The kingdom’s growing lo-fi and nujazz hip-hop scene has a fascinating new entry with the release of The Empty Quarter EP – a narrative album inspired by anime, movies and manga.
Bahraini producer Abdulla Husain Alhayki, better known as DUST, dropped his fourth EP last Saturday and is set to host an album listening session and discussion tonight at Teres in Block 338 at 7pm.
“The entire EP is structured precisely like a sequential anime storyline – the musical progression charts a clear hero’s journey,” the 34-year-old musician from Muharraq told GulfWeekly.
“I started recording the project during a really busy time while I was preparing for multiple shows with my band (DMT Experience) around September last year.
“The whole EP was done in one recording session with the intention of it being a ‘beat tape’ for another artist to collaborate with.”
The nine-track album takes listeners on a three-act journey, starting with ‘The Summoning and Departure’ – where our hero gets his quest and rides out to save the princess.
“One of the main influences for the album is MF DOOM’s album Mm..Food – a conceptual album which had many anime, movie and manga cartoon samples.
“I grew up watching Arabic manga, anime and cartoons, so it was relevant to the ideas I had for the project.”
In the second act ‘The Search and The Village’, we learned about the
princess before the warrior arrives at a settlement seeking clues to her
disappearance, amidst rising climactic tensions.
The final act ‘The
Confrontation and The Vault’ centres on the fight between good and evil
amidst the shifting sands, as the hero takes on the villain, before
ending on a reflective open-ended note.
Originally conceived by DUST
as a beat tape with another artist in mind, the project took an
unexpected turn when fate intervened in the form of Oxnard,
California-based rapper and singer Dudley Perkins, also known as
Declaime.
“By pure coincidence, the day after things didn’t align
with the original artist, and Declaime sent me a message via Instagram
out of nowhere!” DUST added.
“We had never spoken before that and I’ve been a big fan of his work for years, so it kind of felt like a divine intervention.
“Our
initial conversation was mainly about hip-hop culture, graffiti and
breaking or break dancing, and I told him that I make music too.
“When
he listened to my previous project Monsoon, he really liked my sense of
musical direction and he was curious about what I was working on.
“I
shared a brief concept about the new project and the beat tape which
initially had one track with my vocals and the rest were beats only.
“After
listening to it, he told me it touched him and some tracks really spoke
to him deeply, so he started writing what later became the seventh
track The Drumz.
“He chose Divine Melanin as his second feature and the concept of the project came to life after that.”
Accompanying
the album and its second track is a short film Ace of Spades, directed
by Paradox Films’ Yousif Al Sahhaf, who was quick to clarify that it’s
not ‘just a music video’.
“We wanted to bring back the concept of
having a short film for musicians to accompany their work, not just a
music video,” Yousif added.
“If you look back at Michael Jackson, it
was never a ‘music video’ but rather a narrative short film with the
music video incorporated seamlessly.”
Not one to let the dust settle,
DUST is already working on his next album – a jazzy journey titled A
Penny For Your Thought In An Hourglass of Time, which will be released
over summer and another titled CHNGS VOL.2 coming in October.
For more details, follow @dustizm on Instagram.
