Ok, so I've been quiet of late, my one follower can vouch for that. But that's not a problem, I've been ok, I've been more than ok, I've been surfing around the Southern Hemisphere and moving to London. All good but irrelevant. Fact is I'm gona change my blog subject a bit, from "in-store music" to just music and things relating to music.
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| On a river!? I know, it's nuts. |
So a close friend of mine "David Al Hilali" or (
dauwd) in pretentious speak, has been a busy bee, finally finishing his engineering degree and working on some great tunes. It's the most wonderful, melodic and creative electronic music that I'm aware of at the moment. Before you ask, NO, I'm not up to speed on electronic music, the travelling and surfing doesn't bode well for new electronic music discovery. Apart from maybe if you were travelling and surfing in Germany where you can surf on a river in Munich and probably head straight to an awesome techno club. But I didn't do that, I went to Bali and listened to J.Lo featuring pitbull and some reggae.
As a young-un his much more talented brothers had already laid claim to the standard instruments most kids learn, so he spent his time in the Welsh country side (as all, half Welsh, half Iraqi children really should do) fiddling with electronic samples on fruity loops; a loop-based music programme .
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| Dave (centre) the bad apple. |
He was probably a lovely child, but by the time I met him at uni, Dave was a textbook bad apple (person) ready to rot his fellow orchard (friends). Together, we shared an amazingly fun few, hedonistic and apple-rotting years at Uni. His room was both a social and musical hub for a group of us. There was a Withnail & I sort of set up with our good friend/guy in the next room Wyn ;short for Wyndham, lovely name, lovely guy and Welsh for winding road. A constant smoky haze was the order of the day. A stream of creative and entertaining people were always passing through his room in the uni halls. Digeridoos, guitars, bongos, synths and microphones cluttered the tiny living space making for one of the most self indulgent muso times that anyone could possibly hope for.
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| On Bold St. Liverpool eating a creative subway. |
He never really did much more on fruity than a 16-bar loop (normally just 4) which he edited as he went along on the fly, making for very intriguing, creative progressions with beautiful build-ups and drop-ins, that suited both the post-chibuku clubnight sessions and the chilled weekday afternoons down to a T. His downfall, at the time at least, was always with structures. A lot of people could always see the potential in his music and a few of us sensible ones always urged him to do some actual tracks.
I personally think he found it either dull or difficult (probably a combo of the two) and didn't want to work on it, but with maturity and plenty of time on his hands, that focus on creating whole pieces has come through. What we are left with now on
soundcloud fills me with joy. Dauwd has just released his first single through
pictures music a track called "Could it be", my answer to that is yes, yes it could be and I think a great few years lie ahead for dauwd.
