Egyptian DJ 5amaseen Drops Gritty DnB EP ‘Ram​ā​d (Cinders)’

Belgium-based Egyptian DJ and producer 5amaseen explores the non-linear progression of the past on his new project ‘Ram​ā​d (Cinders)’, a collection of three club-ready tracks drawing influences from DnB and Jungle.

Mixed by 5amaseen himself and mastered by Fausto Mercier, the EP is released under Sawna Records. According to 5amaseen, it is “an ode to times departed; an internal and external quest where every note, sound and silence is a spectre. It is also an attempt to communicate with the past, but any attempt is always met with interference and the confines of historicity.”

On the title track, the electronic producer introduces an interesting take on dark DnB, weaving insistent gritty noise textures and glitches with stabby synths and fractured breakbeats. The track features somewhat of a harsh French hymn, alluding to an era that keeps making a comeback in different forms, each time appearing as a more violent apparition.

Meanwhile, ‘Break Runner’ has a more foreboding feel, opening with an ominous beat that slowly builds up to a momentum intersected with skewed synths and sporadic drum patterns that resemble an accelerated heartbeat. This track’s musical sensibility serves as an eulogy to a sound that once was futuristic, yet now, it is only a trace of a time when the imagination could only be tamed by the limits of technology. It is not born on the seeds of nostalgia, but rather inspiration.

On the record’s outro, ‘Tashweesh’, 5amaseen mixes in dozens of frequencies together producing a static noise that resembles a broken radio. This static intersecting the relentless beat dominating the track seemingly serves as a reflection of how one’s attempts to progress become futile due to their colonised mind and constant habit of looking back.

At minute three on the track, the beat slows down to almost near silence - one that’s engulfed by dark atmospheric sound - that then experiences a form of resurrection into a cacophony of pounding kicks and percussive patterns. “The future is not dead, it is only the colonised mind that falls prey to these perils of an imaginary ‘end of history’,” 5amaseen wrote on Bandcamp. “And, the only way to change that is by continuing to push forward.”