Thursday 24 September 2009
Vivek Shraya returns: are you in or out?
(photo: Juliana Neufeld)
I’ve been writing QBiM for over three years now, and one of my favourite things about this labour of love is seeing and hearing the return of some of the artists I wrote about in the early days of the blog. It’s akin to a visit from an unexpected visit from an old friend, and I couldn’t be more surprised or delighted that Vivek Shraya came knocking on the door last week to say hello.
Back in 2007, Shraya was one of the first people to subject themselves to the highly-subjective QBiM Questionnaire. At the time, he had just independently released his debut album, If We’re Not Talking, a crafty mix of electro-pop, dance, and rock, which featured an appearance by Sara Quin (of Tegan and Sara), and was about a month away from totaling blowing everyone out of the water with his cover of The White Stripes “Seven Nation Army”. Vivek was also featured as one of QBiM’s favourite Canadain artists of 2007, thanks to the jaunty electro-surf jam “Fevered”.
Shraya has a new single, “In/Out” from the soon-to-be-released Keys & Machines, and it’s very much a welcome return by one of Canada’s best kept electro-pop secrets. The song is another duet, this time featuring Meghan Toohey who also acted as the song’s producer. If Justin Timberlake and Of Montreal ever worked together, they’d sound something like “In/Out”, but I don’t think it would be anywhere near as fun as this. It’s 2 minutes and 25 seconds is over far too soon, prompting many pushes on the repeat button so far. If “In/Out” is anything to go by, then I’m so looking forward to hearing the rest of the album, and excited for what I hope will be a lot of attention coming Shraya’s way. CBC Radio 3 are you taking notes?
Keys & Machines is scheduled for release in November, and hopefully Vivek will agree to subject himself to our probings once again, and be the first Questionnaire candidate to make a repeat performance.
MP3: Vivek Shraya “In/Out”
Myspace: Vivek Shraya
Facebook: Vivek Shraya
Twitter: Vivek Shraya
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under MP3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
