Biography

Austin, Texas is home for Ramesh Srivastava. Not only is it his birthplace but it is where he has returned again and again throughout his life and career — one which has taken him to many parts of the world and has exposed him to myriad facets of the entertainment industry.

It was in Austin in 2002 that Ramesh started his first band, Voxtrot, which began as a casual Belle & Sebastian-inspired recording project and grew slowly into an indie rock tour de force, signing to Beggar’s Group and releasing three EPs, one full-length album and a handful of singles. Many of Voxtrot’s most popular songs were written while Ramesh was living in Glasgow, where he moved to attend university in 2005, continuing to record songs and play shows with the band when he was home for the holidays. During his time in Glasgow, Ramesh received less of a university education and more of an informal music education, discovering a new world of DJs and nightclubs, most notably the highly regarded Optimo (Espacio). This exposure to dance music — and other genres as diverse as no wave and tropicália — was eye-opening for him and kicked off a lifelong exploration of music that would inform Voxtrot’s sound. 

Voxtrot called it quits in 2010 and so began Ramesh’s life as a solo artist. His first album The King was released in 2014 and was the culmination of five very mobile years . . . drifting between Austin, New York and Berlin. Partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, the album was accompanied by a limited edition book featuring 100 pages of poems, prose and photographs, and though he and his new bandmates (Ryan Hall, Marc Henry and Danny Borja) did complete two small U.S. tours, for the most part this was another recording project. The album is tinged with a sweet melancholia, and in some ways is the sound of a lost soul searching for a purpose. 

In 2014 Ramesh moved back to Austin, and it was here that he slowly began rebuilding himself, inside and out. The next eight years would be defined not only by a rediscovering of his musical self but also his Self with a capital “s,” aided by various forms of therapy and inner work. There were a few short stints living in Los Angeles, dabbling in collaboration and professional songwriting (with artists such as Haim and Rostam), but life kept leading him back home. At a certain point he accepted that the only way for a second solo album to come into being was to become one hundred percent responsible for it, and so followed several years of restaurant work to fund the studio time, orchestral arrangements, and session players.

Says Ramesh, “My therapist talks about external wanderlust vs. internal wanderlust. I’ve exercised a lot of external wanderlust in my life but in recent years have had to go inside, exploring my spirituality and psychology.” This inner exploration is manifested on his new album Eternal Spring not only in some of the subject matter but also in the sonic variety of the songs, embracing a wide range of the music he loves, including soul, electronic and country music. The album deals somewhat more directly than previous releases with his experience as a gay person as well as his relationship to fame and artistic freedom, and revisits his lifelong search for true love, approaching it from a place of self-empowerment and the desire to mature. Imbued in the album is a hopefulness, a full embrace of the human experience, and a celebration of personal essence. 

In Ramesh’s words, “Throughout my career I hope to always be getting closer and closer to a place of authenticity, making my way home to myself. The longer I live, the more that feels like the real goal of life.” 

Eternal Spring will be released March 11th, 2022