ADV Releases New Single ‘Sad & Stoned’ + Announces Release Party
After relocating from Tāmaki Makaurau to Naarm, genre-fluid artist ADV returns with Sad & Stoned – a seductive and sardonic reflection on the modern rituals of attention and affection. Built on heavy bass, industrial percussion, and a humid sense of melancholy, the track turns emotional ghosting into performance art, desire withheld, replayed, commodified.
If his 2024 debut visual album Trust Issues explored love fraying at the edges, Sad & Stoned looks at what happens when the threads snap entirely. It’s pop filtered through heartbreak in an economy of scarcity, where longing itself becomes the product. Beneath the tongue-in-cheek humour lies a deeper commentary on how we trade presence, flirtation, and validation in an age of infinite scroll.
ADV doesn’t believe in genre. For him, it’s all about vibes — and how those vibes turn into moments. Raised between Cape Town and Tāmaki Makaurau, his music lives in the in-between: the airport lounge, the cigarette break, the 3am voice note he almost didn’t send. Sad & Stoned continues that liminal lineage, merging the indie impulse of Royel Otis with the smoky undertow of Massive Attack – part architectural dream sequence, part sweaty basement, part late-night confession.
Now rebuilding his sonic architecture in Naarm, ADV invites listeners into a sound-world made for chronic overthinkers who dance anyway. Sad & Stoned isn’t just a breakup track – it’s a mirror to the way we feel, perform, and recycle desire in real time, or as ADV puts it “It’s every Hinge date all at once, and you’re screaming these lyrics into the void on the drive home, to stop you from crying.”
ADV will be returning to Tāmaki Makaurau to celebrate the release of Sad & Stoned on 30 October at Whammy Bar, with support from spdrtwnbby and Alex Beattie. Tickets available from Under The Radar.
