I had been wanting to write a song like this for a while, something motivating and high energy: Nikhil Suresh

LA based music engineering and mixing wizard Nikhil Suresh, who’s worked with artists like Joshua Bassett for ‘Lie Lie Lie’ and ‘Only a matter of time’ and Carmen Deleon for Juegas is all set to release his upcoming track ‘Lets Get it’ created by his new band ‘Grihastha’.

Being associated with some of the most popular tracks recently, Nikhil’s career graph as an music engineer also boasts of a Grammy nomination for ‘The Lost Boy-Cordea, where he was the assistant engineer on the track.

Nikhil has over the past few years amassed a wealth of knowledge and expertise in sound engineering. He has been the chief engineer at Clearlake recording studio and Fever recording studio and has mastered the art of mixing. He is also chief engineer at 91 sound studios, where he head as an engineer.

Apart from the aforementioned, Nikhil Suresh’s major engineering projects include ‘Love for Summer’ by Loren Gray, ‘Bum Bum’ by Dirty heads and ‘RIP’ by Berner, all of which have crossed millions of hits on Spotify alone.

Here’s a quick chat with Nikhil Suresh:

Tell us about your band Grihastha

Grihastha is actually a one man project, primarily myself. I do most of songwriting and I do all the production myself. Its mainly just my own little creative outlet so I can consolidate what I’ve learned working with other artists and producers into one place, have fun with it and do things the way I want to, no pressure. It was formed during the lockdowns. The name is taken from the Indian age-based system
of the ancients. The life of a person were broken down into 4 stages-

Brahmacharya (the student phase)

Grihastha (the house holder phase)

Vanaprastha (the retirement phase)

Sanyaasa (the renunciation phase)

Being that I am in the 2nd, Grihastha stage, where I have to take care of my
responsibilities towards family and society, I felt that this would be a good name,
because quite literally, I am a Grihastha.

How was “Let’s Get It” conceptualised?* What was your experience while creating this song?

I originally wrote this for an automobile expo, for a showcase event. But then hearing the song back a couple of times, I thought, well this could actually be s full track, instead of a short 1 minute blaster that I had created for the commercial project.

So then I sat with it and thought of some things, and finally, the chorus came to me— c’mon c’mon c’mon lets get it. I had been wanting to write a song like this for a while, something motivating and high energy, so people can blast it to feel energized and motivated— my enthusiasm for working out gave me another reason to write it, as, hopefully, its something that can inspire gym goers to push harder during their work outs.

Alessandro [Medri] the vocalist I collaborate with for most of my songs was the one who helped in writing the rest of the lyrics, and of course, its his voice on the song, and it sounds absolutely fantastic. His performance and tone of voice is perfect for the song.

It was written during lockdown, so of course we had to write it and record it online— honestly, I’d prefer doing it in person—but the fact that we could make this happen online was amazing!

Having worked with so many known names, how does it feel to be releasing your own track? What’s different and what’s similar about the whole process?

Oh.. by this point, exhausting, ha. Just so much to do; I’ve done the process thousands of times for other artists, but doing my own songs always involves more work, as I am responsible for writing the songs, and performing most of the instruments on them.
Doing this really helps me to understand the process better from “the other perspective” — and what I mean by that is, instead of just viewing things as an engineer or producer, I get to understand and appreciate what artists (most of my clients as a producer/engineer) feel like in different stages of the process, and that helps me
serve them better.  It helps me focus on whats really important in the bigger picture, instead of focusing on irrelevant things.

What are your plans for future?

Work with more artists, and release more music! I have a few projects lined up with couple of amazing artists. We’re working on some really cool productions which should be hopefully out by the end of the year, early next year ( I can’t mention the artists just yet). The music ranges from dirty, grungy rock to sweet and pretty pop.

As for with Grihastha, I have 2 more songs lined up, one of them featuring the bassist, Ricky Bonazza of US based metal band Butcher Babies, and also featuring guitarist Takuya Yada of Japanese metal band Black Despair.

It was really an interesting short chat! We are looking forward to his latest release, check it out as it come on 30^th July, Mark Your Calendar!