Alvin Presley steps onto the global stage as an indie musician to watch

Alvin Presley
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Chennai is experiencing a rare week of summer rain. It is sultry, humid, and the smell of mud mixed with the sea breeze carries through the city. Moments like these are numbered. They call for some hot tea, a balcony with uninterrupted views of the overcast skyline, and bare feet soaking in the puddles of rainwater. Chennai-based independent musician Alvin Presley’s buttery voice floats between acoustic melodies and soft percussion, never overpowering the pitter-patter of rain, bringing the evening together.

“I call myself a ‘genre-fluid’ musician. Deep down, I want to stick to one genre, but there are so many things I want to explore and experiment with. I keep coming across music that influences me,” says Alvin, who is currently on the cusp of his debut international tour to Japan. His music gained popularity with the release of his first EP Fall Today in mid 2020. ‘Falling Star’, from this EP was playlisted on the Spotify India curated playlist Radar India as well as the Viral Top 50 India playlist. Apart from this, ‘Fall Today’, the title track from the same EP was playlisted on Apple Music’s A-list Pop, Breaking Indian Independent and Indian Independent Hits playlists.

Playing in four venues across Japan, his tour includes a stop at Tokyo’s Music Bridge, a showcase festival that brings together independent artistes like him from around the world. “I came across the application for this showcase in August last year and applied. I have always loved Japanese culture, so I thought this would be a great opportunity,” says the 32-year-old, who performed at the International Chess Olympiad in Chennai in 2022, and subsequently opened for celebrity comedian Vir Das on his Wanted Tour the same year.

Alvin Presley
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Alvin started his musical journey in 2016 when he was part of a band Attva, but his solo career began when the pandemic struck. “During that time, communication was the only thing that kept us sane. I used to go down YouTube rabbitholes, discover new music, and then go live on Instagram to discuss it and connect with people,” he says, adding that during one of these interactions, he met an agent from Japan. “She told me to reach out if I ever came to Japan, and that’s exactly what I did.”

Being a bilingual musician who writes songs in English and Tamil — two languages foreign to Japan — Alvin hopes that music itself will be enough to connect with fellow artistes and audiences. “They are open to accepting new things, and I’m hoping that even if they don’t understand what I say in English between songs, music will do the talking. It’s its own language, right?” he says, adding that he has previously performed his Tamil compositions during his India tour in non-Tamil-speaking cities, where they were well received.

His latest EP, Pain Geography, currently features five tracks, all of which he wrote, composed, and produced in 2022. It takes listeners through the universal emotions of loss, pain, anxiety, and piercing nostalgia. “The full album comes out in September this year, and it’s going to have more synth. It will carry an 1980s and 1990s vibe. In the last EP, I focused on lyrics and production, but in this one, I wanted to bring my singing to the foreground,” he says.

The Japan tour will serve as a preview for his upcoming album. “I have a few songs I want to try out for a new audience, so I’ll be doing that in Japan. This show is going to be completely unplugged — just my drummer, Vinay Ramakrishnan, and me” says Alvin, adding that he is especially excited to perform in Kyoto, the last stop on his tour. “When I imagine Japan in my head, I think I’m really just imagining Kyoto.”

Pain Geography is streaming on Spotify