Lord RAJA

A restless synthesist whose discography defies simple categorization, Lord RAJA encountered digital audio workstations as a youngster and has since applied traditional musical training, an early love for hip-hop, and a fascination with numerous styles of electronic music. The producer has emphasized physicality and a sense of playfulness all along, from his debut as Infinitirock through his releases for Ghostly International, which include A Constant Moth (2014), Para (2016), and Amadeus (2017).

Raised and based in Red Hook, New York, Chester Raj Anand, aka Lord RAJA, was introduced to music production software at the age of six (by his older brother), and eventually learned piano and percussion. Working with his computer along with keyboards and drums, as well as a collection of Indian recordings, the music-making bug bit the younger sibling early. Just before Anand reached his twenties, he debuted on the Asthmatic Kitty label with Music for Primordial Recollection. Credited to the alias Infinitirock, it consisted of brief tracks that could be loosely classified as left-field hip-hop productions. Anand soon adopted a new alias, Raja, while working on a class project at SUNY Purchase. By the end of 2011, he released the three-volume October Series as digital downloads through Astro Nautico.

The Rubies EP, credited to Lord RAJA, was another download-only release and started Anand's affiliation with Ghostly International in 2013. By the time Ghostly issued the album A Constant Moth in late 2014, the Lord RAJA sound had incorporated numerous strains of electronic music, from bass music and footwork to jungle and IDM. Early 2016 brought the second Ghostly full-length Para, a comparatively richer and broader set of tracks that incorporated sounds from vintage keyboards recorded at an instrument shop in Austin, Texas. A spontaneous and exuberant eight-track EP, Amadeus, arrived in 2017, trailed by a handful of singles released by Ghostly and Fidelio through 2019. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi