Montréal-based multi-instrumentalist Ash has made some waves in the past couple of years. Through his tantalizing productions sitting at the junction between his native Cairo and the city he now calls home, he’s had the opportunity to showcase his artistry in many mystic places, from the White Desert in Egypt through a collaboration with Cercle, to Bonjuk Bay in Turkey or even Mont-Royal in Montréal. Even though he’s been releasing singles since 2016, notably the breath-taking ‘Mosaïque’, for which the video was filmed at the Pyramids of Giza, 2022 will mark Ash’s first multi-track release with ‘About Life’. We caught up with him to chat about the meaning of the project, the ways in which he chases inspiration and how he collaborates with vocalists. Enjoy!
WWD: Hi Ash! Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! How’s it going? What have you been up to lately?
Thanks for having me! I’m doing well thanks. I just got back from a small tour around the Middle East a month ago and I’ve been really enjoying being back to Montreal and waking up every day to work on new music in the studio!
WWD: Your first ever EP, ‘About Life’, will come out on February 25th. Off the bat, what can you tell us about the release? What was the inspiration behind the project, the reason why you’ve decided to come up with something lengthier?
Super excited to finally release a full project. It was inspired from moments of my life and feelings I’ve had throughout my journey. Each track represents a period of my life where I’ve felt something major and life changing. I’ve always released singles, but for this, I felt like I wanted to share a story and something meaningful. That’s why I wanted to release a cohesive full body of work instead of singles this time.
WWD: Even if livestreams and live sessions have become prevalent since March 2020 with the impossibility of playing in front of an audience, you’ve been putting these out since way back in 2018, for your performance of ‘Keep Me’, in the Old-Port of Montréal. What makes such live sessions so interesting to you?
It’s important for me to show the world that live electronic music is not only DJ-based and that it could also include instruments. I used to love DJing, and I still do, but I also love playing and jamming with my instruments live. It has also played a major role in my career to publish these live sessions on Youtube since the pandemic and get closer (even if it’s only virtual) to my listeners, so that they can experience what they haven’t been able to since the beginning of the pandemic. I think it’s a nice experience to still be able to watch an artist perform his music live and improvise around it. It’s definitely my favourite part of my musical career.
WWD: That’s also what you did for the latest single of the EP, ‘Mourning’, which showcases you playing in the post-apocalyptic setting of abandoned highway 113 in Northern Québec. How did you find yourself shooting in that location, how does it fit the feel of the track?
The awesome filmmaker Phil Rouleau came up with this crazy location when I was telling him that I wanted to film the live video of Mourning in a dystopian setting, to showcase the sadness and anger that I felt while composing this track. When he showed me this place, I instantly loved it and said let’s do it. It was the perfect fit for the track and how I felt while composing it, and what it once represented in my life.
WWD: The music video for ‘Homes’ showcases you in both a present (Montréal) and past (Cairo) home. How has that background and transition to a completely different city guided you regarding the music you make? Have you found some surprising similarities between both cities?
It guided me a lot. I’ve lived some amazing things in Egypt growing up but moving here in Montreal for my studies and experiencing a completely new city with my friends and making new friends changed my life. It inspired me in my music. Your mood and daily life matter a lot in music creation, so being here in Montreal and experiencing new things every day affected the music I created. My first year of university was my most creative year up to then. I would spend hours working on new music, even when I was chilling at home with my friends, I would spend an hour or two just improvising live, playing some music and jamming over it while we were chilling. There are some similarities between the two cities, but it’s really the differences that make you learn, because you learn to live in different settings and that alone is inspiring.
WWD: The fourth track of the EP ‘Little Changes’ marks a collaboration with Jinadu, who has previously laid vocals on productions of artists such as Black Coffee, Cristoph and Jimpster to name a few. How did that collaboration come to fruition?
We were put in contact by his publisher Ultra. I sent him that demo I was working on and he immediately got inspired and wrote and recorded something over it. He sent me a demo 2 days later and I immediately fell in love with the melody and his voice on it. My favourite part is the second verse, the harmonies that Jinadu recorded are absolutely beautiful and dreamy. It’s something he’s really good at.
WWD: ‘Little Changes’ being the only track on the EP that features a full vocal performance, I want to ask you, how do you decide if you’re going to feature a vocalist? When you compose, do you know from the get-go that you’re going to have a singer on the production?
Most of the time when I’m composing, I often take an instrumental direction, where I really don’t give the track enough room to breathe and include vocals. In that case though, I knew from the get-go that I wanted to have vocals on it, so I composed it while having a voice in my head and structuring it in a way that would allow to have vocals.
WWD: Following-up that question about coming up with ideas, is there usually a specific workflow on how you come up with ideas? An anchor that gets the whole composition going?
I often start with piano chords, but I realized that it could be limiting because I always ended up playing the same chords. Now, it’s become very random. I love live looping and improvising, though to me it’s the most inspiring way of composing, because you don’t really have time to overthink what you’re creating. Overthinking is my biggest enemy, so when I’m playing a melody or some piano chords for example, I will always feel like it’s not good enough, but when I’m live looping or improvising, everything is so instant: you create a melody, you loop it, play a bass, loop, a rhythm, some percussions, loop, so you don’t have time to overthink and decide if it’s good enough, you just do it. And the good thing is that sometimes, you realize that it sounds awesome!
WWD: Thank you again for your time Ash! Aside from the release of ‘Little Changes’ and of the full ‘About Life’ EP, anything else exciting coming up in the next few months?
Thank you!! Yes, I’m working on a lot of new music and a completely new live performance and can’t wait to share all that with the world!
Listen to the full ‘About Life EP’: https://ash.ffm.to/aboutlifeep
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Picture credit: Tina Picard