At only 20 years of age, the singer, songwriter and award-winning jazz musician known as ADVIKA has already made a significant name for herself with an impressive body of work that belies her age. She began releasing jazz-infused pop folk songs in 2020 as she entered the prestigious Berklee College of Music’s Electronic Production and Design program, but her accolades as a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and Carnatic singer began well before her college-level studies. She won the the YoungArts award in jazz vocals and songwriting and performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2018, where she won the Berklee Newport Jazz Festival Scholarship. She’s also a merit scholar at Berklee. Imagine not only being recruited but paid to go to one of the best music schools in the world.
One listen to ADVIKA’s work and it becomes abundantly clear that there were no mistakes at Berklee admissions. The thing that stands out the most has to be her pitch perfect voice, even in her earlier work. Pitch perfect doesn’t even really describe ADVIKA’s vocals: describe there’s pitch perfect, and then there’s absolutely flawless. Not a waver or a waffle in tone, yet full of emotion and poignancy, ADVIKA was destined to go far no matter what level he schooling reached.
It’s possible that ADVIKA is so effortlessly able to reach these tones with such clarity due to her Carnatic training: a form of Southern Indian classical music which is distinct from more northern/Islamic fused music, Carnatic vocals focus on a complex tonal system that must be clear and pitch-focused due to how many distinct notes there are in the scale. As a lover of jazz and its own complex vocal and tonal standards, this may be how ADVIKA chose to pay homage to both east an west as she began to carve out her style. It certainly means she doesn’t sound like anyone else in the pop world.
In terms of her songwriting and composition, ADVIKA’s first releases are jazz and pop folk-based with just a hint of ambient electronic structure and her also nearly perfect viola work, her most recent singles, “Come Back to Earth” and “Put Your Heart Away,” see the gifted artist really flexing her electronic production muscles. With what sounds like a tabla drum loop backing the track in a nod to her South Indian heritage, ADVIKA pulls various instrumentals in with more and more electronic programming as the track goes on, writing the track like a classical composition as is comes together. This whole song is meant to support her goosebump-inducing vocals, which are also multi-layered to create a complex harmony. The effect is chilling and emotive before you even begin to recognize the depth of the lyrics.
The lyrics describe the deep anguish of gradual separation in a relationship that once held a promise, watching them slowly detach themselves from each other. One holds onto the promise and hopes that the other comes back. And when they do decide to come back, it’s too late. There is nothing left anymore. The strongest bonds can be ephemeral if not cared for and nurtured. The song’s energy builds throughout, going from a mournful call to a realization of the end. -ADVIKA
Just released a couple of weeks ago, ADVIKA’s “Put Your Heart Away” also shows her promise as an EDM/pop fusion artist. Setting her jazzy vocals to a disco house tune she also created herself, it seems even with all the praise she’s gained in jazz and classical disciplines thus far doesn’t mean she plans to stay there. With so much raw talent and an already impressive discography, the sky is truly the limit for ADVIKA, and it will be up to her whether she wants to “Come Back to Earth” for us mere mortals.
“Come Back to Earth” and ADVIKA’s other stunning works can be streamed on her Spotify page. It’s a good one to bookmark for future as well, as this is clearly just the beginning for this multi-talented artist.
Hey now, 90s kids, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” has a new outfit for the modern era.
Dance Armstrong and Roy LaCroix are honoring the turn-of-the-century hit and its enduring pop culture legacy with a tech house rework designed to propel it onto today’s dancefloors. Buoyed by trunk-thumping kicks, the producers’ energizing framework adds a transformative energy to the charming original that would even be pleasing to Shrek’s jaded ear.
The unconventional choice of the source material marks just another ambitious challenge in the collaborative saga of Dance Armstrong and Roy LaCroix. The duo have a history of taking the road less traveled with success after their remix of Creed’s “Higher” released last year.
“Being a child of the 90s, I listened to Smash Mouth’s ‘Astro Lounge’ album an uncomfortable amount of times on my Walkman CD player,” LaCroix recalls. “After Dance [Armstrong] and I released our well-received Creed edit, we knew the next logical step was to find another 90s rock anthem to remix and quickly realized that ‘All Star’ didn’t have a proper tech house flip.”
The track has found a home on Hood Politics Records. Take a listen below.
