“If you take a step back, it is basically electronic music fused with hip hop. Sub genres really don’t matter when you take a step back, you broadly look at them as electronic and hip hop,” musician, producer, and rapper/beatmaker Sidharth Ezhilan tells us about the intricacies of deriving influences from various different genres and sub-genres, to create his own evolutionary style of music. Sidharth’s independent solo project Ezzyland’s first release was a single, ‘After Dark’, later to be included in his debut EP, The Simple EP. Marking the beginning of his venture into songwriting, ‘After Dark’ catalyzed Sidharth’s inclination to write his own music, leaving no room to lax. “After I wrote it,” he says, “I realized I can write music, and I took it more seriously.” And, subsequent to the creation of Ezzyland, this epiphany shot Sidharth into the territories of music recording and production. “I like rap music, and I like making beats for myself,” he says, “I don’t like having other people making the beats for me because then you have to pay them royalty and all that shit. That’s why I started making my own beats; I am more of a beat maker than a rapper.”

Ezzyland went on to release a slew of singles along with four EPs, on the internet by way of SoundCloud, in the last five years. But, as much as the internet seems like an opportunity for expression, rising up within this gargantuan ocean of music fed to the listener through complex behavioral algorithm's - SoundCloud - is no meager task. “You see if you want to build an internet following,” Sidharth says, “You have to be really good at it. And I guess to a certain extent it matters where you’re from, and I realized that the hard way. I’m from Chennai.” Even though Sidharth’s introverted nature holds him back from promoting his own music more proactively, these obstacles seem to not bother him much – a musician who believes his roots are embedded in the creation and improvement of music. “I send mails and messages to different artists, who I am influenced by and look up to. And, sometimes they do reply, and sometimes they share my stuff with new audiences, and that makes my day.”
 

Sidharth’s tools of songwriting mainly consist of his laptop and a pair of headphones. Playing around with DAWs, and tutoring himself on their optimum usage from the internet, Ezzyland’s music is all about the groove. It's the kind of groove that Sidharth claims can hit him at any point of the day, at which time he whips out his little notebook, and writes his lyrics down. “‘Shoegazing’ was like the second song that I wrote for Alien Brown. I wrote that song using just my laptop, and a pair of Apple earphones. I noticed that the bass was a bit too much, so I learnt from my mistake. And, I keep learning from my mistakes, and keep getting better with each song. After writing ‘Shoegazing’, I feel like it’s one of my favorites, because I let my emotions and thoughts influence my music a lot. And it feels really good if people are able to co-relate and interpret my music, and like it; it feels really good.”

 Like any other engineering graduate who had taken a few wrong turns, Sidharth is now planning on learning more about music and becoming a better musician; now we can all look out for a constant onslaught of music from him. “Slowly, my family, friends, and relatives, are beginning to understand this, and becoming a little more open minded about this. So, I’m going to do courses and better my music; that is pretty much it. I have to do this every day, I can’t be without music for even a single day, it’s really difficult for me.”

Stream 'Shoegazing' from Alien Brown by Ezzyland below: