Category: Music

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A post shared by The British School of Kuwait (@bsk_kw) on Mar 28, 2020 at 4:14am PDT

Some British School of Kuwait band students got together virtually and performed the Kuwait National anthem online as part of a virtual ensemble. Check out the video above.

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A post shared by مركز الشيخ جابر الأحمد الثقافي (@jacc_kw) on Mar 25, 2020 at 11:11am PDT

The song above was created for JACC by a bunch of local musicians whom played their parts individually while in isolation in their homes.

Last week Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre organized a private music performance in Vienna called “The Sounds of Kuwait”. I saw bits and pieces of the performance on instagram but a friend just sent me the 10-minute long video above.

If I get my hands on a better quality video I’ll update this post with it, but for now this should do.

Local band Galaxy Juice have a new single out called “Dancing Night” which I currently have on repeat. Its their first single from their upcoming album “Galaxy Juice and the Forty Thieves” which will have more Arabic and Khaliji influenced beats and rhythms compared to their previous releases. They’re calling this genre Khalijiwave, check out the new track above or on SoundCloud.

Nick Ingman is an English arranger, composer and conductor who’s worked with a lot of musicians including Blur, Oasis, Madonna, Elton John and even worked with Radiohead on ‘OK Computer‘ which is one of my favorite albums ever. I hadn’t heard of Nick until a few days ago when a reader made me aware that his 1976 album ‘Terminator’ used the Kuwait Water Towers on the cover. Since it was released around the same time the water towers were completed, this might have been the first time the water towers were ever used in an artwork.

I found three copies of this record on eBay, I just bought one and so there are two more left if you’re interested in picking one up.

Thanks Adam

Lebanese composer and songwriter Rene Bendali has died at the age of 70 in the city of Tripoli, in northern Lebanon.

Bendali shot to fame in the late 1970s and 1980s for performing with his family as a band called The Bendali Family, who were behind songs such as the hit Do You Love Me. Source

I had posted the video “Do You Love Me?” on my blog back in 2007 because it had been shot in Kuwait in 1978. The song and video quickly went viral but I never really researched it more or anything until now. I just found more information about the song and video in the comments here and I copy-pasted it below:

First of all, this was shot using 16mm in front of the kourniche of the Kuwait-Sheraton in exactly August, 1978, but was only made to be featured as a ‘publicity’ shot on film for a Kuwaiti T.V. programme interview with the band (eleven sisters and brothers showcased in a double concert there at the Public Kuwaiti Theatre and a local cinema).

There are snippets and clippettes of this rare, one-hour long interview on YouTube with actress-turned-singer-turned-actress-again S’oaud Al-Abdallah doing the staccato interview with the cheery family who wore velvet uniforms. Kuwaitis were wealthy enough at that time to invite anyone they could ever think of (including at one time, the American disco band Boney-M who allegedly turned into Islam there), and so the Bendalis were in hot demand in that wealthy-beyond-words oil-tick nation.

So, basically the song ‘Do You Love Me?’ wasn’t made in that same year only because that video was shot in the same year: it was a very popular — and energetic — concert-opener ‘medley’, non-song of Roger Bendali’s composition using a 70’s pop hit (Can’t help think of the original artist for the Englizi intro, but it should be The Tremeloes? Someone with time and interest enough better check into that). Contrary to what many believe, René Bendali did not compose nor write the words for the song — He just sang it.

The first recorded version of this song was featured as a medley in their Sgt. Pepper-like T.V. musical show (I was lucky to have watched it when I was still a kid), called ‘Kamera 77’: the show had all the band’s members (rumoured to include even cousins at one point in the show, plus their mother and father). Kamera 77 was really a hit with almost all Arabic nascent ‘colour’ televisions at that time and it sold very well, to the extent that the Bandalis (or Bendalis/Bendaly Family, or in Lebanese-Arabic A’ailit Bandalee), became trully a house-hold name, and oddly enough… still are.

As for the song itself, this medley was put to record in 1976 and it featured only Roger, but then again it’s found its way into many albums and records released by the band (and, later by the Kuwaiti label Al-Naza’aer), and some three different concert versions like the one used here by DJ Dub Snakker still exist. René Bendali is cited here as the originator of the song in 1963, which is very offtrack and wrong. Well, back in 1963 most of the band’s members weren’t even born, for crying out loud.

I couldn’t find the full interview on YouTube but I did find this short clip. If anyone has the link to the full interview please share it below!

Below is also a video I found of their performance in Kuwait. The video says 1979 but I think it’s actually 1978.

For the first time in Kuwait, Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company will perform Giselle. Teatro alla Scala is the oldest and one of the most renowned and prestigious ballet companies in the world. The romantic and tragic ballet Giselle will be performed by the world’s top 100 dancers. The story of Giselle is about a young and beautiful peasant who falls in love with a peasant, Loys, only to find out that he is a duke and is engaged to someone else.

Book your tickets now: 7, 8, 9 January 2019
www.jacc-kw.com

This past weekend the MDL Beast electronic music festival took place in Saudi Arabia and I spent the whole weekend checking out people’s pictures and videos because I was curious to how it would go. Well, it looked insane. The first day over 130,000 people showed up and the stage looked epic!

The event was mixed, not segregated. Some girls had abayas on while others didn’t. I really don’t think any other place could have announced an event this big just 10 days before the event date and still manage to fill up. Things are moving so fast in Saudi and they’re not playing around, they’re doing everything big. I’m loving watching this transformation.

Make sure you check out the videos and stories on the MDL Beast instagram account, they had this great aerial shot of the venue in their story and it looked like a mini city. @mdlbeast

It’s so weird driving by these billboards on my way to work every morning advertising the electronic music festival in Saudi. I still can’t get over how ridiculous this is.

A year ago this would have sounded like a funny article on The Onion but this is actually real and happening. In 10 days Riyadh will be hosting the MDL Beast Festival, the largest electronic dance music festival in the region featuring over 70 DJs including Afrojack, Black Coffee, David Guetta, FISHER, J. Balvin, Martin Garrix, Steve Aoki, Sebastian Ingrosso, Tiësto and more. My favorite local band Galaxy Juice will also be part of the lineup.

Tickets start at KD73 for a 3-day pass and go up to KD923 for the VIB tickets (very important beast). For a full lineup of the performers as well as more information on the festival including tickets, visit mdlbeast.com.

Altersal, the lead singer of my favorite local band Galaxy Juice released a new EP last week along with a new music video which I’ve shared above. This is what he had to say about his latest release:

“You Never listen” is an ep that follows up to my debut album “Wifi Dreams” that was released in January last year 2018. It is a deep expression and reflection of some personal incidents and low points that I was experiencing with my relationships this year so I tried to transfer all my negative feeling and emotions and turning then into a beautiful bouquet of flowers that I can share with everyone’s who’s been through the same hardship in their personal lives and so that they can dance and sing their troubles away just as I did.

Unlike the music I play with my band Galaxy Juice which is a mixture of guitars and synthesizers. This project is more electronic-based and even though the guitar is my first instrument, I didn’t use any guitar or acoustic instruments so this is a full-on electronic synth-based project that I really enjoyed creating.

The project was mastered by a great engineer called Charlie Vella who produced music by one of my fav bands called Twin tribes, so he helped me take my production to a new level that I’m really happy with.

Here are the streaming links to “You Never Listen”: iTunes / Spotify

Last night was the cultural event for the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea and Kuwait. As part of the cultural filled evening, a variety of Korean traditional and modern music performances were meant to take place including a performance by the K-pop group D-Crunch. But just before they were meant to perform, the Ministry of Information ordered a halt to the event.

Meanwhile in Riyad the popular K-pop group BTS performed 2 weeks ago in a packed stadium…

Not only that but the hashtag #dcrunch_come_to_saudiarabia has also been trending with Saudis apologizing to D-Crunch for what happened to them in Kuwait. This is just too weird, how did Saudi Arabia become more liberal than Kuwait overnight?

A few years ago I posted about a vintage radio shop called “Moqtanayaty”. When I first wrote about them they were located in Kuwait City but since then they’ve moved their shop three times, first to blockat, then to Hawalli, and now they’re back in the city again but this time across the street from Mubarakiya in a building called Burj Al Hamam Tower.

The place sells old vintage radios, boomboxes, record players and even some cameras. Everything they sell works and if you have an old radio that needs repairing they even have a repair guy. If you’re interested in checking the place out, here is their location on [Google Maps] and you can find them on instagram @vintage_radio_

Also, here is the link to my previous post.

A few weeks ago I ordered a new turntable (Fluance RT81) from Amazon since the one I had was from the 60s and sounded great when playing old stuff, but not so great with newer music. Once the record player arrived I decided I’d look for a new pair of speakers that I would just use with it. I ended up passing by Xcite and narrowing down my options to the KEF LSX and The Sixes by Klipsch. Both sounded great, The Sixes looked retro which matched well with my player but they were also fairly big and bulky. The KEF were a perfect size, but they didn’t have the retro look of The Sixes which I liked. In the end, I decided not to buy either one because the KEF cost KD340 and the Klipsch KD240. I already had my B&O Beolit 15 speaker which I wasn’t using, so I decided to connect that to the turntable instead and save myself some money.

