Exposed Vocals just caught an interview with Netanya
Born and raised in Adelaide SA in October 11 1999, James Totani is a DJ, music producer and e-boy, present in the online world, working for the big league under current alias Netanya (stylised as: netanya), having accumulated 2 million streams (and counting) throughout all streaming platforms. His musical style has evolved over the years from Big Room and Progressive House to Future Bass. His first tracks under alias Sam Vuuren “Lights in Motion” and “God of Israel”, appeared online in 2015 through a now defunct Italian net label Smash Up Records to minimal fanfare. Netanya continued to attempt for success, collaborating with fellow producers Ya’akob, Strell and Electro Rock singer Christina Marie Magenta on an EP titled “Hey Cutie” and saw a limited independent release on Bandcamp in August 2016.
He continued to release music independently with a reboot of “Lights in Motion” and “Clarity” with Christina Marie Magenta in 2017, followed by a hiatus immediately after Clarity’s release.
After Netanya returned to the music scene in August 2018 with a bunch of remixes on SKIO, Clarity became a sleeper hit, peaking at #78 on the ITunes Australian Electronic chart in February 2019. Due to the success, Netanya decided to take all he learnt since his inception and moved on, with the release of ‘Lemme Go’ in 2019, which is built around the Progressive House music Netanya previously made, and features vocals by RoundRobin (credited as Marco), the very first male singer to collaborate with him. In 2020, Netanya announced the release of his album ‘Crave You’, following four singles from the album. The lead single which is a second edit of “Lemme Go”, was released in February 2020, when it garnered 100,000 streams in a month after being featured in online publications, and over 400,000 streams across streaming platforms in its lifetime. Netanya then released the album’s titular single “Crave You”, which has received over 100 plays on radios worldwide and over 150,000 streams on Spotify and 178,000 streams on Soundcloud, and was also featured on Episode 28 on Indie Network Radio Show. His recent single “Learning to be Me”, gained over 1000 shazams in its first week of release and peaked at #41 on the ITunes Australia Electronic Genre chart in its third week. Netanya then released his debut album ‘Crave You’ on November 23 2020, which contains 15 songs and instrumentals of various electronic styles from future bass to house to reggae.
Netanya is now working on his second album called “With You”, with 15 brand new strong and powerful songs about hopeless love and crushes. The album’s genre is future house with influences from hyperpop, trap and synthwave. After two more singles, the album will be released on October 25th 2021.
Check out netanya’s new featured release on Exposed Vocals
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?
Netanya: I grew up listening to a lot of electronic music. In primary school, I use to buy many compilation CDs that were published by Ministry of Sound and One Love and listened to all kinds of different electro house DJs, particularly deadmau5 and Wolfgang Gartner, and wondered how the hell did they produce the kind of music they did. This was when I didn’t know the difference between disc jockeys and record producers. It’s kind of like the Ancient Greeks not knowing the difference between the colours blue and black. All my friends and everyone else I knew at primary school thought I was weird having Autism, and being into electronic music kind of alienated me even more back then, especially when people made fun of me for liking deadmau5. I eventually found a way to produce electronic music in mid-2012, and learned from scratch because at that time, I used broadband internet which was costly and loading up YouTube tutorials used a lot of data. Later that year, I noticed a lot of the popular boys in my cohort were trying their hand at becoming DJs, so I no longer felt embarrassed about being an alternative music enthusiast. While many of them gave up come high school, I continued practising electro house music production and created some of my own VSTs from default versions of plugins. After uploading many of these songs onto Soundcloud and the now-defunct Beat100, and getting tens of thousands of streams, I signed a one-single contract with Italian record label Smash Up Records in early 2015, and released Lights in Motion under alias Sam Vuuren. At that point, I felt like I had really polished my craft, and that was the moment I truly felt like an artist. Then I released another single featuring UK singer Santina later that year. That song, titled ‘God of Israel’ was featured in a segment I appeared in a now-defunct current affairs show called Today Tonight, about Flinders University’s early childhood intervention program. Since then, I abandoned my progressive house ventures, reinvented myself and expanded into trap music, future house, dubstep, coldwave and recently hyperpop under alias netanya, and never felt more comfortable about it in my life. After a hiatus in late 2017 to early 2019, I returned with many singles before releasing a full-length album in November 2020 that had fifteen future bass, latin-reggae and trap songs, including “Lemme Go (2nd Edit)” which was featured in a couple online publications and had 500k streams on Spotify altogether, “Crave You” which received over 200 airplays and appeared on Episode 28 of the Indie Network Radio Show, and “Learning to be Me”, which from what I can remember, peaked at #41 on the ITunes Electronic chart in Australia.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?
