Ahmad Refaat, AKA Riff, is part of a new wave of Egyptian producers that have emerged in recent year who are unsatisfied solely with the ‘prod by’ credits and are building a cult-following and solo career playing with the idiosyncratic tapestry of sounds which can be defined as Egyptian street music fused with a slow, eerie and impossibly groovy electronica. Much like predecessors who have paved the way in this wholly uncoined sound, meisters Molotof and ElWailli, Riff is also a classically trained musician who speaks passionately about the intricacies of his production process, making sense of the controlled chaos in his music.
Riff, who grew up in the El Khanka neighborhood of Qalyubia, Egypt, began to ambiently blip onto our radars in 2022 with a string of head-turning releases culminating in ‘Side Effects’, a 10-track lo-fi beat heavy album that oscillates between downtempo dance music and syrupy shaabi melodies.
Riff has since collaborated with Jordanian indie darlings Idreesi and Zaid Khaled on retro-pop ditty ‘Knymakan’ as well as ElWailli on ‘Saba7 El Manga’ and we imagine we’ll be seeing a lot more of Riff on title credits before the end of the year.
In this artist spotlight we dive deep into the creative process as Riff describes fishing for inspiration across continents whilst finding innate similarities in far-flung grooves that complement this new Egyptian sound.
