Critically acclaimed British-Tamil guitarist, songwriter and multidisciplinary artist Kapil Seshasayee has carved out a radical space between South Asian classical music, electronic music, UK garage and political art. Championed by Pitchfork, VICE, NPR and The Guardian, he has emerged as a singular and future-facing voice in contemporary South Asian music.
A restless innovator and Desifuturist, Kapil has performed internationally at SXSW, Latitude Festival, The Roundhouse, Dialled In Festival and Concorde 2, alongside artists including Talvin Singh, Tinariwen, Raghu Dixit and Sarathy Korwar. His live shows combine virtuosic electric guitar, Carnatic improvisation, electronic rhythms and politically charged songwriting. His audiences have come to revel in that collapse of boundaries between concert, club and experimental performance, as witnessed by his sold-out debut London headline at The Social, presented by Asian Tones.
At the centre of his sound is an idiosyncratic approach to the electric guitar. Drawing on Carnatic ornamentation, he bends the instrument into a distinctly South Asian melodic voice, placing it within experimental rock, R&B, hyperpop and UK electronic music. Rather than polite fusion, Kapil dismantles and reconstructs musical languages to create something unmistakably his own.
His 2018 debut A Sacred Bore, confronting caste and caste privilege in India and its diaspora, prompted Pitchfork to write that “listening is like watching a play unfold”, while VICE said it tackled caste “in a way that hadn’t been done before by anyone in the diaspora”. The Guardian called it “one of the most promising debut albums… in recent years”.
His second album, Laal (2022), pushed that vision further into nationalism, censorship, queer representation and cultural power.
Through his music and DesiFuturism.com, Kapil continues to challenge what South Asian identity is allowed to sound like, look like and become.