When Bottled Up's frontman Nikhil Rao sings, "I've got dark immersions, crystal versions of you. I've got soft distortions and I know it's true. I've got hot diffusion, crystal versions uh-of you" in a sort of snob charm way pushing a proto punk Brit / Mid Atlantic accent and riding mirroring guitar lines that moments before felt like Pavement melting with the Beatles on acid, you know... you just know that you are falling headfirst into a midnight movie of a song and you are... and it is beautiful in all the discordant askew ways that you would expect.
By the way, the song in question is Bottled Up's single and title track "Crystal" with the full album dropping October 16th (2020) on Maximum Pelt Records.
Of the song Rao shares:
"Crystal is a song about the multifaceted nature of intimacy, and how insecurity and fear can hold us back from embracing relationships with people. I grew up watching MTV religiously, and I miss the vulnerability of those music videos, so I wanted to try to re-create that vibe in a modern psychedelic way. Watching those old music videos as a kid really helped me feel like I could relate to everyone, especially as an Indian-American who constantly felt alienated by the rampant racism in every part of this country I lived in. It gave me hope that music could help me escape that feeling of isolation, and I'm very grateful for it.
The song itself is also an ode' to when I first picked up the guitar, learning Syd Barrett and Velvet Underground songs to perpetuate the romantic connection between music and my emotions. I hope that Bottled Up can be an outlet for people to become more vulnerable, and help foster more meaningful connections between all of us in what's slowly becoming a more artificial world."
Those of you who know me and know American Pancake, know that I have a special place in my heart for bands that reflect the world around them in interesting ways. So I am stoked to find out about Bottled Up. Totally.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://bottledup.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/bottledupdc/
I wanted to pass along the new Bottled Up single "Crystal" and see if you can fit anything in on your site. "Crystal" is the title track from band's album out in October 16 via Maximum Pelt Records. The band is great for fans of Parquet Courts, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall.
Here is a quote from the band's Nikhil Rao:
"Crystal is a song about the multifaceted nature of intimacy, and how insecurity and fear can hold us back from embracing relationships with people. I grew up watching MTV religiously, and I miss the vulnerability of those music videos, so I wanted to try to re-create that vibe in a modern psychedelic way. Watching those old music videos as a kid really helped me feel like I could relate to everyone, especially as an Indian-American who constantly felt alienated by the rampant racism in every part of this country I lived in. It gave me hope that music could help me escape that feeling of isolation, and I'm very grateful for it.
The song itself is also an ode' to when I first picked up the guitar, learning Syd Barrett and Velvet Underground songs to perpetuate the romantic connection between music and my emotions. I hope that Bottled Up can be an outlet for people to become more vulnerable, and help foster more meaningful connections between all of us in what's slowly becoming a more artificial world."
Jangly and glamorous, Bottled Up’s freaked-up art pop is a smoothie of frontman Nikhil Rao’s key obsessions: Suburban Lawns, italo disco, Alan Vega, Television (the band), television (the appliance), Andy Warhol, the entire decade of the ‘80s, Prince’s particular shade of plum purple, his old Tascam 8-track, Factory Records.
Indian-American by way of Oakland and LA, Rao’s the dude-who’s-seen-it-all meets dude-about-town. A sound designer and audio engineer by trade - professionally schooled in the art of video game scoring- Rao’s a man informed first by the sort of his journeying one’s got to do when faced with the darknesses of addiction and a twisty adolescence in and out of religious cults. For all of its gleaming guitars and glossy euro-flavored synthwork, Bottled Up’s filled with the mental residue one gets after asking the void to fuck off.
Co-led with Colin Kelly - a disciple of D.C.’s avant-analog scene - joined by Michael Mastrangelo and Beth Cannon on dueling guitars, and supplanted by Rao’s wunderkid brother, Rohit, on acid-jazz-does-punk drums, Bottled Up conjures the sort of psycho-potpurri-spirit that’s only given to the sort of band that’s able to conjure a vision of the things they love, the mountains they’ve overcome, and mutate it all into something you can dance to.
The new single, “Kilo,” releasing alongside their new LP, Crystal, in October 2020, is a jerky, punky, surfy affair, like what Devo might sound like if they were booked a gig at the beach. It’s hot, moody, and angular, like all of the ways you might feel when you’ve got to hide some of yourself in front of those you love (or don’t). True to the band’s name, it’s carefully-contained, chaotically-deployed chaos. It’s violent energy, bottled up at the source.
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