Album Notes

“The most ambitious South African rock record you’ll hear all year” – Miles Keylock, GQ Magazine, December 2006

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), Freshylground’s Kyla-Rose Smith (violin, baking vocals), Frank Mallows (vibraphone), Niklas Wittenberg (piano), Morten Minothi Christiansen (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 Potrlock (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.

Produced, engineered and recorded By Dirk Hugo at Sui Studios, Cape Town 2006
Mastered By Tim Lengfeld

'Ego fui sola in sylva, Et dilexi loca secreta'

Artist Website: www.nikhilsingh.com
Label Website: www.omtd.co.za