Excise Dept, the audio-visual collective consisting of Rounak Maiti, Karanjit Singh, Andrew Sabu, and Siddhant Vetekar, are gearing up for their biggest show yet at Lollapalooza India 2026, produced and promoted by BookMyShow Live. With a penchant for subverting expectations, there’s nothing conventional about this group. Everything is infused with calculative madness, a style they sometimes refer to as “schizophrenic.”
Returning to the stage after almost a year, they reflect on their expectations for their upcoming gig: “Every Excise performance is actually very explosive in nature. So regardless of what the setting is, how many people are there on stage, it’s going to come with a lot of energy,” Sabu tells Rolling Stone India. “It’s after a while that we’re playing on such a big stage with a big sound.”
Formed in the wake of the pandemic, the group cut their teeth in intimate, DIY spaces, their sound reverberating even in the smallest of rooms. As they prepping for their Lollapalooza India debut, roping in the theatrical, the narrative, and the political, it’s set to be a gig by the people, for the people. “There’s always that sense of dialogue in the live set between the audience and us,” Maiti points out. Even as the arenas and audiences have grown bigger, the group still wants to have that same sense of camaraderie with their community. “You can expect the same level of sort of chaotic, loud, robust energy on stage with like four men just going at it,” Sabu chuckles, as the fellow members cringe in unison. “That’s a strange way of saying it,” Maiti coyly adds.
“We also have our very close friends who are doing some visuals and lights as well,” Maiti says. “Whatever we do, stage, website, or posters, there’s always an analog component. We haven’t really delved into the generative software kind of design yet.”
Perhaps best described as a stimulating battleground for the audience, this isn’t your typical set. On one hand, you’ll be moshing out to “Baaro Malla,” on the other, surrendering to the warmth of “Koyalia.” It all leads back to their tagline: “Sabh Kuch Mil Gaya Mujhe.”
“Everyone comes in and takes something away from it,” Maiti points out. “I don’t by all means need people to look at me or KJ and be like, ‘Wow, you guys are the best performers ever.’ I would just want everyone to have fun, experiencing what they exactly expected to experience.”
As a group that heavily draws from socio-political themes, investigating the extent of “Indianness” through the lens of diaspora, identity, and culture, the past year was introspective, to say the least. While they were away from the stage, the members were slowly yet steadily creating their own reference points, pouring all their observations into their upcoming album. “We’ve mainly just been writing and working on new music. I feel like a lot has just happened last year, we’ve all just been reflecting on what’s happened,” Maiti stated.
There are layers to their lore. At first glance, they may seem like the conventional friend group that wants to make music together. Zoom out a bit, and you’ll find a bunch of friends hailing from different states, speaking multiple tongues, with varied tastes and personalities, something which could signal a recipe for disaster. Look closer, though, and you’ll find they’re pulling from the vast expanse of a universe built on curating clashing patterns.
Opening up about their creative partnership, the members candidly point out that even while wading through the waters of mainstream success, what keeps them grounded is not the bigger picture, but their bond. “We’re learning a lot as the work is evolving. It can make it harder because you’re close friends. There’s a lot more at stake. It can lead to a lot more friction sometimes. But at the same time, I don’t think I would want to do it with other people. It’s not a negotiable point for any of us, I think,” Maiti emphasized. In a hyper-competitive industry that is often hell-bent on pitting artists against one another, not only is the collective putting out work along with their friends, but also directing, writing, and producing MVs for their peers, such as the sci-fi spectacle “Lime Tikka,” by Baalti and Lapgan.
“We have been told that the four of us are completely different, and it shows on stage. It works in our favor,” Maiti admits. It’s from those very differences that they derive their audio-visual identity. “We are constantly inferring from each other’s spaces and cultural imaginations. The performance is so intertwined with the four of us, it’s like we’re all kind of saying the same things as we do it,” Sabu agrees.
Instead of too many cooks spoiling the broth, they let theirs simmer in genre-bending heat. It’s evident as soon as you hear the music, almost like you’re hit with a tornado of pluralistic inferences. Tracks that contain multi-lingual double entendres, music videos that could qualify as short fictional films, and onstage safari suits that add a touch of sarkari sardonism. There aren’t really any set formulas. “We don’t really fit into the Desi Hip-Hop mold,” Maiti adds. “There’s already a sort of strange ‘trying to fit’ thing that’s happening there. But on top of that, I think, because we’re not [speaking] in one language. By virtue of it being multilingual, it exists in some other third space, which is not English or regional.”
Their debut album, Sabh Kuch Mil Gaya Mujhe Vol. 1, gave their audience a glimpse into what cross-cultural collaboration could look like in the independent scene. Even the most rancid post-digital brainrot, or obscure movie is reframed into something nuanced. Oscillating between what they construe as “high-brow” and “low-brow,” the collective is writing their own playbook of all things “Excise-Coded,” where pop culture, cinema, music, memes, and the most oddly specific things converge chaotically. “There is a general notion of what is ‘excise-coded’ for us as well. And that we’ve seen in the last year, two years since the album came out,” Sabu stated.
Maiti expands further on this, shedding light on the duality between intellectual articulation and buffoonery: “Excise from the very beginning has been that. While we get so much of our inspiration from memes, stupid internet videos and stuff, it is very uniquely positioned in a way where we can make complete light of something, but we can also become very serious if we want to; it gives us that advantage.”
A product of multicultural identities, the members look out for silver linings even as the world grows more xenophobic by the minute. “If you go to Punjab, a lot of the Punjabis who have been deported there earlier, the cars used to have the flag of the U.S., Canada, or Australia. Now it says “deported.” Even that is like, ‘nothing really phases us,’” says Singh. He also introspects on the murky wave of hyper-nationalism visible in the country: “What is identity, especially in a time in India where you know there’s so much conversation about ‘Indianness’ and who is really ‘Indian’ and who is ‘anti-national’? How far can I go in my country to really call myself where I’m from?”
As for their next phase, the genre-defying vigilantes are on a quest for reinvention. “We’re actually now at the melting point of going to the next phase of Excise Dept,” Sabu stated. “If SKMGM Vol.1 was a collage-y tapestry of samples, the new album is more meditative. It’s taking ideas, meditating and riffing on them for longer durations of time; stuff which is a lot more heady and introspective,” Maiti dissected. “Even for the live performances of that album, we are seeking a more Baithak-style, theatrical approach,” Sabu explained. Obsolescence does not incite trepidation; rather, it evokes inspiration. From Rabbi Shergill and Baba Sehgal, their dream collaborators exist on various points on the graph of relevance: “People who [have] kind of [been] forgotten a little bit, but like to be revived again, we take interest in people like that,” Maiti added.
