Ahmed Sirour

In the Summer of 2016, I had just completed a project called 'thEARapy', which was a slow and relaxing EP that fused sounds of nature with my own original music, but towards the late Autumn, nearing Winter, part of the year, I decided to go in the other direction, beat-wise, and decided to do an all-original House music project exploring my various takes of the genre and electronic dance music, in general. This track, as it says in the title, is the introduction track of the album and gives the listener a brief oral history about the origins of the genre, which had architects from both the Chicago and New York areas who created the blueprint of a music phenomena that would go further than its predecessor, Disco, had and ever would go, and spawn almost countless sub-genres of it. My original music that scores these stories builds the music bit by bit, instrument by instrument, to crescendo into the energy and vibe of a House track fused with a funky/soulful vibe, celebrating one of the best creations to come out of the Black music pantheon.

It's like the old Akan word from ancient Ghana called "Sankofa", which is a symbol and reminder that you can't know where you are or where you are going until you first know where you came from, and that's the message behind the groove of this track!

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Different Rooms, One House

Funky Introduction

At the opening of this song is the reference sample (the basis that the rest of the song is built on) of me playing on an old upright piano in the house of a young Parisian drummer who invited me over for an impromptu jam session with his bassist friend, back in 2013. It was an interesting year because I began it by taking a random trip to Europe, arriving in Berlin on January 20th) to spend approximately 3 months in the region (or at least that's how long my round-trip ticket from New York to Berlin was). The funny thing, though, was that I only had about 2 weeks worth of cash to survive on with no additional money that was coming to me, that I knew of. It was kinda crazy for me to book that trip, knowing that in advance, so it was basically a sort of leap of faith, if you will.

At that point, when we were just improvising that day, I had been in Paris longer than the initial 10 days I had planned to be there (at that point, I think I was living there about 3 or 4 months in, of the total 6 months I would be there that year). However, I wouldn't revisit that rough recording of that day until maybe a couple years later, and then still wouldn't finish it until just after the beginning of the new year of 2017, just before my milestone 40th birthday the following month, on February 22nd, which would be when I would release it among other songs I had been holding on to and hadn't finished. It was a speech by the legendary DJ Jazzy Jeff that prompted me not to hold on to too many songs I had, and just release them out into the world, because tomorrow wasn't promised, so might as well send it out to the world so that eventually I just "die empty", meaning leaving it all out on the field...not leaving with unfinished work, if you can help it.

And so here, on another year we enter, 2023, I felt it apropos to mint this song, "This New Day (Gratitude)", which by the title alone is sort of self-explanatory, but I'll take it a step further and say that with ANY new day, be it January 1st or any of the remaining 364 days to follow for 2023, let there always be gratitude and let there always be the same energy we give New Year's Day with the feeling of new beginnings and turning your life around and starting on a fresh, blank new page in your life book...let it be the same for any day, any moment you truly wish to make a change in your life, and then remember to express gratitude for every day you are fortunate enough to wake up and participate in, knowing that yesterday wasn't a guarantee you'd get, and that today is pretty much another reset to try something again or do something new because hopefully we'll get tomorrow, but since it's not guaranteed, might as well make the most of RIGHT NOW!

That's the whole point of this instrumental song that needs no words, but the feeling of the drive of it can be felt. And I'm going to set the reserve price for this song at 1 ETH because it's not only the 1st day of the 1st month of the year, but it's the number that is most important to me when I think about when I consider how to take on life...1 moment, 1 day at a time.

I guess this is another way to look at this being "1 of 1", huh? 😉

Good luck to whomever collects this special piece! 🙏🏾

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This New Day (Gratitude)

In the late Autumn of 2008, I was getting more settled into my Master's degree program in Audio Production at the University of Westminster, London (U.K.), and I had had enough classes with my professors in how to setup a live studio recording session and how to work the mixing desk to start practicing on my own without much help from the staff engineers on duty. I want to say this was maybe around November or December of that year. During that time, outside of class, I was still playing live gigs as a part of various bands playing around London, as well as playing at jam sessions at a few open mic spots. One of the musicians I met, in such scenarios, was an American expat guitarist from Florida named Myles Kayne (his last name threw me off because I instinctively mistook it to be the same as a certain well-known, controversial artist, but then I saw the spelling and it was simply pronounced like "cane"). I don't remember exactly how I met Myles, whether on a gig or a jam session, but all I knew was that he was DOPE! He could hit you with some stanky Blues riffs, some mind-blowing funky licks that James Brown would have made many faces and "ughs" to, and then he had that touch that could turn poetic and beautiful like something you'd hear in a somber flamenco or bossa nova ballad. Basically, that cat was nice with it!

