Ritviz Scopes Out Two Collaborative Albums with Nucleya and Seedhe Maut

In 2016, Pune-based producer Ritviz Srivastava (who goes by his first name) received a melody loop from desi bass king Nucleya and there was only one thing on the young artist’s mind. Ritviz says, “All I could think about was, ‘How do I blow his mind right now?’”

He took that 10-second loop, worked on it for a day and sent Nucleya back half a song. Ultimately, the song might have been shelved, but it established a rapport between the two producers that’s now culminated into a joint album. Ritivz adds, “We’ve exchanged many ideas over the years and it’s been so epic because both of us have such uniquely distinct sounds and styles and seeing them merge and take shape has been so much fun. We really got down to working properly on this album around a year ago when I moved to Goa.”

That’s just part one of Ritviz’s massive plans for 2021, announced earlier today along with a second album with New Delhi’s mercurial hip-hop duo Seedhe Maut. There are 21 songs releasing each week between the start of August until the end of the year. The album titles, song details and collaborators will be announced at a later date.

It might seem symbolic to release 21 songs (and announce it on June 21st, 2021) but the producer clarifies that it was more of a coincidence. “It feels so great to say, we didn’t leave anything out! Both these albums have been such a natural process, and we’ve all beautifully gravitated towards every song that we’ve written together. It’s almost as if we had to stop ourselves and say, ‘We need to either stop or just start a second album right here!’”

While the forthcoming singles will mark the first official collaboration with Nucleya (excluding remixes), Ritviz has previously partnered with Seedhe Maut for runaway hits like “Chalo Chalein” in 2019 and producer SickFlip’s collab “Roshni” last year. He says about teaming up with the MC Encore ABJ and producer-rapper Calm, “Our styles are poles apart, but somehow when we get together we create music so effortlessly, I can’t even believe myself! I feel one thing that really helps is we’re all roughly around the same age, and we somehow understand each other really well. That emotional connection I feel has been the most instrumental part in shaping up this album to what it is today.”

Even as a collaborative artwork crafted by visual artist Santanu Hazarika was sold as an NFT on marketplace WazirX in about half a minute, a lot of other details of Ritviz’s two albums are kept under wraps. The producer has, however, often played snippets and work-in-progress versions of these releases to fans on social media livestreams and thus, songs are often floating around on the Internet. Ritviz considers it the equivalent of road-testing songs in the absence of tours. “As musicians, we’ve all transitioned to many more online forms of engaging with our fans over the course of this pandemic,” he says. With regard to the “leaks,” the producer adds, “A lot of these uploads are by fans and they have no ill-intention, they’re just trying to do other fans a favor, and so we are mindful of it as well.”

With everything kicking off in a month and few weeks, the producer is understandably excited to have a large amount of music coming out, especially since they’re unraveling to become two full-length albums. “In more normal times, we would have put out a live tour calendar and played shows in different cities every week, but instead now it’s a new song every week till the end of the year. The next six months are going to be a whirlwind,” Ritviz adds.

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