OTR’s debut album, Lost At Midnight (Astralwerks), is now available at all DSPs. Get it HERE. Ryan Chadwick – the 26-year old aerospace engineer-turned-producer behind OTR – shared a series of singles in the lead-up to the album’s release, including “Heart” feat. Shallou, which topped the Sirius XM Chill chart and has amassed nearly 12 million cumulative streams, “Midnight Sun” (with Ukiyo), which was heard in the opening scene of the Netflix global hit film To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, “Moon” (feat. Vancouver Sleep Clinic), “Stay” (with WYNNE), and “Drive” (with Panama).
Today, OTR released the lyric video for his new single, “Broken” (with Au/Ra). The clip finds OTR alone yet finding beauty in solitude and his surroundings. View HERE. This Song Is Sick hailed “Broken” as “a euphoric yet melancholic experience” and praised its “bright, shimmering sound.” Au/Ra, who was raised on the Caribbean island of Antigua, is known for her A-class pop songs that explore the dark nature of humanity with huge pop hooks. Her breakout hit, “Panic Room,” went on to be remixed by underground duo Camelphat and now sits at 40 million streams.
Tickets are now on sale HERE for OTR’s North American summer tour – his first headline outing. The Lost At Midnight Tour will include shows at Vinyl in Atlanta (June 27), Rough Trade in New York City (July 18) and The Echo in Los Angeles (July 24). See below for full itinerary.
Lost At Midnight offers a mesmerizing introduction to OTR’s emotionally potent electronic-pop. The album abounds in elegantly sculpted beats and unearthly synth tones, along with poignant piano melodies that cut right to the heart, demonstrating his natural sophistication as an arranger and composer. Lost At Midnight spotlights the singular sonic identity OTR first discovered during a life-changing stint in Japan.
At the age of 22, while studying aerospace engineering in grad school, the Ohio native landed a last-minute internship in the remote Japanese town of Kurashiki. Living alone and faced with a major language barrier, the novice musician bought a MIDI keyboard and started creating his own compositions, tapping into the elementary skills he’d gained by playing on a dusty old piano back in his college dorm. As he taught himself production, Chadwick began bringing his keyboard along while riding the bullet train all over Japan, taking in his beautifully strange surroundings and infusing those feelings of isolation and wonder into his music.
After returning home in 2015, Chadwick adopted the moniker OTR and released a series of singles – a self-driven effort that eventually landed him a deal with Astralwerks, then led to the making of Lost At Midnight. Now based in Atlanta, he hopes that listeners end up projecting their own experience onto what he regards as a nostalgia-inducing album.
“Every piece is like a snapshot of how I felt at the time that I wrote it,” says Chadwick. “So I hope that when people hear it, it’ll bring them back to a specific time in their own lives, and maybe help them to reflect on what it means to them.”
OTR – Lost At Midnight Headline Tour
June 26 – Chicago, IL – Beat Kitchen
June 27 – Atlanta, GA – Vinyl
July 9 – Boston, MA – Sonias
July 10 – Montreal, QC – Le Ritz
July 11 – Toronto, ON – Velvet Underground
July 17 – Washington, DC – U Street
July 18 – New York, NY – Rough Trade
July 23 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
July 24 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo
July 25 – San Diego, CA – Bang Bang
July 30 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
July 31 – Seattle, WA – Barboza
August 1 – Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret