But at first, the most important thing:

Brooklyn based singer songwriter
SHILPA RAY is on EURO TOUR!

She’s going to perform in Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, BUDAPEST JUL 22, Slovenia, Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia and Italy. Exact dates and places

In her music you can find blues punk rock and roll soul gospel and beside conventional instruments a harmonium and sometime a pedal steel guitar:

Some people say her music is a mix of Blondie, Cramps and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Her singing style is often compared to Patti Smith and Nick Cave. Some years before she toured with Cave as supporting act and backup singer, even he was who released her first EP after her band Happy Hookers disbanded. Even more she recorded her version of Kurt Weil/Bertolt Brecht song Pirate Jenny with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for a compilation album.

As a child of an Indian immigrant family she learnt to play the piano and harmonium but was banned from western type music but later she became a goth girl. Her first band was the bass-drums-harmonium trio Beat The Devil where she wrote all of music and lyrics already. Her music is so entertainingly eclectic that I felt the need ask about her influences. She says:

I’m proud to say I’m still a sponge in the sense that I can absorb a lot. At the same time with a question like this I never know where to start. I obviously love music my tastes have a fairly wide range. I’d say my biggest influences are the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Arthur Lee

Classic Punk, Hip Hop especially old school Hip Hop, Industrial/Noise, Soul, and Old Bollywood music from the 60s and 70s. Lately I’ve been really into Broadcast and Ministry. Ha! Who would ever put those two together? I don’t know, it’s just where I’m at:

I like other forms of art as well. I used to be a dancer so that comes in to play a lot. If I can’t move to my own music then what ‘s the point? I do like to read and do it often but in short form. Something I can get through in one sitting like poetry, essays, short stories rather than a novel. I’ve got a short attention span. I love streaming TV shows. I’m all about it, especially if the writing is witty. I recently watched Fleabag and Killing Eve. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a damn good writer.

Cooking is another big one for me. I love to cook and I love to eat. Most studio engineers I know are big into cooking. It makes sense to me cause making a record and making a well balanced meal is kind of the same thing. Anytime I’m at a mixing session I often wonder if the track has been over spiced. I love going to museums and looking at art. I like the theatre a lot to. This is all starting to sound like a profile on some Tinder app. Are you gonna swipe left or swipe right?

SHILPA RAY  new EP  NIHILISM  on 16 May

The song “Shoot This Dying Horse” is a rainy day waltz about how bad things can happen to anyone, at any time in the most random and meaningless ways. More specifically, it’s about getting dumped at a bar two days before Christmas. It was inspired by and written after binge-watching the Grateful Dead documentary series Long Strange Trip.

On the B-side, there is an Alice Cooper cover. The story behind this version is that she and her band listened to this one a lot on tour. When she paid closer attention to the lyrics, she realized if sung by a woman the song could be a feminist anthem.

„What have I got
That makes you want to love me
Now is it my body
Or someone I might be
Or somethin’ inside me”

The original one.

Digital and limited cassette editon on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US)

‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’

By Jonathan, SHILPA RAY could be Patti Smith and Iggy Pop love child with Allen Ginsberg as the midwife. Maybe, I do not know, but her new album DOOR GIRL released now, and it is among the best ones this year. She is coming from New York, living in a love and hate relationship with the city where she works as a door girl at Pianos bar. And this door girl tells stories about the city and its people who are living in a big sweet rotting apple like worms.

She has started to write this album after she was rejected by record labels and booking agents because ‘she doesn’t write strong enough hooks.’ ‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’ And then she wrote the first song for the album in about an hour or so, really angry.

Musically this record is all digging into what she felt was indigenous from New York City, so a lot of the influences came from doo-wop, punk, noise, hip-hop and no-wave.

This song ‘EMT Police and the Fire Department’ is about a hot summer night at the Pianos when somebody called the ambulance, the cops, and the fire-brigade, and they arrived at the same time

‘It was like one of those nights in the summer when you know there’s a lot of trouble about to happen, because it gets swampy and hot and everybody goes crazy… I’ve definitely seen people fighting in the front. It breaks out in this massive wave: it gradually happens and then somebody calls out some kind of a sexist or racial slur, because they always just go to that… Then the whole place just goes crazy. I’ve definitely seen somebody break a bottle over a guy’s head before over something really stupid.’

DOOR GIRL ON TOUR in October in UK, France, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic, in November in the US. So if you want a strong hook, she will give you a fucking strong hook.

UK DATES: 3 > Brighton – Green Door Store, 4 > London – The Social, 5 > Glasgow – 13th Note Cafe, 7 > Gateshead – The Central Bar, 8 > Hull – Adelphi Club

If you want to know more about her songs, she talks about here