Chandra Shukla (born Vivek Chandra Shukla 1975 Alameda, California) is an experimental/avant-garde musician interested in audio, video, live performances, graphic design and runs the independent record label Erototox Decodings. His history stems from learning Indian Classical Music by learning tabla from the likes of Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and sitar from Pandit Habib Khan. At the age of 17, Chandra Shukla met Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and for the next 4 years would be involved with joining Psychic TV and h/er for their live performances sometimes in the Bay Area and other times abroad. In 1998, joining P-Orridge’s first incarnation of Thee Majesty on stage in Stockholm Sweden, with Bachir and Mustafa Attar of The Master Musicians of Jajouka playing eps samplers and his Indian classical music. Though offering his skills to other projects such as Scribble Seven (Steven Stapleton’s Nurse With Wound live project) and joining Hans-Joachim Roedelius on three tours, and more recently touring with This Wilderness (Joe Coleman, Phil Puleo and Robbie O) and die Angel (Ilpo Väisänen and Dirk Dresselhaus) and being part of an array of numerous side-projects and lending his skills as a contributor. In 2021, Chandra Shukla along with friend Carl Michael von Hausswolff debuted their project ‘Travelogue’ (Touch. UK). Xambuca is his main electro-acoustic experimental project and one that has shared the stage with many guests including a rotating cast of characters with audio/visual elements both live and exhibited. Chandra Shukla once a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area and Brooklyn/New York City now resides in Asheville, NC.
For his NES residency, Chandra has gathered field recordings from his travels all over Iceland to create a sound piece entitled “eldur og ís” (fire and ice).
Links:
xambuca.com
erototox.com
xambuca.bandcamp.com
erototox.bandcamp.com