“My home was filled with classical Indian Carnatic tunes growing up; my mom would cook curry and sing along passionately.”
“I love-hated it because while I barely understood the words, the intonation was catchy and mesmerizing and invaded my mind at a very young age, filling me with meditative mantras. But being a typical little girl, the first tape I bought was the Spice Girls’ Spice. I knew every word of every song because I looked up the lyrics on some Geocities website and printed them out and I really really really wanna zig-a-zig ahh.
Middle school was a great time for music—No Doubt, Snoop Dogg, Weezer, TLC—pop music was and still is a great inspiration to me. I love music that is accessible and catchy and I try to pump some of these pop vibes into my own Bob and Martha melodies.
During high school in my rebellious teenager phase I listened to terrible emo and screamo music and pretended to like it for a while. There was this one song called “End of Sound” by Keepsake which was really just a long beep the entire time and annoyed the shit out of everyone but I played it over and over. Fiona Apple brought me out of that dark period in my life because she was a goth poetic pop princess just like me. I still adore her so much.
Today I have access to so much music out there, which is overwhelming and awesome. The new electronic movement in Hip Hop today is just amazing—Nicki Minaj’s Pink Print was on replay for a full week at my apartment.
I also go to shows all the time; Brooklyn is one of many birthplaces for Indie and I feel lucky to be welcomed into the community here. Other experimental babes like my friend Laetitia Tamko from the BK band Vagabon inspire me every day to keep on keeping on… I can really do whatever I want yanno? And look good doing it. We have some true royalty in the music scene in America and I want to be just like them when I grow up.”
—Aparna Muralidharan
Bob and Martha’s “Middle Babies” EP is available from their Bandcamp page.