Netanya: Growing up, I never had connections. I was always made out to be the weird one all the time, and nothing I could do would ever make any difference. There were no Spotify pitching playlist sites and no genuine promotional services when I was starting out. The closest I ever got to exposure in early primary to high school were pretty much incorporating music into videos for assignments and playing music at my last birthday party, with much fake excitement from students. My friendship group in primary school were not very supportive of me and never took me seriously, so its always good to have my two best friends from school who appreciated what I did. I would suggest to work within your means and don’t expect anything too big to happen by osmosis. I was never able to get gigs because I didn’t know how to and didn’t have any connections, and nowadays it’s even harder, even in Australia where we didn’t have as many cases as the rest of the world. Find ways to upload music and have a presence on social media. I use to always upload my music to Zippyshare before I was allowed to create a YouTube account. I use to always tag everyone on my Facebook posts because nobody would like any of my posts, so yeah it was that sad. Make sure you have lots of friends in school that are very supportive of you I guess; I’ve seen that work out pretty well with Restricted. Instagram is a much bigger platform than what it was before, so be supportive of other artists. Like their photos and listen to their music as well.
Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?
Netanya: I never performed live, but once won an award at my school’s talent show in 2015, set in the staffroom. Basically, I walked in while one of my songs played and was quickly given the microphone by my teacher to talk about my music, and then that was it. All I was able to do was introduce myself and say what kind of music I produced in front of like twenty people before my teacher took my microphone away, and I then received a $100 prize. It was uncomfortable but the money prize was much needed for a new backpack and some clothes.
Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?
Netanya: No. I have been asked in the recent years to do online live performances, and to be honest, I am busy with university studies, that’s one thing, but it’s more about what I want to do. Its one of those things that I would put a lot of planning into. It’s the budget, the organising and all that. I want to do something grand and have lots of cool visuals and sometimes it’s hard to do it all on my own, unlike producing music and promoting my releases. It’s something that I want to do considerably well. When I was releasing music in different aliases in high school, nobody would listen to it, so I never had real fans, and those who acknowledged my music did it out of obligation, so finding a venue and setting up a live performance would have been very embarrassing given that nobody would come and see me perform, and I already faced severe bullying after appearing on TV once. The simple hellos I received from everyone else at school just wasn’t enough. At the talent show six years ago, I expected everyone from school to be there, but it was only a quarter of my family members, and some teachers with the students that had to be there to sing choir before the award was announced, but I later learned that was just a school talent show thing. Last year, I learned about using OBS and high-quality livestreaming from various social media sites, and even did a three-hour livestreamed ambient musical performance for uni which was amazing, so I think I will do something very visual, by having different segments that represent the songs that I would play with music videos, lyric videos and/or visuals, as opposed to just a continuous House DJ set at a club with me behind the turntables. Everyone wants to come and see the legend for the legend itself, and If anyone wants to go see a DJ, they would actually go to a club instead of staying behind a computer screen.
Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?
Netanya: At the moment, I am still producing music with my laptop computer and I always use my earphones to make sure I have enough limiter or whatever effect on my songs, and I use my Beats pill at least once for every song I work on, to listen to what it would sound like through the speakers. When I started out, I would sit on a desk, and sometimes work on the floor. Since the television appearance, I moved onto what is now my third laptop which I have used since the start of this year, and moved into my new bedroom in November 2018, where there’s a bit less room, but I now have a real desk and chair to work comfortably. In 2020, saved up and I bought a license for FL Studio, after almost eight years of using a demo version like a poor person. I think in the future, I will probably focus more on the visuals, so maybe a green screen and an auto dolly for my phone to film music videos I reckon and go from there. In my upcoming album, I used instruments from both Ableton Live and FL Studio to produce one of my fifteen songs from my next album, which is coming soon in October 2021.
