Contact:
Instagram: @markbfromdc

They used to call me SaintMark

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 film and 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’s 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. 

Artwork for Crystal LP by Daya Ramesh
Artwork for BU2 by Allison Demoss

dreamcastmoe

mgmt: kr@endlessloveshow.com

dreamcastmoe
Where does your dream start?

dreamcastmoe aka Davon Bryant-Mason is a lifelong resident of Washington DC, formerly the chocolate city. He is the singer, songwriter, producer who since 2017 has quietly been releasing some of the most hotly tipped and underground genre spanning music.	

Traversing across R&B, funk, soul, jazz and hip-hop, Bryant slickly moves between styles and tones. This ability to twist and turn in different directions - yet remain stylistically coherent - can be traced to his home city of DC and the makeup of the neighbourhoods.

His beats are a mirror to his life lived and experienced there. “I would not be where I am today if I weren’t from DC,” he says. “You can hear DC in the way that I talk. Certain runs in my voice are rooted to the soul of DC because I listen to a lot of Donny Hathaway and Marvin Gaye. I would say DC has a role in my approach to my music and sets the tone. I’m one of those people that could work with anyone. I always try to bring the best out of people. That’s just how I grew up. I grew up in a smorgasbord of a city where one block could be hood shit and the next block could be the White House. You have to know how to move accordingly through all those spaces.”

Your Weekly Celestial Journey, Thursday’s Ten to Midnight on KXLU 88.9fm or KXLU.com. 

All shows recorded live~

Amsterdam based DJs, events company and record label. - support@dekmantel.com for all your webshop and label enquiries.

Bottled Up is following