Ahmed El-Motassem - This Song May be Monitored for Your Protection

Music Style:

Singer/Songwriter

City:

New York

 

State:

New York

 

Country:

USA

Band Description

Ahmed El-Motassem is a NYC-based singer-songwriter with a hypnotic multi-layered sound of vocals, keys and guitar that combines elements of new wave, alt-folk, avant-pop with a mid eastern twist. 

Additional Band Websites

Artist Biography

Ahmed El-Motassem moved to New York alone as a teenager, where shortly thereafter he began performing first as a drummer then as a writer/ vocalist.  Co performers included members of Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch, Hassan Hakmoun, Marc Ribot &  Elliott Sharp.

 Ahmed's first CD entitled 'An American Fantasy', a collaboration with virtuoso  cellist / composer Fred Lonberg-Holm, was released in 1996 by Tellus (Harvest Works Records). It received good reviews and made it to Wire Magazine's top 5 list. Performances that followed with his then band Legal Fiction, a Brechtian cabaret rock band featuring the talents of veteran musicians Michael Attias, Evan Gallagher & Igal Foni, resulted in recording a second CD entitled 'Legal Fiction', produced in part through a CBS affiliate studio grant. Legal Fiction was often compared to Current 93, Captain Beefheart & Frank Zappa, in fact before Ahmed had heard their music. Other work by Ahmed was featured on 'State of the Union', a Compilation CD, and 'Revenge of the Stuttering Child' (Tzadik records), both of which were produced by Elliott Sharp.

 Between 2004 and 2008 Ahmed wrote and produced a surreal sketch-comedy video entitled 'Soofy Lunacy', that was screened at local theatres and performance spaces in NYC & Brooklyn. He also produced and performed a one man act entitled 'The Great Embarrassment of Being'.

 Ahmed El-Motassem's upcoming release, 'This Song May be Monitored for Your Protection', is his second solo album following 'Eggman And Divine Inner Band', released in 2012. It is available on iTunes and elsewhere worldwide online beginning May 31st, 2014

Press Release

 

 

Ahmed El-Motassem is a New York City based artist. His upcoming release entitled: 'This  Song May be Monitored for Your Protection', is his second solo  album. It is comprised of hauntingly melodic and lyrically articulate songs that bring to mind a panorama of influences while maintaining a totally unique identity. Ahmed's vocal delivery is intense and low key, from emotionally charged Kafka-esque blues, as in the album's title song, to chanting over screaming guitars on tracks like 'Untouchable' and 'Happiness Machine' . The songs are composed and performed by Ahmed, accompanied on some tracks, 'The Only Big Man'/ 'Future Crimes'/ 'Happiness Machine' & 'You Long to be Real', by veteran keys/bass man Mounir Sobhi, whose quarter-tone tuned keys and synth-strings add a mid eastern twist to the sound that is both charming and disarming.

 'This Song..' is a concept album that tells a story of the Orwellian-Huxleyan world we've been warned about in fiction, only soon to become the official guide book for our current and possibly future global state of affairs. It is a darkly humorous expression of an at times confident at times lost soul who values human freedom as divine beauty.  As a live performer, Ahmed El-Motassem's act is both intense and electrifying. Fans of Lou Reed, Kate Bush, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg are likely to find something to love about this record.

 'This Song May be Monitored for Your Protection' is available on iTunes and elsewhere worldwide online beginning May 31st, 2014.