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?
Netanya: The internet has always been good to me and helpful in ways in which primary-school-me could never imagine. In January 2015, my first record label reached out to me on the internet to release music on ITunes and other online streaming and download shops. It taught me how to really release music effectively by them constantly delaying my release dates and randomly ghosting me near the end of the year. I had to constantly chase them up every day and week for a release date, and they would make me wait for months and then give me one week’s short notice. After releasing music on bandcamp, I finally found a distributor to put my music in many of the same stores Smash Up Records did, and have been releasing music independently since early 2017, starting with a dubstep-like vocal version of “Lights in Motion” featuring Christina Marie Magenta.
Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?
Netanya: I would love to perform with Slayyyter. I think she is a fabulous artist, and has lots of amazing songs, including Self Destruct, Mine and Clouds. I have been listening to That Kid since I heard about an iconic former bedroom producer who was doxed that I won’t be naming out of respect for privacy. Chase Icon has recently ventured into music and she would be so cool to tour with. Poppy’s very industrialised music is a joyride. If Tom Jay Williams is still performing these days, I would love to be one of the opening acts for him. That would be an honour. WNDR has really cool music I first heard on a commercial for BooHoo fashion. Meant to Be is an underrated bop. Even Lady Gaga and Cascada too would be a great honour.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?
Netanya: When I released my first album called Crave You, I felt like I’ve had enough of producing music and had a bit of writers’ block for a couple weeks, until suddenly I had an immaculate conception when I produced a couple prototypes of what is now “Cloud 9” and “King of My Castle”. Resultingly, I produced twenty songs and am continuing to produce songs, for a new upcoming album called With You. With You will have fifteen songs from my studio sessions including the blissful coldwave song “Cloud 9” which was released in April 23 2021, and sentimental dance-pop songs “King of My Castle” and “The Ivory Tower”, coming soon in July and October of this year in that order, all with original lyrics and production. Soon after, my second album will be released in October, which will also feature a cover of Pyromania by Cascada. The songs in my next album will feature vocals from at least one major artist.
Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?
Netanya: I think I would be living a very sad life if I weren’t making music. There’s something about my music that really makes me happy, and its that when I make music, I expect that it will sound good to the ears and be enjoyable, so when I listen to it, I feel good knowing it has a lot of potential. When I was on a hiatus, I considered a venture into the film and CGI and VFX industry as well as a high school teaching career. I also made a little bit of money promoting other brands on Instagram. I wouldn’t know exactly what I’d be doing, but there’s always a way to make money. Maybe another clothing brand, but something more amazing than just a photo on a plain T-shirt.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in the next year or so?
Netanya: Next year, all my fans should look forward to lots of music videos, especially for the songs “Crave You” and “Learning to be Me”, as well as other upcoming songs including “Cloud 9”, “King of My Castle”, “The Ivory Tower”, “Bastille”, “Black Money”, and “Pyromania”. I am planning to work on even a third album which will have a much more dark and industrialised sound than the previous two.
Exposed Vocals: Any Shout-outs?
Netanya: Special thanks to my mom, Aunty Elenor and my all my teachers including Mrs Armstrong, Mrs Pedler and Mrs Kernich for believing in me. Special thanks to Santina for lending her vocals on God of Israel, she is super talented and would love to work with her again one day. Special thanks to RoundRobin for working with me on Lemme Go, and helping to blow it up into something viral. Also special thanks to Lady Gaga, Cascada and Deadmau5 for their music had helped me get through tough times. You all are an inspiration. Thank you to high school for being absolute hell to deal with and to all the kids who constantly ignored me and my presence unless they wanted to start drama or bully me, now I don’t have to worry about hundreds of people tearing down my self-esteem and confidence for whatever reason they could come up with for seven hours per day and five days per week, because I’m not seeing these people anymore.
