Anish Kumar: the Cambridge student vet-DJ on a fast track to major fame

Anish Kumar playing at Printworks London. From @anishkumarmusic

A rave-devoted Northern crowd crammed into a tiny basement club, a creeping baseline blending into a familiar piano riff, the Bollywood song that sounds like your childhood roaring through blaring speakers and the sticky dance floor air. This was the very scene at Anish Kumar’s recent gig in Newcastle’s Cobalt Studios. It is moments like this that communicate the magic in his music. The special familiarity of northern musical icons who rest delicately on the cusp of international fame is tangibly felt. That they make sure to devote time to intimate shows in their home ground is a small pleasure that materialises in the air, like a giddy secret that only the audience is in on. 

Anish Kumar is from Washington, a small town in Sunderland, in the North of England. I first found his music on the Spotify editorial playlist Altar, a shamelessly self-labelled home for ‘alternative’ electronic music. And alternative it was. Anish’s music is reminiscent of many familiar names in the electronic scene: Four Tet, Barry Can’t Swim, and Ritviz, an Indian singer-songwriter (and a personal favourite of mine) who is currently dominating the country’s charts. My unintentional discovery of (and subsequent obsession with) Anish’s music seems to be a recurring theme in his steady rise to fame: in 2020, Annie Mac played one of his records on her Radio 1 Hottest Records of the week, which sky-rocketed him to national attention. Since then, Four Tet played one of his Bandcamp records at his Glastonbury set in 2022, which further propelled his reach to unprecedented ends. 

I spoke to Anish about his work so far, how he reflects on his musical career progression, and what the future holds. He has thus far gained around a quarter of a million Spotify listeners and a most streamed track of over 3.5 million listens. He has been on the music scene for just over three years now, and his career progression shows no signs of slowing down. 

Anish Kumar. From @anishkumarmusic

I personally had a special interest in learning the inspirations behind his most recent album release - Bollywood Super Hits - which features a number of famous Bollywood ‘super hits’ seamlessly blended into an electronic beat. Although Nazia Hassan, the Pakistani singer-songwriter of the South Asian cult favourite ‘Disco Dewanee’ may no longer be alive to witness Anish’s tribute to her music, the hordes of South Asian diaspora youth like myself are more than happy to make up for this. Anish said the album was inspired by tracks he’s grown up listening to and loving, and his own creation is a genuine labour of love in tribute to these personal experiences.

However, this album alone does not encapsulate his musical versatility. Anish is wary of being pigeonholed genre-wise, of being written into one particular, perhaps commercialised, ‘sound’. His most streamed track is one in collaboration with Barry Can’t Swim, Blackpool Boulevard, and this is a record more typical of the British electronic music scene. Anish also talked about his experiences as a music producer and DJ. The two finally united when he was  ‘discovered’ and had to develop a more performance-oriented persona in the DJing aspect of the job. Until then, producing and creating records had been somewhat ‘geeky’ exercises for him, something he took solace in as a deeply solitary exercise. 

Last year, Anish played at the South Asian Music festival in London ‘Dialled In’, alongside other famous British South-Asian artists, as well as at Boomtown and a couple of our own May Balls! Because Anish gained steam via radio, he effectively surpassed what he describes as the classic ‘playing of empty rooms’ that all small-time DJs have to suffer through at the beginning of their careers. This year he is scheduled to play in Austria at Snowbombing, Croatia at Hideout, and Barcelona at the internationally coveted festival Primavera. He’s admitted a certain sense of imposter syndrome in being catapulted onto such career-defining line-ups, all whilst studying for his Cambridge Veterinary Medicine degree, of which he has one year left to go. 

Anish Kumar. From @anishkumarmusic

Anish sees his fan base as something which can still be separated into distinct categories based on how people found his music, and which aspect of the music they stay for. The demographics are varied, and he lets the inspirations for the music define their appeal, in a sense. 

His new mixed tape, released in singles on March 22nd, and then as a whole tape in May/June, seeks to capture this ‘pluralist’ aspect of his music. It will include some of his very early never-released work and other tracks that represent his attitude to life in general. Anish Kumar doesn’t want to be constrained to any genre in his music, or in his life. In regard to his veterinary study, he has always seen it as ‘something completely distinct from music; music is something I always have bubbling away, a very night time thing for me’. He compares it to the same way as someone who plays uni sports would balance that with their work, except he has 222,415 Spotify listeners and a jet-set summer of international performances- no big deal.

All in all, Anish Kumar is a great representation of what keeps me loving music. Bollywood music has been a genre long relegated to some deep, almost embarrassingly private, part of my memory. I have only ever enjoyed it at weddings and utterly ‘adult’ affairs - in varying degrees of formality. Anish’s music has, by contrast, allowed me to embrace my culture in the most genuine, free, and unexpected way. 

The cover of Anish’s new single Praise. From @anishkumarmusic

Stream Anish’s new single Praise on Spotify now!