where it’s not really represented or celebrated, it can definitely be very easy to forget that at times.

Brown Boy Magazine (@brownboyau) celebrates worship-worthy tastemakers and changemakers in the South Asian Australian diaspora (with that extra bit of flavour—and humour).