Continuing his recent run of releases, Dualist Inquiry will put out a new track and video titled ‘You & Me’ on June 1. The sunny, nu-disco-influenced track with a thumping bassline is his first-ever collaboration with Delhi-based vocalist, Sanchal Malhar, who has been associated with acts like Indigo Children and Superfuzz.

Evidently different from his other two recent releases, ‘Mayday’ and ‘Fever Dream’, ‘You & Me’ shows his unwillingness to adhere to genre classification, while focusing on what’s important to him – making music that makes an emotional connection.

“‘You & Me’ happened very organically, almost by accident,” says Sahej Bakshi, who makes music as Dualist Inquiry. “Months before I heard Sanchal sing an unplugged set at a cafe in Delhi. When I ran into him at boxoutwednesdays in February, I suggested we try to write a tune sometime. As it turned out, we ended up having a small afterparty at my place that same night, and that’s when Sanchal recorded the vocals with a strained/hoarse throat (in his own words). He sang a line from an old song that he wrote but never recorded, and I looped it, put it through a radio filter, recorded a bassline and guitar part, and that's about it - the song was done. That same weekend, I played the song at a gig in Mumbai and the crowd requested it a second time, and I realised that it just works,” he adds.

The artwork for ‘You & Me’ has been created by Arushi Kathuria, who has also done the animation for the video.

For the Delhi-based electronica producer Dualist Inquiry aka Sahej Bakshi, ‘You & Me’ also marks his first venture as a director. The past 18 months saw Sahej diversify his interests into videography and filmmaking, and don the hat of a music entrepreneur. He enrolled in a filmmaking course in Prague last year, and ‘You & Me’ is the first result of that interest.

“I realised that the song deserves its own video, and decided to shoot the music video in my basement by renting a green screen and shooting a few angles of Sanchal and I performing the song. After the shoot, I went ahead and removed all the green screens from the footage, and animated the movement of the characters on a black background. This is what I sent to Arushi, whose animations I have been a huge fan of. She did her thing and animated this bright, cartoon-y, nostalgic ’90s universe in which Sanchal and I are placed. Personally, making this video been an incredible learning experience for me, something I have wanted to do for years, and something I'd love to continue to do in the future,” Sahej says of the video.

2018 should see Sahej direct and work on more music videos.