Ashton Nyte is a South African-born singer, songwriter, producer and author, best known as the frontman of the alternative rock band The Awakening. Nyte has released eight solo albums and two books, in addition to twelve albums as The Awakening, as well as several other projects and collaborations. He is considered to be a pioneer of alternative music in South Africa, and has been described as "something of a musical genius" for his typical method of composing, playing and recording each instrument himself on most of his releases. Nyte is widely known in South Africa for his chart-topping cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence", "Maree" and several other top singles. His signature style combines baritone vocals, garnering comparisons to David Bowie and Johnny Cash, with instrumentation that ranges from lyric-driven acoustic folk, to alternative rock, to post-punk and electronic music, as well as a penchant for the theatrical. Nyte has been based in the US since 2009.
Early life Born in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, Nyte relocated frequently throughout his childhood until settling in Johannesburg as a teenager. Born into an Afrikaans and English-speaking family, he grew up in a bilingual environment and composed works in both languages. Nyte completed his degree as an architect while singing in his first band, Martyr's Image and forming The Awakening in 1995.
Career
1990s Nyte rose to prominence in South Africa at the end of the 1990s as the frontman, writer, and producer for The Awakening. His first album, Risen featured the band's first hit single, a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence" which brought national media attention along with club and radio rotation. The cover reached number one on South Africa's national radio. Following the success of Risen, Nyte began to write The Awakening's second album entitled Request which embraced the electronic and industrial sounds of 1980s new romantic movement. These influences were openly acknowledged by Nyte, who describes his musical tastes as "very broad" and names among his personal heroes the likes of David Bowie and Kate Bush and Elvis Presley. The single Maree from Request went to No. 1 on the SA rock charts.
The Awakening's first music video was filmed for the single "Rain" by director Katinka Harrod. The video was filmed in the middle of winter which posed a unique challenge for Nyte who performed under icy water during filming, was painted in body paint, and hosed clean for other scenes. The video brought more public exposure for the band and was aired on several music shows throughout Africa. In August 1998, The Awakening headlined the second stage at South Africa's largest music festival, Oppikoppi.
In November 1998 Nyte launched his own record label, Intervention Arts and began to produce and promote other South African artists in addition to handling all management and distribution of The Awakening. A third album, Ethereal Menace, was released in 1999. The album utilized elements of industrial music, later dubbed as "dark future rock" by Nyte. The album achieved an enthusiastic reception: Another music video was produced for the single "The March" by South African Music Awards winning director Eban Olivier. The video for "The March" was placed in rotation on MTV Europe. That year The Awakening headlined the Oppikoppi music festival to over 30,000 people.
2000s After the release of the third Awakening album, Nyte released his first solo album, The Slender Nudes, in early 2000. Heralded as a "glamorous departure" from The Awakening's harder rock stylings, The Slender Nudes''' style was described as "Ziggy-era glam rock with '80s-induced synthpop." The album ranked 14th of the top 30 albums for 2000 in South Africa, and featured Nyte's experimentation with alter-egos such as the "Electric Man" and "Glam Vamp." Two videos were produced for the album, "Glam Vamp Baby" (included on the album's disc) and "Need for Air" both of which were aired throughout South African television. The single "Glam Vamp Baby" was featured as a track on Universal Records/Sheer Music's Indie Essentials compilation.
The South African version of The Slender Nudes featured a cover photo of Nyte kneeling next to a pale nude woman; when the album was released in the US, distributors feared that the artwork would prove objectionable to the American market. An alternative cover was proposed, and copies sold in the US feature an image of Nyte as the Glam Vamp, the artist's androgynous, sometimes cross-dressed alter-ego portrayed in the same-titled video, as a result. Ashton Nyte once again performed as a headliner at the Oppikoppi Music Festival.
Complementary to the glamorous and decadent imagery of The Slender Nudes, Nyte released The Awakening's fourth album, The Fourth Seal of Zeen in September 2000. The album displays a range of sounds between darkwave and classic gothic rock. The song "The Dark Romantics" became a club dance floor anthem throughout the world and remains one of the band's most beloved singles. In May 2001, Nyte created his first theatre piece, The Slender Nudes Cabaret, which was performed at Die Teaterhuisie Theatre in Pretoria, South Africa. He also performed a headline slot at the first Pink Loerie Mardi Gras and Arts Festival in Knysna, South Africa. In December 2001, The Awakening released a follow-up to Zeen – an EP called The Fountain which featured songs closely linked in style and atmosphere. The eponymous single "The Fountain" went to number four on the South African rock charts, and charted in the top 10 for nine weeks, with another single "Martyr" topping the charts.
