Rapper, sound engineer, music producer and visual artist Amro Zidan is a multidisciplinary independent artist based in Alexandria who expresses the darker side of life - but not without expressing innovative ways to keep his tracks positively dance-inducing. If you’ve ever tapped your foot to ‘Lamooni Elli Gharo’ featuring Segma2022, or his Shaaby-infused track ‘Ana Msh Shayfko’, which has garnered over 25k views on YouTube, then you’re familiar with the sonic dissonance that results in every pessimist’s guilty pleasure.
Today we’re turning the spotlight onto his 2022 EP ‘El Tashwesh Tafah’ where he takes a more experimental approach to the electronic Hip-Hop album.
The EP consists of three tracks which are meant to convey feelings of anxiety, depression, pessimism and alienation.
In ‘El Tashwesh Tafah’, we see the artist strip down from usual commercial sounds and delve into more industrial ones, employing different reverberating synths, distorted vocals, compound sequencers and different folk rhythms. The music production merges with the artist’s singing in an intricate yet subtle manner, giving the vocals a spoken-word vibe.
Pessimism in this album is glorified as a type of defense mechanism against pain, disappointment and failure, with lyrics like “Motasha2em Bass Le Hadaf” and “El-Tasha2om Beysod El Sadma” which translate to “Pessimist but for a reason” and “Pessimism blocks the shock” respectively.
Another theme and recurring lyric in the album is “Bar2os 3ala El-Nar” meaning “Dancing on fire” which is presented as a philosophy to deal with the disturbances of life, to watch the world burn around you yet still keep going.
“The elements in the album are used to convey all the thoughts I had at the time. A time which came after a period of isolation and silence to witness the eruption of the distortion in my mind,” Zidan tells SceneNoise.
Written, produced, mixed & mastered and performed by Amro Zidan, ‘El Tashwesh Tafah’ is an explicit representation of the artist’s multi-faceted skillset.
The EP also comes with chaotic visualizers produced by the artist himself for listeners’ dark contents.
