Hania Shalaby is a young Egyptian music producer based in Cairo, where she grew up with an older brother who's been exposing her to house and the vast realm of electronic music since an early age. That was the start to her love for music, until she decided to give herself completely to it, realizing that "it was music that started making me at the age of 8.” 


Hania got into production only a year and a half ago, and has since been able to reach a level of quality that would usually be attained only after years of experience. Hania has signed her first track to Alexandrian label Xndria, and has been trying to make her way into the Egyptian underground scene, regularly posting her productions and her live sets online.

Like many artists, she draws her music from her environment, but disergarding nature as she doesn't really feel a connection with it. “I feel like nature isn't something I can connect to” she says, which might be the reason behind why her music sounds so dark and industrial. That said, in her spare time, she enjoys listening to a wide spectrum of more rootsy genres ranging from blues, jazz to psychedelic rock.


Hania doesn't like to be placed in boxes, constantly traveling through an evolving musical aesthetic. The artist stresses that “music is one of the only words with no clear definition but so much meaning” and this is reflected in her compositions which don’t follow a specific form and aren't affiliated with a particular genre. There is minimalistic approach which she follows, that makes her experimental sound unique, as she uses subtle changes and constant variations to her sound design. 

Hania’s latest single on Soundcloud, entitled “La Belle Noiseuse,” is the perfect anthem for a dark, smokey room. The track is an in your face industrial techno voyage transporting you to the netherworld, absent of any harmonic content as it mostly relies on industrial sounds to set a dark mood over a punchy kick and syncopated hi-hats. Three minutes through, the track starts to intensify as more sounds come in, sprinkled with a vocal loop that creates tension and takes your mind to a slightly chaotic state. Despite her young career, Hania Shalaby has revealed exciting promise. 


Follow Hania Shalaby on SoundCloud for more.