No bullshit, a few days later I log into Reddit from my browser and noticed someone had sent me a direct message with the chat feature. I check Reddit from my phone daily but the app I use doesn’t support chat and so I didn’t know someone had tried contacting me. The message was two weeks old from someone at Xcite asking me if I’d be interested in reviewing the KEF LSX. I right away replied back with my phone number hoping I wasn’t too late. A few days later I headed to Xcite to pick up the speakers to review.

Full disclosure, I have a long-standing relationship with Xcite who provided me with this speaker to keep. They’ve been very supportive of the blog from the very early days and they’ve lent or given me a number of items over the years to review, as well as hooking me up with discounts. I’m a huge Xcite fan.

The KEF’s turned out to be a perfect size for my turntable. They don’t overpower it and although they don’t look retro, they did fit in looking very cool on my cabinet. The speakers come in five different colors but I opted for black since it would match my space better. All the colors are clad in a fabric made by the Danish contemporary textile designer, Kvadrat so the speakers look and feel very premium (they’re also pretty heavy).

Each one of the KEF speakers has it’s own built-in amplifier so I had to connect each speaker to a separate power outlet. The reason for this is the speakers can be used wirelessly and placed in different areas around the room so they each need their own power supply. The KEF has four sources of input, Bluetooth, WiFi, optical input and a 3.5mm auxiliary input. I connected the record player through the auxiliary input and as soon as I played one of my records I was completely blown away. I didn’t think records could sound so good or clear, that partially had to do with the fact I had previously been listening to records with my vintage record player but it also had to do with the fact how good these speakers sounded. For their small size, the speakers were crystal clear and fairly loud. I could hear so many different layers of instruments and even at max volume, they never distorted or sounded muddy. In fact, the speakers sounded so good I started researching KEF speakers for my home theater.

For those of you who are interested in wirelessly connecting to the speakers, other than Bluetooth they support Airplay 2 and have Spotify and Tidal built-in. Although I’m using it with an analog connection to my record player, I do have the speakers connected to my WiFi network so I could connect to it with the KEF app. The KEF app allows you to manage all the settings of the speaker including the volume control, input port as well as various detailed sound options.

Speaking of the volume control, there are some downsides to these speakers with the main one for me being the lack of a physical volume knob. The only way to lower or raise the volume is with the included remote control or through the KEF app. I guess that’s practical if you don’t want to get off the couch, but with my vinyl player I tend to spend a lot of time up next to it swapping records and flipping them over, so I want to be able to reach out and raise or lower the volume without having to pick up the remote. The other negative is the lack of deep bass. Although most reviewers online state the unit has good bass, that really depends on the music you listen to. I wouldn’t listen to electronic music with these speakers, not unless I attach them to a subwoofer (it has a subwoofer output port). But since most of my vinyls are composed of old music from the 70s or MTV Unplugged sessions, the speakers performed really well without needing a subwoofer.

At KD340 these speakers aren’t cheap, but then again you wouldn’t be looking at KEF speakers if you wanted something cheap. The best way to really appreciate these speakers is by listening to them in a quiet environment because no matter how many YouTubers say these speakers are great, you’re not gonna know what great sounds like unless you hear them in person. Personally, I think these speakers sound incredible, so much so that I’ve been trying to figure out how to make more use of them since I don’t use my turntable a lot and I really want to listen to these speakers more.

If you’d like to hear the speakers, they’re on display at the large Xcite in Avenues and their Al-Rai location. The speakers are also available on their website.

I was gonna start this post by poking fun out of Saudi Arabia because they’re advertising music concerts all over Kuwait as if they’re a weekend destination now like Bahrain or Dubai. But then I found out yesterday they announced the Jeddah World Festival and now I feel sad, sad that we don’t get events like this in Kuwait.

It’s currently the Jeddah festival season and they’re holding a bunch of music concerts with artists like Chris Brown, Martin Garrix, Marshmello and Afrojack performing.

Just a few days ago Backstreet Boys performed in Jeddah to a sold-out crowd and you can watch a clip of it above.

But now Jeddah upped their game yesterday even more by announcing the Jeddah World Festival which will be one of the largest music events to be held in the region and will be broadcasted live on MTV in over 100 countries. They also announced the first wave line-up which includes Nicki Minaj, DJ Steve Aoki and singer Liam Payne. The second wave line-up will also be announced soon.

So yeah, now I’m just sad and confused.