ADV: 10 Interesting Facts You Might Not Have Known

In case you did not know, ADV is a South African songwriter, singer, drummer, guitarist and bassist. He’s an artist who can do it all. From a young age he was exposed to all sorts of music. From Elvis Presley to The Doors, from Depeche Mode to Nirvana.

You probably don’t know much more about ADV, but this article will change that…

Here are 10 Facts You Might Not Have Known About ADV:

1. He suffers from Sinusitis

From a very young age he got this curse of dealing with hectic sinusitis that wouldn’t go away. Time and again he finds it hard to record vocals because he’s constantly short of breath. All the sniffing causes headaches and some of the lyrics starting with a “M” or a “N” are pronounced weirdly with a blocked nose.

All of this puts a delay on the recording process for a couple of days till it calms down. Being a smoker doesn’t help at all either…

2. Drums were ADV’s first instrument

When he really got into playing music at the age of 11, drums were his first instrument of choice, but having no money it was something far away from becoming a reality. Instead he got a crappy acoustic guitar as a gift. Only about two years ago he got the satisfaction of joining a band on drums, but in the end it turned out to just be a phase. He still loves banging the drums though…

3. His first gig ever was a sold-out show at the Barnyard Theatre

So he just turned 16 and joined a band as a front-man for the first time. The band rehearsed a short set of covers (mainly rock) and eventually they went on to play the gig. It’s funny looking back, the whole crowd consisted mostly out of Afrikaans people. ADV doesn’t advise any rock band to play Iron Maiden in front of a crowd like this.

4. Every song he releases, he writes, records, mixes and masters himself

He admits that he’s probably a nightmare to work with. ADV is a perfectionist when it comes to music. He wants it this to sound exactly like that and he specifically wants that to be presented like this.

When he graduated as a sound engineer it enabled him to shut up and just do it himself. When he officially started ADV in July this year, he created deadlines for releasing a song every month. This meant that he had to do everything from writing to recording and from releasing to marketing the song within 25 days. “There ain’t no rest for the wicked” after all.

5. ADV has a Wikipedia-brain when it comes to music

He has this freaky thing where he knows the name of a song, it’s artist and the album (and sometimes even the year of release) about 5 seconds into it.

Before making music, as a kid he used to study the tapes, vinyls and CD’s of everything and everyone from the 50’s to the 2000’s. It was all he could do back then before picking up a instrument and he guesses that all the info stuck with him ever since. He thinks that he’ll give Johan Stemmet a run for his money.

6. “Dead End Town” was recorded in a attic while ADV was housesitting

At the time he was dating a girl who went away with family for Christmas. He was asked to house-sit and gladly accepted. For someone that is always surrounded by people, this was the ultimate escape.

He took all his instruments and equipment and moved in for a week all by himself. ADV started writing and came up with the whole song in like 20 minutes? Everything felt very convenient to do. There was no one to tell him to turn the volume down and no one to bother him. He loved it.

7. He was a Magician for hire

ADV was going through this weird phase where he lost touch with music, probably felt over-worked and finally hit writer’s block. For some reason he stumbled upon footage of David Blaine and it flipped his world fucking upside down.

He immediately started to learn the stuff that Blaine was doing with cards. Soon he did street magic to strangers and their reactions were priceless. They instantly associated him with devil’s work, which he thought was rather hilarious but felt untouchable.

He eventually started getting paid gigs to do magic! All within 5 months. It was crazy and totally unexpected but looking back at it, it’s a total cringe-fest.

8. He contacted Judas Priest to use one of their songs

Haha! This is ridiculous. So he fronted a band called Haiven and he had a pretty good idea of how the band must sound and what they should write.

He was aiming at a sleazy / heavy type sound and thought of Priest‘s one song that would be perfect. He thinks it was called “Hot For Love” from their Turbo album back in ’86. He wanted the band to release this as recorded cover. So, in order to do that he was trying to get hold of their label and rights owner.

ADV googled everything he could and landed on this super legit page with an email address, saying that it is the manager of Judas Priest. Being young and stupid he typed out this whole speech and why the band wanted to use it and blah blah blah.

About a month later he actually got a fucking response! It said some crap about them not approving over this, etc. Whether this was legit or not, you can at least give him a point for trying.

9. There’s a story behind the ADV name

A lot of people asks what does “ADV” mean? The answer is that it doesn’t mean anything. ADV didn’t want to put his actual name on it and neither did he want to make something up that would sound corny. So he decided to just use his initials. This is very anti-climatic and he knows it.

10. He used to work in a video-store

He just finished high-school and got this job. This was such a drag but he’s glad he did it. It used to be so boring that he and his friends would put on some classic soft porn just to have a laugh at the customers or on some shifts he brought in his guitar and wrote songs. Not too bad for a first job, right?

I’d like to thank ADV for sharing these facts with us. Feel freeo to check out his Facebook page or follow him on Instagram.

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