Nikola Pavlović
Belgrade
- By day, Protaanta is a Bachelor of Audiovisual Arts and a video editor by trade. But by night - Protaanta is a multidisciplinary multimedia artist. I can do all sorts of creative stuff - owing to my wild imagination due to my raging untreated ADHD and Autism combo - so yeah, add AuDHD and proud to my resume)... I can dance, I can sing, I can write anything and write it goode o yeea - I have basic theater and film actor training, I do comedy stuff and funny voices, I love making music videos and short videos, I also love creating video-art, I plan to make an animated adult tv show one day - and even create a video game for it.
All of my video related artistic work has always been my second biggest enjoyment - my first love will forever be music. There's probably more stuff I forgot, like I know how to draw and sculpt a bit, and I've also spent a considerable amount of time learning DJing and making mashups. My natural curiosity has also made it easy for me to learn and incorporate all sorts of sciences into my work - more info about that below in the "Armchair" section ! O yeah bby !!
So yes - I might be all of the above - but on top of it all Protaanta is just another average human bean - but an all-around cool guy-bean with only minimal brain damage !
- Now, I can’t believe I have to disclose this already (because were accelerating towards a cyberpunk-like-idiocratic-cleptocracy) - yes, I’m using various AI tools in my work. Ok, ok - hold on to your pitchforks, and listen to me very carefully cause the talk we need to have now - it's giving me agita just thinkin' bout' it, yeesh... I’m very well aware of the ongoing AI Slopocalypse, and while I’ve been waiting for these technologies basically my whole life, now that I finally have them and can finish a lot of my barely salvaged and unfinished work, it feels like a monkey’s paw wish—again, it comes at a price… of feeling mega icky.
You can find my full statement on the matter on my only album that contains actual AI here on SoundCloud (Need For Speed 10ft Underground) — https://soundcloud.com/protaanta/sets/need-for-speed-10ft
— where I describe my stance on the matter in more detail.
Again, I will only use AI to enhance and improve my already existing song projects, 99 percent of AI slop music clogging Soundcloud and the rest of the internet is just done by basic prompting and sharing online - no covers, no editing, no vision, no artistic integrity and so on... For example - I'm adding more instruments and changing existing sound while still using my own original notation and ideas and so on. I haven't even tried just using prompts in Suno - the thought itself is mega sleazy and uncreative for me.
So yeah—for now, you’ll have to take my word for it. I’ve been doing all kinds of art projects for my own soul, and I’m trying to find ways to actually use AI like a tool or an instrument—not as an insta-slop generator. I’m genuinely trying to push the medium forward by researching how to use AI to improve on everything I’ve done and learned so far.
All the tracks on the album Kakaphoney, for example, were made only with Fruity Loops from around 2006 to 2019. The same goes for my mashups and DJ mixes—100 percent AI-free.
And don’t worry, friends—like the Need For Speed album, all future AI music projects like it will be self-contained and clearly tagged as AI. This way it should be pretty clear which of my tracks are made by hand - and which one have been touched by the AI devil... Phew... I feel lighter and less icky now !
- Explore more of my visual work (especially my short films and music videos!!) on my YouTube, and also you can find various bonus content on my Instagram :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbJc8y0NnH6bAl7PX0DD2Wg
https://www.instagram.com/protaanta/
And if you are here to explore how exactly Protaanta puts the "Audio" in audiovisual - first of all thank you and welcome ! Now, below you will find quite a lot of readin' material - but rest assured I'm trying my best to explain my "Fire Rizz & Drip" with brevity :
- AuDHD and proud. Executive dysfunction ? Never heard of her.
- Punished perfectionist.
- Armchair : [scientist, philosopher, sceptic, humanist, optimist, futurist, soothsayer (for shits and giggles) and psychiatrist].
- For a long time I ONLY experienced enjoyment whilst creating. Took me a lot of work and blood and sweat to learn to be a one man band and also finish stuff and share it. For the longest time, I mostly used Fruity Loops 9, but the moment I would realize I'm nearing the finalization and also mastering of my tracks (and exporting and... Ugh, lord give me strength - sharing and promoting) - my AuDHD brain would take over my body and command me to start a new creative audio project... So this happened for around 200 of my tracks... Never shared any of these and then my PC died and I formatted the disc by accident (cuz imma dumdum duuh). Now, left only with around 200 unmastered raw exports, I had to take a couple of years hiatus in order not to implode from cringe and autistic rrrage...
