Wild City

Not a lot of mixes can leave a lump in your throat – less so, within a minute of them. Enter Derain’s mix for Wild City, which picks at fresh wounds of our collective consciousness with the opening echoes of Aamir Aziz’s poem ‘Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega’. The quintessential verses gained their importance through the poignancy with which they encapsulate all the emotions and tragedies surrounding protests against the discriminatory Citizen Amendment Act and the unjust retaliation they received which shook the nation at the start of the year. Derain adds just enough spacious harmony to augment that poignancy and remind us with great impact that justice is still missing and the perpetrators of injustice are yet to answer for their actions. How then would you follow an opening like this with music? Fortunately, Derain’s own music carries just enough ambient chaos to respectfully carry Aziz’s anguish forward, disintegrating the verses into their abstract emotions and mood which he then connects all the way to New Zea