Devo‘s Mark Mothersbaugh has paid tribute to the late Paul Reubens, saying that creating the music for Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the 2016 movie Pee-wee’s Big Holiday “changed the trajectory of his career”.
Reubens died on July 30 at the age of 70 after privately suffering from cancer.
“He always had a good personality and a good heart,” Mothersbaugh told Yahoo Music. “It’s just shocking and sad that he’s gone.” He admitted that he had no idea that Reubens had been diagnosed with cancer, adding, “We’d even been talking about working on an animated version of Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”
Mothersbaugh and Reubens met at the comedy improv theatre the Groundlings when Mothersbaugh was dating founding member Laraine Newman (who was also part of the original Saturday Night Live cast). There, Mothersbaugh witnessed Reubens creating his Pee-wee Herman character. They first collaborated in 1980, on the obscure film Pray TV, before a scheduling conflict prevented Mothersbaugh from writing the score for Reubens’ breakout film role in the Tim Burton-directed Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
However, they would eventually work together again when Reubens approached Mothersbaugh about Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which he composed the theme song and episodic music for. “I’d never done a TV show before,” Mothersbaugh remembered. “That took me into the world of film and television and video games. It totally changed the trajectory of my career.”
Actor Paul Reubens In New York on March 25, 2016 CREDIT: Mike Pont/WireImage)
At the time, Mothersbaugh was feeling burnt out from the relentless album and touring cycles Devo had and appreciated being able to do something new. He came to appreciate the quick turnaround that came with working on a weekly episodic show: “I’d write 12 songs’ worth of music on Tuesday, record on Wednesday, put a tape in the express mail on Thursday, they’d mix it into the show on Friday… and on Saturday morning, we’d all watch it on TV. And then the next Monday, I’d get another tape in the mail. I was like, ‘Sign me up for this job!’”
He also revealed Reubens took a hands-off approach to Mothersbaugh’s work. “‘Here’s my only notes. When it’s something sad, make it really, really sad. When it’s something happy, make it really, really happy. When it’s something shocking, make it really, really shocking.” Mothersbaugh explained, “He just wanted everything to be done to extremes.”
Mothersbaugh went on to write the music for the entire run of Rugrats and its three theatrical films, as well as other children’s TV shows like Clifford the Big Red Dog, Beakman’s World, and Santo Bugito. He’s also produced music for video games including Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter, and more recently composed the score for Elizabeth Banks’ viral comedy-horror film Cocaine Bear.
Last weekend, the most elusive artist in electronic music shared a four-track EP, Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760. Named after two of the songs within, the new EP is his first since 2018’s Collapse.
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You can stream the EP, which is out now on Warp Records, and purchase physical copies for your collection here.
Accompanying the EP is a new music video from the mind-bending artist Weirdcore. The longtime collaborators joined forces to bring the lead-off single to life with intense fractals, heavily distorted images of Aphex Twin and other complex imagery in the audiovisual showcase dedicated to the producer’s parents.
The new EP was not the only new music fans were able to get their hands on this month. According to MusicTech, an anonymous SoundCloud account that’s been tied to Aphex Twin recently released three tracks, “Short Forgotten Produk Trk Omc,” “2nd Neotek Test Trac Omc” and “matriarch test 3+Om1 Cass+909 edit1 F6 omc+1.”
All three are said to be created in 2006 or 2007, as noted in the track descriptions. The last of the trio contained more descriptive details which explains how he created the sounds featured within:
unfinished, only track i didid on the matriarch.vocal sound is actually a Onde Magnétique om1 cassette recording being spazzed with control voltages from the Cirklon ***
The Mexican city of Chihuahua will be issuing fines for live performances of songs deemed to be misogynistic.
Artists could have to pay up to 1.2million pesos (£56,000) for playing lyrics that promote women’s “denigration, discrimination, marginalisation or exclusion” amid a “pandemic” of gender-based violence in the city.
According to the United Nations, ten women and girls are killed every day in Mexico. The city’s mayor, Marco Bonilla, recently said in a video posted to Facebook that seven out of every 10 calls made to Chihuahua’s emergency services were related to domestic violence, mostly against women. In addition, domestic violence rates in the city have been steeply rising.
