Nikhil Singh - Pressed Up Black

The newest OMTD release, Pressed Up Black by The Wild Eyes front man Nikhil Singh is available nationally.

The stockists are:

Look and Listen stores nationally

Musica Megastores: Sandton, Zone and VA Waterfront
The Bin – 105 Harrington St, East City Cape Town and The Bin online store
CD Select -Tyger Valley Centre, Durbanville (021) 914 1860

Canned Applause Records - Mellville, JHB (011) 483 8823
Seedy's CD store - Hatfield, Pretoria (012) 362 5841
A Store - Kloof Str, Cape Town (021) 422 2888
SCAR – Kloof St, Cape Town (021) 422 5900
Online Stores: www.oneworld.co.za (international and local orders)

Listen to tracks off the album from the OMTD website: www.omtd.co.za

Read the interview with him in the Mail and Guardian: http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2006/2006nov/061103-singh.html

Look out for a review of the album in this week’s Sunday Times magazine

As well as:

An review in the December GQ

Feature in the Dec SL magazine

Interview in December Blunt magazine

Review in the new issue of One Small Seed magazine

More to follow!

Check out Nikhil’s website: www.nikhilsingh.com

Send him fan mail/ junk mail/ love letters/comics..…to: Nikhil@nikhilsingh.com

Read on for more about the album….

In a scene where bands who ape a perpetually recycled punk past from the comfort of their 3-car suburban garage and a confessional roll-call of singer songwriters who earnestly tug away at teenage girls’ heartstrings are hailed as ‘cutting edge’ it’s tempting to read alternative music it’s death rites. Until you hear Nikhil Singh’s debut solo album, Pressed Up Black.

It’s liberating listening for anyone disaffected by a scene perilously close to flat-lining on its obsession with new wave nostalgia and singer songwriter schmaltz. Released on hip Mother City indie imprint One Minute Trolley Dash, Pressed Up Black splinters the signature obsessions Singh showcased in his art rock combo, The Wild Eyes ‘ the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll’’ into a brave noir world of avant-rock excess.

From the tarnished glam and free jazz filtered garage rock gambol of opener ‘Nagasaki Nikita’ to the mutant murder ballad choking alternative country’s corpse on haunting album finale ‘One Hundred Dead Horses’, Pressed Up Black injects an unapologetic avant-garde fire back into alternative rock’s insipid recipe book. So what’s Singh’s elixir? Simple: start by inviting a cast of marginal music mavericks including Ntshuks Bonga (saxophone), Brydon Bolton (upright bass), Heinrich Goosen (drums) and Jeanette Klaasens (violin and viola) onboard and feed.

Feed your vocal, guitar and synth strategies into an audio abyss that an outrageously eclectic ensemble including Wild Eyes cohort Gareth Dawson (noise bass), Freshlyground’s Kyla-Rose Smith (violin, backing vocals), Frank Mallows (vibraphone), Niklas Wittenberg (piano), Morten Minothi Kristiansen (guitar), Lee Thompson (trumpet, flugelhorn), Righard Kapp (feedback), Dan Manojlovic (e-bow guitar, cigarette and plucked piano wires), Ramon Da Silva (kalimba, spectrum computer), Dirk Hugo (guitar scratches, overdrive guitar), Paul Opie (bass) and Simon Portlock (drums) dance a dervish around with their uncanny improvisations.

Wait up, spectrum computers, plucked piano wires and cigarettes? Well, call it thinking out of the box, if it makes you feel safer. But be warned Singh’s mission is more than a mere ‘marketing 101’ motto. Remember, Pressed Up Black isn’t neo-this or retro-that. Rather than clone any seasonally chic retro-rock clichés or succumb to an underground stereotyping emasculated by it own self-indulgence, Pressed Up Black invites the listener to decode a flotation tank of mind-altering echoes that - depending on what frequencies fry your synapses - are reminiscent of everyone from early Lou Reed and Eno-era Roxy Music to Devendra Banhart, Bonnie Prince Billy and beyond. And here’s the rub: none of this stuff strays far from the dance floor either.

-Miles Keylock