True to Cosmopolitan Magazine's description of Nyte as "Johannesburg's Bowie" Nyte chose to abandon the hedonistic persona of the Glam Vamp for his next solo album, Dirt Sense released in 2002. The album spent 17 weeks in South Africa's charts topping out at number two. Described as "stripped down, minimalist, under-produced, almost dirty", and "a powerful album with strong tunes and hard-hitting lyrics" the album contains some of the artist's "most personal" songs. A video was produced for the single "Window" and aired throughout South African music television. In May 2002, Nyte was the male lead in the play "My Bloody Valentine" which premiered at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa.
In June 2002 The Awakening recorded its "most aggressive, guitar-driven album to date," entitled Roadside Heretics. Thematically, Roadside Heretics deals with a discriminated-against and isolated people, a subject well known to South Africa. According to Nyte, Roadside Heretics marked a new era for The Awakening, as the band focused on capturing their trademark live performance intensity within the album's sound. In the same year, a compilation album entitled Sacrificial Etchings was released, featuring singles from 1997 to 2002 and a few previously unreleased songs including the hit single "Vampyre Girl." The album Sacrificial Etchings ranked as the 18th top album of 2003 in South Africa.
In early 2003, Nyte released his third solo album, Sinister Swing. Described as "organic electronic / experimental" music, the album received critical acclaim for the hybrid of pre-1980s electro and the "icy echoes of isolation...and just a hint of swing." Nyte later wrote and starred in an adaptation of Sinister Swing with the University of Pretoria's theatre department as a cabaret piece. Later that year Nyte founded The Red Room, which went on to become one of South Africa's most established and longest-running alternative music dance clubs.
A year later Nyte began to work on The Awakening's Darker Than Silence, with lyrical themes about devastation and medication. Songs such as "One More Crucifixion", "Angelyn", and "The Needle and The Gun" achieved a positive reception worldwide and notable success on South African and German charts, where it was released on an independent German music label. The success brought the band to tour the United States for the first time in 2004.
In July 2005, Nyte released his fourth solo album entitled Headspace with his solo band Ashton Nyte and The Accused representing the live line-up of five musicians. Music videos for the singles "My Little Rock 'n Roll" and "Murder Me" were aired throughout South Africa. Ashton Nyte and The Accused performed at The Woodstock Festival (South Africa) before embarking on a national tour in December 2005.
In 2006 The Awakening signed a management deal with German-based MCM Music, and later signed a record deal with German label Massacre Records. The Awakening then released its eighth studio album entitled Razor Burn. With the European distribution and marketing of Massacre Records, the album received more notice than the band's previous albums as well as positive reviews from the alternative music press, and a second US tour followed in 2007 along with a headline appearance at RAMfest, South Africa's largest alternative music festival. The following year the band returned for a third tour of the US, this time with one of its first 2008 US shows as a headliner of HM Magazine's stage at Cornerstone Festival 2008.
2010–2019 In late 2009, Nyte departed completely from his rock persona and completed his fifth solo album, The Valley, described on PRI's The World as "giving South African music a new spin." Other reviews describe the album as "a collection of songs caressed with Americana styling as uniquely as only a non-American could" and "an ingeniously crafted pictorial." The Valley was released in the United States in June 2010 accompanied by a multi-date tour and over 40 Triple-A format radio stations giving it airplay. Two of the album's songs became semi-finalists in the International Songwriting Competition the same year. Nyte was invited to the internationally acclaimed radio show Border Crossings, where he performed select songs from The Valley live on air to more than 125 million listeners.
Following the US success of The Valley, in 2012 Nyte announced that he was planning to release his next album written entirely in Afrikaans, entitled Moederland which he referred to as "an album that pays homage to my Afrikaans heritage and the country that has shaped me." The album's lead single entitled Kan Ons Weer Begin went to No. 1 on major Afrikaans stations throughout South Africa and remained in the top ten for several weeks. The album features a duet with Afrikaans music icon Karin Hougaard entitled "Lukas" which also went to No. 1. Ashton later joined Karin on stage to sing "Lukas" at her Atterbury Theatre performance on 2 March 2014. In December 2014 Moederland was named one of the top ten best Afrikaans albums of the year by Netwerk24, South Africa's largest Afrikaans media outlet.
2014 also saw the release of Anthology XV, a new greatest hits compilation for The Awakening featuring two new singles "Fault" and "Beneath Your Feet" in addition to remastered versions of selected hits from the band's lengthy career. A music video was released for "Fault" in late 2013 to promote the new tracks and updated sound.