Well, that was until I started learning Djing with Traktor around 2019, and because of a near-death experience where I almost drowned, I had a mini breakdown and just flipped my extrovert-introvert switch. In translation - a year before the Coronavirus pandemic, I was already isolating myself to clean my act up and learn DJ-ing and to find a way to finish not only all of my songs - but a myriad of visual art and projects as well !! And then I found out the magic of mashing stuff together and realized that I can maybe rescue my babies this way and also create some sick trackzzz and mashups along the way !
So, here we are many years later... My plan is still to slowly drip-feed various tracks here on Soundcloud (for free and under the CC license) - until I get a respectable amount of followers - then I might think about just creating a Bandcamp page and sharing everything else and being done with these 200 ghosts from my past !!!
Now here's some other interesting info someone interested in how I (Nikola) co-exist with Protaanta in my head, and how my personal philosophy influences my creative choices :
- Everything shared will be free for download and under the creative commons license. I’ve always created music out of love for the process and love for music itself. That’s why my focus has never been on perfectly polished, masterfully engineered tracks. What has always mattered most to me is reaching the self-defined goals I set and creating music with distinct, emotion-driven vibes.
- As for my DJ mixes, you can expect Ravey hard-dance mixes with an emphasis on genre mixing, achieving mashup-like qualities by cramming in as much songs as possible and using effects to punctuate certain moments or transitions. This is my mainline "0Chill series", a series of mixes that include : "AuDHDj", "Alien Rave", "Exorcist Zumba" and "Sex & Drugs & Riots & Raves" types of mixes, each subset of "0Chill" trying to accomplish my DJ mission statement and artistic goals in various ways...
- Protaanta is also about fighting for world peace - while many say I have 0 Chill - I say the world needs to chill the fuck down right now, we need more horizontal and not vertical systems of control, we need to make wars that create so much unnecessary emotional, genetic and environmental damage, we all need to learn to stop making our political beliefs a part of our personality - we need dialogue and cooperation, not competition and screaming into each other about which team has the prettier flag and moto !!! We also need more mental health awareness and so on and so on... My hope is that by using music and the clubbing scene as a tool for therapeutic healing on the dance floor, I can somehow improve the world and these issues.
- Allow me to be frank (and kinda cringe, sorry) for a moment... My dream goal is to be a famous DJ that travels around the world to play futuristic next-level sets (especially my Alien Rave Dj mixes!) so that I can at least somewhat assist in people's healing by making them dance uncontrollably. When talking about the underground clubbing scene, those who know - just know the feeling of a crowd of very different people all sharing a moment in unison. We lost that tribal moment, where the whole shaman leads a tribe in song and dance around the fire - today we have clubbing, and considering we live in a Clown World, for many this activity is the closest they can get to therapy, to exercise, to a way to release tension from their muscles (tension that accumulates over the years and just progressively worsens overall health) - so think of me as an alien dj who is trying to make you dance until you sweat all of your troubles away... Now what do I mean by all that ? Well, here some more fun facts about Protaanta that might help you to understand my position here : I'm a practitioner of my own custom deep breathing "meditation" technique, the end goal being purely medicinal and not spiritual - the reset of the breathing pattern and also stress relief via muscle relaxation. It's very similar to Wim Hoff (aka the Ice Man), but I kinda disagree on Wim here - I'm pretty sure you get more O2 into your lungs if you lie on your stomach in the prone position (the medical position used for elderly who have trouble breathing) - while mr. Hoff says to lie on your back... I'm also a Lucid Dream investigator (WILD gang rise up) and I ironically learned a lot about relaxation while practicing the WILD technique - I think that all of the world religions and spiritual leaders must agree on the best way to achieve relaxation and these WILDS helped me the most. All the tricks I learned while practicing wake induced lucid dreaming (everyone must try this technique at least once in my opinion) also helped me to get into practicing the tremor exercise therapy, or TRE. In my opinion, dancing and yoga and popular meditation techniques are fine - but if you really want to get yourself rid of stress read the book "Why Zebras Don't Have Ulcers" and then try some TRE or tremor exercises and also try the WILD lucid dream induction technique (and if you ever get a panic attack or feel weak or have a headache - lie on your stomach and do deep breathing techniques - make yourself yawn and reset that breathing and soon your headache will pass and sinuses will clear up!), and after some time of practicing your body will find ways to incorporate some of it's elements into dancing on the club danceflor itself!!!!), oh and I am also a retired Psychonaut... I got the message a long time ago so I hang up the phone. But if you are going to do shit that's bad for your health - always do it in the name of science and expanding the limits of your mind, never do it for the pleasure alone !!! Anyway... There's probably a lot more detail about me and Protaanta I could share - but for now this is how it all plays into my global Protaanta Mission Statement - and also how it all influences how I create my music (and especially how I DJ), so there you have it - don't hate on a playa muthafuckazzz !!! :PPP
Protaanta’s tracks
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