SURREY - It's not uncommon to see Chin Injeti's name on the back of an album. The Surrey-via-Toronto producer, who has helped out on Grammy Award-winning records, has worked with everyone from rapper Eminem to P!nk to Gwen Stefani to local radio heroes, The Boom Booms.
But the artist who's been recording since the mid-1990s with his former band Bass is Base is only now releasing his third solo album."I was just trying to find my own way, to see where I wanted to be in music and this kind of made sense," Injeti told the Now at a Vancouver recording studio where he is currently helping produce a Boom Booms' album."I came here and I was trying to find what I wanted to do next and one thing led to another and I just started helping people with their music and I thought, 'You know what? I'll have a go at it,'" he said.Injeti's album, The Reverb, was released Tuesday (Sept. 9) from Sparks Music, a Toronto-based record label. The 40-minute album is, in a word, eclectic. From the triphoppy "Around the Outside" to the funkinfluenced "On the Run", The Reverb is a sampling of different styles that create the mosaic that Injeti attributes to his many collaborators over the years."This record, the fundamental difference is that since the last record, I've worked with a lot of artists and I've produced a lot of people and written with a lot of people so there's a little bit of everybody in me," Injeti said. It turns out that the album's name also comes as a nod to the variety it presents."There was a club when I was growing up in Toronto (called) The Reverb, (and it) used to play a lot of eclectic music out of different nights," the popular producer said. "You'd have punk nights, industrial nights, hip hop nights ... I just thought it would be a cool theme for a record."For Injeti, the idea of eclecticism seems to be not only a theme on this album, but a major theme in his life. The musician says he "more or less" lives between Surrey and Los Angeles, where he works with his partner DJ Khalil along with the several other major recording artists whose albums Injeti's name has appeared on. He also grabs influence from his Indian roots, which he says, "is in everything I do... the way I internalize music is from that perspective."While "home" for Injeti may be split between several cities, at the end of the day he loves to relax in Surrey where he lives."I live in Fleetwood, it's a really beautiful neighbourhood. It has a wonderful community feeling so that's my connection to it really," he said. "Where I live is like Pleasantville - the lawns are perfect, the kids are out playing... it's a good energy in that place."kalexandra@thenownewspaper.com