Pills and potions from Eve Alai
The Singapore-based up and coming Lankan producer-songwriter talks to Ruqyyaha Deane
Coming from a family with a musical background, it came as no surprise for Eve Alai, now 23, to begin experimenting with playing the guitar around 12 or 13, which in turn led him to looking at music more seriously.
Thus in 2017, he left to Singapore’s LASALLE College of Arts to pursue his higher studies in music specialising in production.
When he first started getting into recording music however it was with varying results, it being a learning curve for him, he tells us. It was the need to have more control of the end product that led him to start going into production, his initial efforts being after learning through YouTube.
An upcoming Singapore-based Sri Lankan producer with many songs already in his repertoire, Eve Alai has now begun exploring different aspects of music releasing his original new single ‘Pills and Potions’ featuring Senara under the Singaporean record label Umami Records.
Under the name Eve Alai, a pseudonym which pays homage to his Sri Lankan roots as it plays with the pronunciation of ‘Evil Eye’, he tells the Sunday Times that he intends on keeping his professional work as a producer separate from his artist project hence the name.
“Over the past six months because of Corona, things have slowed down in Singapore so I have had a bit of time to maybe try and get my music out and that is what evolved into this project. I want to pursue a career in music production and recording but this project helped me see what could happen with my own music if I had 100% creative control over it,” he says.
Pills and Potions is a heady mix of lowkey house beats that make you want to groove as you would at a party yet listen to it on its own too. Its lyrics are a stark honest confession of someone coming to the realisation that a toxic partner and relationship is not for them.
Sri Lankan artist Senara who collaborated on this project and contributed with her soulful vocals gives the song a haunting tone that almost hypnotizes listeners into dancing their frustrations away to the music.
Pills and Potions is a culmination of all the different songs that Eve Alai listens to which is a mix of happy-sad, melancholy, EDM music. “I think what I find interesting is that due to production and the nature of it all, people cannot really understand the gravity of the lyrics as much so I like when songs can be perceived differently by different people,” he tell us.
He adds that the pre-chorus is one of his favourite parts of the song as he has noticed that it is what people latch onto the most because the line ‘I don’t need your pills and potions’.
This is not Eve Alai’s first video however as he already has garnered over 50,000 plays on Spotify and close to a 100,000 views on YouTube with his first single ‘Made It Out’. Definitely a Lankan musician to watch!