The musical voyage of a Doha-based Pakistani instrumental rock guitarist carries on with melodious murmurs. The musician captures distinguished moments of his life in his new album Dreams.
Pursuing a full-time career in banking, Shehzad Bhanji manages to take out time for his passion – instrumental music. He is all set to launch his third album next month.
Shehzad has tried to create a perfect balance in the new album. “While I was bouncing ideas about my third album in my mind, one aspect was very clear to me that it should have a perfect balance of melody, experimental genres, harmony and groove. These were my guideposts,” said the guitarist while talking to Community.
“The album also needed to have a story, triggering the listener’s imagination. I wanted my listeners to feel that the album will take them on an emotional journey as well as give them a good time.”
Dreams contains 10 songs and is all about key moments in Shehzad’s life that occurred over the last two years. “Although, there is no narrative that anybody has to follow, but each of the songs in my view relate to the specific milestone I remember – the crazy moments, the desperate moments, the wonderful moments, and the moments that were just fun. They all relate to the journey of Dreams.
“The whole process was quite a journey itself. As soon as I completed sketching out all of the songs, a simple yet bold phrase entered my thoughts that seemed to express everything I was feeling – Dreams. This one word idea or theme seemed to fit all the song of the album.”
Shehzad spent more than two years writing, making demos and eventually recording them at his home studio. “The 10 songs that appear on Dreams, culled from upwards of 40 musical ideas in various forms of completion, cover considerable, and even surprising, sonic and emotional ground. I had to be brave enough to be lighthearted. But how do you do that and still be maintaining the perfect balance between melodic appeal of the track and guitar techniques.”
For Shehzad, song inspiration can come from so many areas. “I wake up in the morning and I’ll have a feeling about a place or somebody or something that happened to me. I might read something or bump into somebody and some feeling will hit me. And I go with the inspiration; If I want to write a song about summer coming and I’m driving in a convertible, I’m going to write a summer song. That’s my true passion. Simply to write music around what I experience in life. It connects very well with the listeners too.”
The instrumental musician loves to experiment and that was his starting point for Dreams. “The album has ‘modern meets traditional’ written all over it, and it contains elements from many musical genres such as instrumental rock, blues, funk rock, pop rock, EDM and acoustic. This is something that was not there in my previous two albums namely; Never Say Goodbye and Profound Beginnings.
“Dreams has a very unique and different sound from my previous album. I purposely picked different songs; brought in different instruments and created a sound that makes my guitar sing my melodies. There were some constants that gave me confidence that things were going to work in this new area that I was working in like bringing in my favourite guitars and amps. I was looking for a rhythm section that would change the way that I not only would play but think about the songs, where they could go and how they could sound.
Shehzad always wanted to produce instrumentals that provide an escape to the listeners. “The world needs escape. I know I do. I never put on music to remind me of how terrible the world is. I put on music to make me feel good or to make me forget what is happening, something that puts me in this great place.
“There is heartfelt stuff on the new album Dreams that takes you somewhere warm and nice, but then I have other tracks that just rock – another kind of escape.”
Shehzad strongly believes that moving to Qatar has made a tremendous contribution to where he is now. “The journey has been amazing so far. This place has something special. It is very difficult to explain but it really helped to restart my passion which I had left years back.
“The best thing about Qatar is that it’s a multicultural environment which paves ways for different genre of music to flourish. This is where the collaboration projects happen too – fusing different styles to create a unique sound.”
..
