The most renowned DJ and Music Producer duo ‘Lost Stories’ admired for their unconventional take on EDM and chart toppers, has put Indian Music on the world map.
Meet Rishab Joshi and Prayag Mehta - The two halves of ‘Lost Stories’ who are best known for their ability to uniquely blend Indian Folk sounds with Electronic Music. The showstopper duo are the hypemen and wingmen for every setting who together as ‘Lost Stories’ never fail to be their absolute best.
While their unique releases in collaborations with international artists like Marshmello, Kshmr, Demi Lovato, Zaeden and many more has been hitting the global charts, they have also been setting the vibe at various music fests like Tomorrowland, Global Citizen Festival and Sunburn.
PRAYAG MEHTA
Prayag was born and brought up in Mumbai. Like most children, he loved to spend time with his friends playing video games and sports. But getting into music for him happened in a dark period of time. During his teenage, Prayag met with an accident that put him on bed rest for a month. Thats when he stumbled upon the music software Fruity Loops DAW and started creating some tracks, one of which was ‘One Last Time’.
He says “I am highly inspired by two master composers & legends who revolutionised film scoring: AR Rahman and Hans Zimmer. I love unique melodies. No matter how hard I try to hunt for new music, I always end up with classics.
RISHAB JOSHI
Brought up in Mumbai, Rishab was always surrounded by music. His father is a performing musician, so he got into music very early in life and would often find himself messing around with his dad’s instruments.
Growing under the enchanting influence of traditional folk music, Rishab spent his teenage years headlining a band in school and college, playing side-percussions at Navratris, doing audio edition work for his dad and multiple programs on All India Radio.
His destiny seemed to have been laid out for him. Following his passion, he dropped out of college and pursue his career, as he would visualise himself pressing lots of buttons and producing music.
For Rishab, his journey with electronic dance music began when he got his first computer. The demo songs that came along with the music softwares fascinated him so much that he started digging deeper to understand how electronic music is made & decided to make similar music.
For Prayag, one of his first tracks called “One Last Time,” was played by Tiesto on his radio show and he gained some recognition in the niche of Indian dance music space.
Soon, Prayag & Rishab met online through an internet forum and started exchanging their music and giving each other feedback as both of them were familiar with the genre.
After a few months of nerding out over music, they realised that since both of them are producers, they should start making music for other DJs to make some money to set up a studio of their own. While doing that, they even ended up composing a few originals .Prayag's network was pretty strong when it came to International labels and he sent those tracks out to many including Tiesto's ex label Blackhole Records. They liked the track and signed it.
After that, every big international DJ started playing their music regularly. A few months in, they even started performing at various festivals across the country.
It's been a journey of over a decade and some of the best highlights have been officially remixing some of the greatest artists such as the Grammy winner Afrojack, Grammy-nominated One Republic and critically acclaimed Norwegian DJ Alan Walker. They’ve also had the opportunity to officially remix a track by the legendary rock band, U2.
“Not a lot of people know this but the name Lost Stories came up during a random conversation about how we didn’t have an artist alias right before we were releasing our first track”
Being a DJ is not a piece of cake. Their career in DJ-ing faced its share of challenges as well. One of the initial struggles they always came across was how people would take them for a ride.
“We realised we needed to be way more smart for the industry. Also, initially it was difficult to convince our parents to let us do this full-time. Once the media started writing about them, they realised that this is a real thing and since then they've been relaxed”, says the DJ duo.
Currently, the duo is focused on The Lost Stories Project and The Lost Stories Academy.
While Rishab dabbles in tech and constantly tries to find new innovations that could help automate things on personal & work front. Prayag & his wife are huge advocates of women empowerment and education. They both have been sponsoring education for young girls from the lower strata of society to help them gain exposure & awareness to dream big and ensure that education helps them achieve those dreams. They also donate literature and self-help books in regional languages to various NGOs and orphanages.
Ever since the pandemic hit the world, both Rishab & Prayag, together as The Lost Stories have become super intentional with their music in terms of the mood created for the listener and how it impacts them. At this point of time, they’re fully committed to leaving a deep, positive impact on all their listeners to help them see the good in these tough times.