the dots connect...

LISTEN ON ALL PLATFORMS + upcoming album release shows in Berkeley & LA.

My freshman year of college was frankly rough. I had a diverse group of eccentric, creative friends in high school and suddenly I was surrounded by bland, pre-finance bros. Plus, I planned to play football and quickly stepped away from the team due to injury (and a distaste for my teammates) leaving a hole in my life. Despite having grown up as the only Egyptian (and one of few Muslim families) in town, it was the first time I truly felt I didn’t belong socially.

The one silver lining to that environment was the relief of finding my fellow outliers. For this reason, my college bonds (my wife included!) are some of the strongest I’ve formed. I’m grateful to my friends from that time, even the ones I don’t talk to as much these days.

I met Alex (Lish Grooves) during my sophomore (his freshman) year in comically debaucherous college fashion. We quickly bonded over a shared love of music, basketball, nature and [redacted]. Although I poked fun at him, I admired how Alex stubbornly did things his own way, seemingly immune to peer pressure.

It was no different when he started playing guitar. He noodled obsessively for hours on end developing a singular style. That eventually grew into making “ambient grooves” combining his playing with field recordings from nature. He built a following in that space so ambient music became the focus of his output.

In 2023, Alex sent me a demo called “Rabbit Holes.” A song about friends gone astray it featured a funky bassline and a restrained vocal delivery, which I later learned was him whispering to avoid complaints from housemates. I was intrigued when he told me he had 20+ more vocal songs he’d made over the last few years.

At some point during my wedding, in which he played guitar during the ceremony, I asked him if he’d be open to me “executive producing” his vocal album — something I have no technical qualifications to do. In the midst of wedding craziness, I forgot we had the conversation so when it came up a couple weeks later, I thought he read my mind.

In February of 2024, we rented a converted 1920s schoolhouse in Valley Ford and hunkered down during four days of rain to start work on the album. I saw my primary role as helping Alex distill his essence through the music. Having known him for over a decade, I at least felt qualified on that front.

We widdled down the demos into a cohesive tracklist before turning our sites on finishing the songs. We changed arrangements, added or removed elements and kept notes of where we’d want to bring in features. It was a seamless collaboration largely because, after years of friendly shit-talking, I was comfortable telling Alex exactly what I thought was needed (or not). Through this process, I realized I actually did have something to offer.

We finished off that weekend with a tentative tracklist and a long list of to-dos. Although I continued offering feedback, Alex deserves all the credit for the incredible amount of work to complete the project. From spending countless hours in a professional studio with a mixing engineer (shout out Cole!) to finding a session drummer to bring the percussion to life to pulling from his community of musicians to contribute, this is Alex’s labor of love.

And true to Alex, it doesn’t adhere to categorizations nor is it trying to be of the cultural zeitgeist, despite feeling very relevant in these times.

On the second night of our retreat, we decided to take a break from fine-tuning to write a new song together. We were both pretty worn out from the day (I’m a morning person!) but, with some encouragement from Alex, we made “Let it Go” based around an old poem of his. It was the only song the two of us made together from scratch and an appropriate sentiment to leave you with now that the album is out in the world.