Polymancer | The Curve Magazine

Behind the ‘reality’

By Ksystof Ogint | April 15, 2021

I’ve got to admit, Polymancer’s dream pop certainly altered my expectations of what the indie genre can represent. I see him as one of those artists who are able to form a guitar out of your emotional strings. His music really speaks to you in a mystical tone.

-What drives your passion for music?

I’ve been writing songs since the age of 6 and they’ve always been more bailout getting my thoughts out to the world and for the world to feel what I’m feeling, along with me. Music goes through so many lives, impacting each in a different way - and that befuddles me. My drive for making music starts and ends at the idea of how I can make people feel emotions, and keep them coming back for more.

‘Reality’, single by Polymancer

-Do you see other artists as competitors or as potential co-workers?

I feel that being an indie musician takes a lot of effort to begin with. Looking at fellow artists doing it all but themselves really pushes in a big quotient of respect for them into my head, seeing all the work they put in working out for them in terms of the quality and the reach they get really motivates me rather than make me feel jealous of them. There’s always the idea of comparison to self, where you see someone doing better than yourself; but I feel it’s the way you take that forward in the next step - either you see them as competition and try to do better than them, or you can look at other artists, see how they’re growing, and work like them or with them, grow together, or even be better than you were yesterday to begin with. Collaborations are always a growing opportunity, and I see only an upside to it - expanded reach, better and wider perspective, more knowledge, faster workflows. It’s a win-win situation.

-There must have been that first moment when you felt it all worked out, tell me about it.

That moment kind of comes with every project, once it goes through to begin with. For my debut EP in late 2020, the preparation phase was the most time consuming part. Hours and days of work, non-stop, was going in, and dI couldn’t see where all to put it out for it to get the reach it deserved. I’d been seeing situations where people were putting songs out and getting no reach in terms of numbers - they’d cry about it own social media all day, beg people to come and listen to it, send it to random strangers via DMs in the hopes of getting their music one extra listener, and nothing would work out. In my opinion it’s all about the time you give the project at the end of it though. A lot of people feel if they put out good music, the music will speak for itself and people will come to it - social media is a scam and posting on Instagram daily makes you look like a try-hard, whereas in actuality, it’s completely the other way round. Getting the word out and actually networking and telling the right people about it gets the real eyes and ears. It’s a slow process, but it does require a lot of work - consistent work in terms of marketing and reach, that people don’t really realize that often. It worked out to an extent with my last EP, I’m aiming for reality to reach a higher level than that, fingers crossed.

-In your music, you seem like an emotional guy, are you like that in life?

Haha, definitely. I write about the past and how it influences my present, usually. The first song I write in recent times was Got Me 2, and that comes from a very emotional place to begin with, itself. I take myself as a hopeless romantic, but the hopelessness ends up winning out, and there’s always a bundle of emotions that unpack themselves with the music I write.

-Do you ever write poems?

I used to, by choice, when I was in school. University saw me taking some creative writing courses, so I wrote some poems then again - but it’s been a while since I did last. I’m not much into poems of late - I feel they’re interpreted in completely different ways than what they could have or would have been written as originally, as is the case with most songs too. The reader’s interpretation is always going to unique to them, but my relationship with poems has always been so academic. School and university have had me get very annoyed with illogical interpretations of poetry that I didn’t relate to, but had to agree to - because the teacher or professor said there was no other interpretation that was correct in the scenario. Language for me is very subjective - to each their own. The moment subjectivity in writing is lost, it takes the fun away for me.

"Either you see them as competition and try to do better than them, or you can look at other artists, see how they’re growing, and work like them or with them, grow together, or even be better than you were yesterday to begin with.”

-Tell me about your collabs, who did you work with already and are there any upcoming ones?

I’ve worked with a few songwriters and producers in the past, among the likes of NVR/MND, Screaming Cactus, Tan X and TushPerc, and have some really cool collaborations coming out with Oh Arya, Arham Fulfagar, ROL!N GRAY and more in the near future.

-Do you want to work with any label in the future?

I currently work through my own indie release label, PolyMaster. The label game seems quite enticing, but a little problematic at times to me, in terms of the loss of creative control that many artists complain about at times. If I can find a good deal with a label in the near future, I’d love to get signed. I’ve been reaching out to a few, among the likes of Interscope, Atlantic, and Sony. Let’s see what we end up with!

-Do you look up to any artists (see them as idols)?

