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I’ve been holding on to this interview for a while now…perhaps too long. A while back we met up with Sex Ray Vision at a show in Ft. Worth and had some time to ask him questions about his music, his start as an artist and his plans for the future. Ravi, the man behind Sex Ray Vision, is one of the funniest artists I’ve met. We ended up hanging out for about an hour, cracking jokes and watching Basic Physics perform his set. Throw on some SRV tracks above and read the interview below (edited for readability).

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Alright, we’re ready.

I just gotta make sure I don’t say anything racist [laughs].

Tell us how you got started making music, producing.

I’ve been making music my whole life. I played the piano when I was a little kid, and I didn’t like it at all, but for some reason I felt some moral obligation to stick with it. My parents would always ask “you wanna keep doing piano this year” and I was like “yeah” but inside I was like “why did you say that!?” [laughs]

But I’m real glad I did. It payed off. Like in high school I was in a really shitty band that I thought was awesome. That’s really been the story of my life – I always think I’m a lot better than I am, which is why I stuck with it for so long. I didn’t realize how bad I sucked. Like every few months I’d look back and be like “man, that stuff sucked, but THIS stuff, these are gonna be the hits!” [laughs]

Where did you go to school?

I went to Stanford.

And that’s where you met Brian.

Yeah, so I was making house music and electronic music for a while, and then Brian was my roommate one year, and he was a rapper, so I was like I wanna make some rap music. So we did that for a good year and a half, and that’s where Sex Ray Visions came out of. But at some point I started making EDM again, and putting it up on the internet, and that just blew up.

At some point it was just all the remixes and stuff I was making had become the identity of Sex Ray Vision, so it didn’t really make sense for us to make music together anymore.

Well he was doing vocals, right?

Yeah, he would do vocals sometime. It’s a lot harder for him to do vocals than it is for me to do production, they’re just different skills. He’s not as EDM oriented as I am, so we just kind of split off into different directions, but it wasn’t like, contentious or anything.

What programs are you using right now?

Some Microsoft Word, some Excel, some Powerpoint. [laughs]

No, I use Logic, which is like the DAW on the Mac. I don’t really have a preference though, some people are like what’s the best one, but I’ve only ever used one. That’s what I learned on, so that’s what I use.

I also use Ableton when I’m playing live, which is great. I used to use CDJs for a little bit, but you gotta beat match, and I’m lazy, so I didn’t want to do that anymore.

You have a very distinct sound – where is this coming from? What’s your base when you start making a song?

So the secret is there’s this guy that made this VST that made everything sound amazing, and I killed him, so nobody else can use it [laughs]. I listen to a lot of Top 40, a lot of pop, a lot of the shittiest…like right now I’m rocking Justin Beiber’s Boyfriend on my Spotify playlist. Yeah, so. I don’t have any shame, I’ll admit it. [laughs]

You know what, you can start making EDM and then criticize me for what I listen to. Until then…

But I love good melodies and catchy hooks, it’s really easily digestible music and I just love it. I don’t like having to think and get really into music, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s just who I am. I’m very shallow, self centered…[laughs]

I like really easy, palatable, melodic music, and that’s where I come from. but I also kind of like the driving electro house sound that’s coming out now.

Well now that I know you play piano, I can see that in your music. Lots of chords, melodies.

Yeah, I’ll sometimes listen to stuff like that, that I want to play, something like Debussy or Chopin. The melodies they were using back in the day are so much more intricate than anything that’s on the mainstream scene right now. I’m not saying I live directly from there, because I’m not that good, but that’s the kind of stuff I’d like to be doing. Just weaving this tapestry of sound…you know…that’s what I want to do.

So you’re 23, you’ve graduated from Stanford.

Yeah, I graduated June 2011, I finished my undergrad. Then I finished my masters last year as well.

So what are you doing now?

This, and I’m also doing research on Stanford campus in bio informatics. You know, like dealing with genetic data.

Do you want to do bio…whatever, or music?

I’m not sure. So my plan, if all things stay equal, I’m probably gonna apply for a Ph.D this year and do that. But the music thing is just blowing up so fast that at some point I might have no choice but to say, I’m making enough money here, so that’s what I gotta do.

Your music kind of blew up naturally, but where was your launching point to go from a kid at Stanford to playing shows in Texas?

Yeah, I just put it all online, YouTube, Soundcloud…all those sites. And blogs like The Kollection and other blogs just started picking it up. I didn’t really promote it or anything…we put up a Facebook page and stuff like that, but I didn’t do any hard work there.

Future plans?

I’m probably going to have to do music full time at some point. It’s a lot of fun, I’m not gonna lie, but yeah, I imagine I’d like to be a mainstream artist in the EDM scene, I wanna be writing awesome, big songs. I want to be doing tracks with the biggest guys in the world.

Will all this be solo, or will you collaborate?

I love collaborating. I don’t get to do it enough. I mean, I did a track with 3LAU back in September and then I did a track with Colin McLaughlin a few months back. I’m actually working on another track with him.

But yeah, it’s something that I love doing. I just don’t get around to it enough… collaborating just takes so much more effort.

What about your sound and style, are you going to try new things?

Yeah, my stuff is known for being really melodic, real poppy, happy. I want to introduce a harder edge into it, I wanna mess with it. I’ve been putting some heavier stuff into it, but I want to go all out.

I just released a new EP a few days back, and it’s very melodic, very fun, but I think in a few months I’ll do another big release with some harder tracks.

How was the Relaxed EP release?

It was great, we have all these blogs picking it up, you guys picked it up. A lot of people downloaded it. I think there was something like three or four thousand downloads off Mediafire yesterday. You know, thousands of plays on Soundcloud. Only like, a few hundred million more to go until I get where I want to be at! [laughs] That’s my goal. It’s reaching a little bit, but…

How did you get picked up by Blackbook?

Matt Impastato, who’s the booking agent for Blackbook, he does great work, he’s responsible for all these shows I do, he just emailed me out of the blue. He’s like, your stuff is awesome, come sign with us. At that point we had just started getting fans and we were getting a lot of emails like ‘yo, we’ll represent you’ but Blackbook were the first people that were legit, and could actually bring more to the table than ‘we’ll field some emails for you.’

It’s been great though, Lauren and Matt are just really helpful. They know this industry and how all this works a lot better than I do. It lets me do what I do best, which is make music.

Last word to fans on The Kollection?

Keep listening to my music……please!