Lord RAJA

From an early encounter with digital audio workstations onward, Lord RAJA has channeled formal musical schooling, an initial devotion to hip-hop, and a wide-ranging curiosity about electronic subgenres into a catalog that evades straightforward description. Physical engagement and a playful sensibility have remained central to his approach, evident from the outset under the Infinitirock moniker and persisting across his Ghostly International output—A Constant Moth (2014), Para (2016), and Amadeus (2017).

Born Chester Raj Anand and raised in Red Hook, New York, where he continues to reside, the artist received his first music-production software at age six from an older brother and later studied piano and percussion. Combining the computer with keyboards, drums, and a personal archive of Indian recordings, Anand developed an early and persistent drive to create music. Shortly before turning twenty, he issued Music for Primordial Recollection on Asthmatic Kitty under the Infinitirock name; the release comprised short pieces that loosely aligned with left-field hip-hop. While completing a class assignment at SUNY Purchase, Anand adopted the Raja alias and, by the close of 2011, self-released the three-volume October Series as digital downloads via Astro Nautico.

The download-only Rubies EP, issued as Lord RAJA, marked the beginning of his association with Ghostly International in 2013. When the label released the album A Constant Moth near the end of 2014, the producer’s palette had expanded to include bass music, footwork, jungle, and IDM. Early 2016 saw the arrival of Para, his second full-length for Ghostly, whose broader and more intricate arrangements drew on vintage-keyboard tones captured at an Austin, Texas instrument shop. In 2017 he delivered the spontaneous, eight-track Amadeus EP, after which Ghostly and Fidelio issued several additional singles through 2019.