I’ve grown up with Lorde coming into the scene completely from scratch with an amazing debut album, as well as seeing Billie Eilish grow from where she started to where she is now, all from her bedroom as her workstation. It’s very inspiring to see these individuals reach where they are today, although I wish Lorde would come out with more music soon. EDEN has been a major influence in my earlier releases and continues to inspire my sound in terms of the production I’m putting out, but my upcoming music has a very unique vibe to it. Can’t wait for the audience to check it out!

"The label game seems quite enticing, but a little problematic at times to me, in terms of the loss of creative control that many artists complain about at times.”

-Do you make music for yourself, or for your audience? Once you felt that your audience is growing, did it inspire you to work on music more?

It started with me wanting to put my emotions out in a way that I could vibe to them myself first, and then it graduated to more. I think of music as a good background to what the listener might be feeling at the moment, and then the foreground for it all. If the beginning of my music process doesn’t vibe with me, I find it hard for anyone else to vibe with something I don’t vibe to myself. Making music feels like self expression, then relatability kicks in. The relatability is also always going to be very subjective to the listener and their personal lives and experiences, so my artists process get very simplified in that sense. Seeing my audience grow is wonderful - it really motivates me to create more in terms of quantity of music, as that way, there’s always more that my listeners can listen to and vibe to if they like my music. With a larger audience comes more people with different tastes and interests, so the more the music, the better the vibe, the more they have to listen to at their disposal.

-Do you do anything else apart from music?

I used to play football semi-professionally up till 2017, when I played for FCB Escola Gurgaon, FC Barcelona's Indian division of football (soccer). I’ve really been into writing all through as well, both academic and fiction. I’ve written a bunch of research papers about consciousness, higher dimensions, hallucinogens, politics, etc. in terms of academic writing, and was writing two teen fiction novels before I got into my under graduate degree. Maybe the books will come out some day haha, who knows. I had a YouTube channel that I was pretty pumped about, as well as a blog that I still write sometimes. Music has taken the front seat of late, however, and I love giving priority to it. There’s so much more coming soon that I’m excited about.

-Have you got any haters already?

I’m not sure if I’d classify them as haters, but I definitely have had a few people dislike my music in the beginning and then come around and tell me that they took a while, but they were now in love with it all. This one guy didn’t get the arrangement or the production style of one of my earlier songs, I Can’t Sleep, and DMed me on Instagram to tell me that personally. A few weeks later, he messaged me again, telling me that the song had grown on him and he was now in love with it. I’m flattered. I feel it’s very natural though. Art is subjective and not everyone may like it, and that’s very normal. As an artist, I feel you really need to be very open to criticism, and it’s not necessary to feel bad about people’s opinions about the work you do. My job as an artist is to give my work my all and put out the best product I can - if people like it, well done! If they don’t, I still did my best, and they’re open to their opinions! There really doesn’t have to be a downside to it.

-Do you write music routinely or only at certain moments?

Tunes and lyrics come very naturally to me, mostly at random times when I’m not even thinking of writing music. I have so much music that I’ve written but need to produce or do more about, but it’s all just sitting quietly on my phone, untouched for months or even years until I sit to write it down properly. An upcoming song called “Thoughts in the Wind” was written by me at a concert I was attending over two years ago, and I sat down to work on it properly only this month. That says a lot haha.

-Are you a night owl?

Totally! My sleep schedule has been kinda off in the last year, as has everyone else’s, I feel. I wake up around 11 AM, start work around 3 PM, work till 11 PM, take a break till 2 AM, work till 5 AM, and crash. Lesser people active around these times in their work schedules allows me to do so much more without the world working at the same time - think of it this way - when I’m pitching my music to people, they don’t have to look at other work, because they have no other work to worry about. Plus, when I’m working, the world is quiet. It allows me to make music so much easier when there’s lesser noise in my surroundings - being a bedroom producer in a busy metropolitan city with my house in the middle of the place surrounded by traffic on the roads doesn’t help the background noise while recording vocals, but my odd work timings definitely do.

-What’s success for you?

Getting my voice heard and having a platform where I can be is success to me. It’s the ideas that I have that I feel can change the world and make it a better place - success for me would be to be able to get them across - to have that audience that hears you and stands by you. Some might mistake this with fame, but they’re really not the same thing to me. I feel fame and success are two similar things that come regardless, if the person is aiming at being good at what they do, they’re going to be seen.

At first, Polymancer reached out to us for a promo of his latest single ‘reality’. But I feel like this interview has uncovered the persona that stands behind the lyrics. Polymancer is unique. He understands his position, style, capabilities and time management, and I feel that makes him a promising artist.

You can follow Polymancer's journey here: