KSHMR is one of electronic music’s most recognised influential producers. He now reveals Mirage, his debut album under the alias TEJA and made in collaboration with Ampermut and Gobi Desert Collective. The album represents both exploring a new creative direction and a significant personal statement from an artist who fully steps into a sound he has been quietly developing for years.
Mirage
TEJA is the name KSHMR has chosen to distinguish this body of work from his main project. The alias draws from a meaningful personal source: the middle name of his late younger brother, Tej. While KSHMR creates euphoric, high-energy productions, TEJA takes a more spacious and considered approach. Organic house music with room for instrumentation, groove, texture, and the kind of slow-building emotion that rewards careful listening. It is a parallel identity that will have its live side, its own releases and its own journey. He had this to say:
“I fell in love with organic house some years ago and started this album, not knowing where it would lead. I didn’t know how it would fit with my past music, but exploring this sound gave me a newfound passion for creating – it’s fresh, exciting territory.“
The style has been visible in KSHMR’s work for some time. Unreleased IDs and demos in this style surfaced through his Rickshaw DJ set filmed in Mumbai. The partnership with Ampermut and Gobi Desert Collective began with a chance connection. KSHMR featured a Gobi Desert Collective and Ampermut track in a Dharma Radio show. A shared style and mutual creative curiosity turned a single collaboration into a sustained exchange of ideas, demos, and finished music that eventually grew into a cohesive album none of them had necessarily set out to make.
Mirage is eight tracks of deeply immersive, sophisticated sound. From the opening warmth and exotic strings of ‘Oasis’ through the deep moods of title track, the wavy grooves and intoxicating melodies of ‘Nigaaro’ and ‘Rosh’ featuring Mir Iqbal. The expansive centrepiece of ‘Aquarius’ at six and a half minutes of summery, airy melodic escapism, and the closing melancholy of Sundial.
