'Silk' & 'Lemon' / Moktar [Interview]
“Silk” and “Lemon” are the first offerings from Moktar’s forthcoming debut EP on Steel City Dance Discs—an explosion of nostalgia and spiritual freedom wrapped in the veil of Middle Eastern percussive beats.
When I first listened to Moktar’s “Silk” released on SCDD, I was reminded of a scene from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, created by Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amipour. Described as the “first Iranian vampire spaghetti Western”, in a state of pill-induced euphoria the protagonist Arash sucumbs to rejection when attempting to kiss his love. In a confused state of elation meets disappointment, he leaves.
While alike in their respective symbiosises between Eastern and Western influence, I was more struck by the similarity between the mood imbued within this film and the rich personal history Moktar exudes in his own tracks.
Listen to Silk below.
And like the ending of this scene from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the conclusion of “Silk” feels strangely bitter-sweet. Imagine my amazement when Moktar told me about the fictional narrative that unfolded in his head while producing the track.
“When I was making this track, I kept picturing this Middle Eastern girl wanting to go out to a house party… and she finally makes it, and gets really drunk for the first time and has the best time of her life … and then has this like reflective moment where suddenly she isn’t having the best time at the party anymore, everything is really overwhelming … she finally makes it home at 7 am , but her parents are waiting for her and she’s in lots of trouble”
If the beginning of “Silk” represents the excitement and anticipation of the start of a night out - where ordering that first drink parallels the first pounding kick drum that we hear, then the end represents the trip home. Imagine sitting in the Uber, windows down, sad to be leaving, but smiling ripe with the knowledge of friends new and old and memories to last a lifetime.
In “Silk” the ending is so vastly different from the beginning that, without the considerate effort Moktar has put into building the narrative, you would think they were two different songs. “I deliberately wanted to make a journey track” Moktar tells me, “I was trying to make it gradually shift without people feeling like it had changed… making the transition as smooth as possible did really take a long time [but] I kept trying and trying until it seemed to make sense”.
To use French Philosopher Henri Bergson’s words, “Silk” unfolds like “a succession of states each one of which announces what follows and contains what precedes”. The final moments contain musical elements like the shout and distinct percussion introduced in the beginning, but in this new context informed by warm pads and an emotive bass line, they evoke completely new feelings. As the song concludes driven by compelling bass licks, shimmering high percussion and Middle Eastern instrumentation, a sense of sentimentality arises within me, a testament to Moktar’s unique ability to craft such a powerful sense of nostalgia in the space of one song.
Like “Silk” which Moktar describes as representing how he feels today - “the luxury of being comfortable and the ability to move around freely, both physically and spiritually”, “Lemon” also bolsters the same sense of freedom in both meaning and composition.
My favourite moment in “Lemon” comes about three quarters of the way through, when Moktar includes a sample from a live Egyptian comedy performance from back in the 60s or 70s. “These shows were huge over in Egypt” Moktar explains, “everyone would go to them, and they were televised for the people who couldn’t make it. I wanted to include these elements I was familiar with growing up”.
“Silk represents how I feel today – the luxury of being comfortable and the ability to move around freely, both physically and spiritually”
Impressively “Lemon” contains over 20 layers of sound, each with a distinct textual property. Amazingly, Moktar actually confesses he has stripped back the song quite a lot from what the first demo sounded like. “Less is more”, Moktar says, “especially it seems in club music”.
Even now while he plays with the business of overlapping sounds, a sense of chaos is never reached, no easy feat when working with a concoction of marching bands and a panoply of Middle Eastern drum samples. With so many aromas and flavours to be devoured “Lemon” almost feels akin to walking through a food market, famished and ready to pounce.
With Moktar’s new EP release on the horizon and lockdown restriction due to ease, we are not far away from hearing Moktar play his own music in clubs. I will be there with bells on.
Stay up to date with Moktar on Soundcloud and Instagram.
Words by Jack Long (@patrick.di_henning)
Photos by Zsuzsanna Ihar Dominka (@zsuzs_)
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