He pledged in the video to donate the money collected from fining artists who break the regulations to women’s shelters or programmes to prevent violence against women and girls.
“Chihuahua is one of the five municipalities in the state with a gender alert, declared due to high rates of structural violence against women,” added councillor Patricia Ulate, the head of the city commission on women, families and gender equality (via the Guardian). “Any action that contributes to eradicating these circumstances counts.”
However, the move was criticised by Francisco Sánchez, a congressman for the wider Chihuahua state, who dismissed it as “useless and anachronistic”. Meanwhile, local media raised questions over whether it could affect future concerts by well-known reggaeton artists or performers of the popular genre of corridos tumbados, such as Peso Pluma and Bad Bunny.
Bad Bunny attends the 2023 Costume Institute Benefit celebrating “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 01, 2023 in New York City (CREDIT: Taylor Hill/Getty Images)
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, last month affirmed that musicians had the right to “sing whatever they want” but criticised artists who glorify violence and drug use. “We are not going to remain silent when they say that [ecstasy pills] are good and that they have a 50-calibre weapon, and that their idols are the most famous drug traffickers,” he said.
Chihuahua previously attempted to penalise live shows that featured songs which were seen to glorify drug crime. Los Tigres del Norte, a particularly popular Mexican band, were fined in 2017 for playing a narcocorrido, a song glorifying drug trafficking. However, the sanction had little effect on the band’s popularity.
Grabbitz’s sound is becoming synonymous with VALORANT.
Later this month, Riot Games will celebrate the best players of their first-person shooter game with the 2023 VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT). This will bring together gamers from all over the world to compete for the highest honors in the game.
Each year, the Riot Games music department teams up with musicians to create a special anthem dedicated to the competition. For the third time, Grabbitz has been selected to soundtrack the action and this time, he has help from breakout rapper bbno$. Together, they showcase the fast-paced action of the shooter with explosive bass, electrifying vocals and dramatic cyberpunk synths.
Check out the music video for “Ticking Away” below.
In addition to the large-scale video game competition, Riot Games is giving music fans a reason to join in on the festivities. On August 26th Grabbitz and bbno$ will perform “Ticking Away” for its live debut at the VCT Finals Opening Ceremony.
The gaming giant also announced a collaborative event with Brownies & Lemonade that will take place in Downtown Los Angeles three days prior on August 23rd.
In case that wasn’t enough music, Riot Games has also acquired a custom DJ truck that will be hosting pop-up parties all across Los Angeles from August 13-23. At the time of writing, the specific artists featuring at these parties have not been shared but organizers have stated that more details are coming soon.
The 2023 VALORANT Champions Tour will take place August 6-26, 2023 at the Shrine Expo Hall and Kia Forum in Los Angeles. You can learn more about the month-long competition and the various pop-up events here.
Robbie Williams has said he wants to recruit Radiohead for a cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’.
READ MORE: Robbie Williams live at Mad Cool 2023: still the ultimate showman
The former Take That singer is keen to get Thom Yorke and co. to do the backing track for his own version of the 1983 Weather Girls hit.
He says he is yet to hear back from the band about the cover and may ask Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor instead.
He told The Sun‘s Bizarre column: “I want to do a cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’ but I want Radiohead to do a backing track for me.
“But they have not got back to me. I keep asking but nothing back. I dunno. I might ask Trent Reznor.”
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails CREDIT: Daniel Boczarski/Getty
His comments come ahead of his two forthcoming sold out shows at the Royal Estate of Sandringham later this month.
Meanwhile, Radiohead drummer Philip Selway recently said that the band will release new material “of some sort” in the “next couple of years”.
“We’re always talking about stuff. But in terms of an actual kind of collective project, beyond the ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ stuff that we’ve been doing [2021’s ‘Kid Amnesia’ reissue project and interactive exhibition], it’s kind of further down the line for us when that will happen. We’re talking about that, but at the moment everybody’s doing their own thing,” Selway told Prog Magazine [via MusicNews].
Elsewhere, Noah Yorke, the son of Thom Yorke, recently shared his new song ‘Cerebral Key’, taken from his forthcoming EP of the same name.
The post Robbie Williams wants to recruit Radiohead for cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’ appeared first on NME.
