Episode 12: Gold Revere- Success Through Remote Music Production

NEW EP "LAVENDER" OUT TODAY! 12/18/2020

Hip hop/R&B duo Gold Revere, Akash Gururaja and Ian Crumley, started making music in Ian’s basement in 2017 before making a major splash on the scene this year with their viral track “Goldfish Crackers.” What started as an experimental summer project in their hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa quickly gained traction thanks to the duo’s vibey mix of hip hop and R&B influence, classical training in piano, violin, and vocals, a knack for staying on the pulse of social media trends, and Ian’s production acumen matched by Akash’s lyrical intuition.

After releasing three DIY EPs and close to a dozen stand alones, the college freshmen came out with their single “Goldfish Crackers.” The infectiously quirky ear candy made of Ian’s whistle-meets-country-trap hip-hop beat and Akash’s playful lyrics struck a nerve on TikTok where the associated #GoldfishDance began trending. Akash sings: “Goldfish crackers when I'm tryna fake a smile, and then black coffee when I'm tryna walk a mile. Red velvet cake is when I'm thinking bout the aisle and DOTS when I feel I haven't seen her in a while.” Using popular snack foods for deeper metaphorical meaning, the song stuck.​ ​“It’s a love song,” says Akash. “A different way to say you miss someone. Looking at something through another lens. Plus, everyone loves Goldfish Crackers.” Eventually the phenomena drew the attention of Pepperidge Farms who went on to create an official Goldfish Crackers TikTok account dedicated entirely to a stop motion Goldfish character performing the animated dance tutorial. The song’s success caught the interest of Sony Arista who subsequently signed the duo.

Ian and Akash first met in 9th grade choir and quickly became close friends and performed together throughout high school in show choir, all state choir, school musicals, orchestra and the like. Both having grown up in diverse musical households - Ian’s mother a former opera singer, his father a professional drummer in a jazz band, while Akash was raised on Indian music and started piano lessons at age four and violin at age nine - Gold Revere boasts a deeply complex musicality. Their shared musical lexicon and approachable, goofy personalities make the duo an alluring anomaly. Intrigued by intricate song structure and genre fluidity, taking notes from acts like Tyler The Creator, Kanye West, and Jacob Collier, Gold Revere find their niche with an impressively unique sound. “We want to make music with meaning that sounds great and is fun,” says the duo. “Using innovative sampling, we’d like to keep expanding and pulling in different genres to appeal to the widest variety of people.”

After performing as Gold Revere at prom followed by a summer tour, Ian and Akash headed off to college but continued to make music sending tracks back and forth recording in their dorm rooms. “I make a beat then send it on a private SoundCloud link to Akash,” says Ian. “If it passes the ‘garbage or fire test’ I start writing lyrics and we go from there,” says Akash. They both laugh. Now halfway through their sophomore year, Akash a neuroscience/pre-med major at Vanderbilt and Ian a mathematics major at Iowa State, Gold Revere welcomes a new EP titled Lavender set to release on December 18th.

Follow Gold Revere:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/goldrevere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/goldrevere

Music: https://fanlink.to/goldrevere

Lavender:

https://goldrevere.lnk.to/Lavender