Previously with hip-hop/electronic act ViceVersa, Bengaluru producer Manas Ullas teams up with vocalist Siri Ravikumar for his first solo outing
Producer Manas Ullas aka SicRa (right) called on vocalist and radio jockey Siri Ravikumar (left) for his debut solo single "Concrete Jungle." Photo: Guru
At the end of 2016, Bengaluru-based musician Manas Ullas experienced a producer’s worst nightmare ”“ the death of his laptop and all of his work-in-progress tunes. He says, “It got so demotivating, I decided to get a 9 to 5 just to keep my mind off it. Any attempts at making music for myself, or for those I had made for earlier, didn’t feel the same, until very recently when things started to make sense again. Took a while to move on, but it happened.”
A founder of Mumbai electronic/hip-hop act ViceVersa and part of electronic/rock band mode.AKA, Ullas took up the role of sound designer at Radio Mirchi and it was only in late last year that he began going back to making music, this time for his solo project SicRa. As he tinkered around and turned “drunk poetry” into the lyrics for his debut single “Concrete Jungle,” Ullas found a perfect voice in Radio Mirchi jockey and vocalist Siri Ravikumar. He recalls an open mic night in December last year, “It was her singing at this live venue setting that made me realize she fits this kind of a song. I think the very next day we started recording, with the help of [sound engineer] Timothy Thomas, who helped with the vocal harmonies amongst other things.”
“Concrete Jungle” piles on the animal kingdom metaphors from Siri over SicRa’s slick basslines and a sublime beat that certainly moves away from his work with ViceVersa and mode.AKA. Concentrating on work led to Ullas leaving ViceVersa and mode.AKA’s other producer and songwriter, Sandeep Madhavan was occupied with work in Mumbai, which left the door open for solo work. Ullas says, “The difference making music solo is that it’s an open palette. I could make a club banger, move to an acoustic guitar only song, then make some metal. The freedom is amazing.”
And now that he’s got a hang of things (and regular data backups on his laptop), there’s more coming up from SicRa, with four upcoming singles and a three-track EP called The Amygdala Hijack. “It will all be released before the year ends,” Ullas says.
Watch the lyric video for “Concrete Jungle” below
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