The body of John Castic, a man who disappeared after a show at the Brooklyn Mirage over the weekend, has been found in a nearby creek, Fox News Digital reports.
Castic, a 27-year-old Goldman Sachs analyst who lived in Lower Manhattan, was reportedly last seen leaving the popular East Williamsburg concert venue around 2:30am Saturday, according to police. His body was spotted and retrieved from the waters of Newtown Creek by the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit early Tuesday.
Speaking with Patch, a friend of Castic’s said the man’s phone location “went dark” soon after he left the venue, but the device’s Find My tracking app placed him on the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge, his last known location, around 3:50am.
John Castic/LinkedIn
“They have found his body and confirmed it’s him,” his father, Jeffrey Castic, told Fox. “It appears to have been death by misadventure. His wallet and phone were found on him.”
Famed electronic music duo Zeds Dead, the headliner of the night’s show at the Brooklyn Mirage, took to social media to share a statement following the news of Castic’s death.
Castic’s death follows that of another man, Karl Clemente, who also disappeared from the grounds of the Brooklyn Mirage on June 11th. Clemente, 27, was reportedly denied entry to the venue before turning up dead five days later in Newtown Creek.
The investigation into Clemente’s death, which was not considered suspicious, is still ongoing, according to police.
Noel Gallagher says he hasn’t got the same presence as U2 frontman Bono or Coldplay‘s Chris Martin, when he performs onstage.
Speaking in a new interview with Radio X, the former Oasis man said he was not “cut out” to command the stage like either singer.
“Some people are cut out for that kind of thing. Chris Martin for example, can do that thing with the crowd. Bono can do that thing with the crowd. I can’t. I’m not interested in it,” he said.
Gallagher went on to say that classic songs like ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ are actually bigger than him.
Noel Gallagher performs during South Facing 2023 at Crystal Palace Bowl on July 28, 2023 in London CREDIT: Gus Stewart/Redferns
He continued: “That song’s bigger than me. That song will be around long after I’m gone. So those big songs like that and ‘Wonderwall’… I don’t feel like I have to be larger than life.
“I mean people are here to see me. They know who I am. They know what I’m like. And that’s what you pay for and that’s what you get.”
Despite that, he recently took aim at artists like Adele who’s songs he said are “shit” and regarding her discography he said he found the “whole thing offensive”.
He also recently took aim at The 1975 and, in particular, frontman Matty Healy. First branding him as a “slack-jawed fuckwit”, the Manchester singer-songwriter then revealed to NME that he considers the band to be both “shit” and “not rock”.
“Oasis’ influence, I think, was for people to fucking start a band in the first place,” he said. “I do meet loads of guys who say that and that’s great. There are a lot of them around, it’s just a pity guitar music has become marginalised. You’ve either got to be rock, or that fucking [The] 1975.”
“At the BRITs, The 1975 won Best Rock or some fucking shit… I was watching it with my kids, two teenage lads, thinking, ‘Is it me being a grumpy old man, or is this shit?’ They were both going, ‘Oh no, this is fucking shit’,” he added. “The 1975, Best Rock Band? Someone needs to re-define that immediately, because that is… I don’t know what that is, but it’s certainly not fucking rock. Whatever rock is, that’s not it.”
Insomniac Events has dropped anchor on the first-ever lineup of EDSea, the promoter’s new floating festival.
With its jaw-dropping lineup and eight marine-themed stages, EDSea promises to be a tidal wave of euphoria. Set to rock the boat are Afrojack, DJ Snake, Seven Lions, TOKiMONSTA, Galantis, Cloonee, Zeds Dead and Ferry Corsten, among many others. Check out the full lineup below.
Insomniac Events
EDSea’s maiden voyage kicks off on November 4th aboard the towering Norwegian Joy. The 15 deck-cruise ship will depart from Miami, sail to Nassau for an “exclusive island party” and head to the private island of Great Stirrup Cay before returning on November 8th.
EDSea’s organizers will transform a number of the boat’s existing spaces into sea-nic views with “art installations you can find at any Electric Daisy Carnival event,” according to Insomniac. The ship will also offer go-karting, laser tag, interactive gaming, casino experiences, comedy shows and more.
Passes to the inaugural EDSea are sold out. You can find out more about the maritime music festival and four-night Caribbean cruise here.
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