I remember inviting him over to hang at one of the studios on campus, as he was really feeling my style of playing and wanted to jam when we both could meet up, and so when he dropped through, I set up the mic for his guitar and recording space so that if we had any good ideas, we'd catch it in the moment (which is how my comedic but true song called "I Don't Like Bananas" came to be that same day/session, but that's another story).

He asked me if I was working on anything, so I let him hear an idea I had that would be the basis of "Warm Rain", but it was only some chord progressions of soft pad sounds that seemed like what you would hear during a yoga session or meditation. He started fiddling around with it, but then I suddenly had a concrete idea for guitar, and since I don't know music theory or read music at all, I had to sing the lines to him (a la George Benson style) for the arrangement I had in mind, and this man mimicked me on guitar to perfection! For the parts that were harmonic (since no one I know but Lalah Hathaway can sing more than one note at a time, simultaneously or harmonically), I played them out on keys. So, quite frankly, the guitar parts you hear in this recording are, note-for-note, my vocal guitar arrangements that he followed me perfectly as I sang them out, and it's one of my favorite tracks, as it is for many others who've told me such over the years, since it and the project were released.

I added the rain sound effects later, after I had recorded and mixed the other keyboard and piano parts that I had added to the final draft. I am honored to have this piece collected by a true music lover, and I hope if this ever is passed on to other collectors over time, they will also appreciate the quality of the work that went into this impromptu but nonetheless inspired session that created this piece of music that I hold dear to me and am proud of.

If I had space, I'd include the stories of fans who've written me about their experiences connected to this song. They are some really moving stories, and are from different parts of the world.

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The After 2am Sessions LP

Warm Rain (featuring Myles Kayne)

I first encountered Cleveland P. Jones in Atlanta, GA,  about 22 years ago in the year 2000 (how funny to call it that, two decades and two years after the fact). It was at a popular open mic/jam session, and have you ever been to one where people sign up to perform and all of a sudden, mid-way through the event,  a singer gets on stage who is so amazing, who captivates the audience with every note uttered, and who pretty much burns the stage with their unbelievable talent and stage presence that others who knew they might be called up next quietly and quickly made their way to the exit because they didn't dare follow up behind THAT?! Well, that's Cleveland, but the crazy thing was that during that time, he was always humbly and comfortably cool with just being the background singer for various artists around town or on tour...but I always wondered why someone with the gifts of a certified headliner was content with being near to but outside of the spotlight?

Fast-forward a year later and Cleveland's doing his Master’s degree program in Boston, and I was back from London having completed my own after being gone for 2 years but now know how to produce and engineer, and so I go by to visit him in Boston but also see if I can talk him into recording a track because I really felt the world needed to hear this amazing artist. Cleveland, however, was very hesitant to do so and resisted the idea, initially, but eventually came around, and we managed to first release a cover of the jazz standard made famous by Nat King Cole ("Nature Boy"), which got a lot of great buzz! It was that catalyst that helped Cleve to get over his initial anxiety about his unique vocal register and learn to embrace it and see himself as a lead singer that all the rest of us who knew him completely believed he was meant to be.

"Sensitive" came about as kind of a fluke, because we were actually recording an entirely different song, to try and put together a debut EP for him. It was when we decided to take a recording break, at his home studio, that he went to make a snack while I stayed in the studio area and decided to play around on keys to just clear my head of the project. I then played a combination of chords that made me stop, go "hmmm", then played it over again and felt something spark, so decided to record it then loop it to see if I heard any ideas. Cleveland walks back in, and I ask him to listen to the loop and see if he maybe he hears something magical in it as I do. He stops moving, closes his eyes while standing there in the middle of the room, then opens his eyes again and starts humming a melody, over and over, punctuated by one identifiable word..."sensitive". He then looks for a pen and pad, then starts writing something while still humming, and still saying that one word, then stops humming altogether and just writes like he's taking notes from a fast talking professor.

About 20 minutes pass before he mumbles what seems to be a verse that he's trying to get right, then walks over to the microphone, puts on the headphones, and signals for me to get ready to start recording him, and then he begins singing the very first verse, which is what you hear in the first minute of this recording...the first time the public has ever heard this rare first take that never made the final mix of the song. Also, for the purpose of context, the song actually had to do with his ex, whom he was still getting over, and the emotional wounds were still fresh as she did a number on his heart, but what great songs haven't had such a powerful catalyst as heartbreak to create something special?

What you hear in the first minute and a half is the genesis of "Sensitive", in its original rough & unmixed, early arranged form before it merges into the final draft that many have come to know and love over the past 11 years that this song has been in existence, received airplay around the world on various independent and major radio stations, including on Gilles Peterson Worldwide where the famed DJ did a rare thing in featuring it on his BBC Radio show in two consecutive shows, back-to-back. He even went further to contact us later via email, with a licensing contract, to ask to have the song be featured on his Brownswood Bubblers Seven album compilation (interestingly enough, as track #7 as well). Most importantly, it introduced Cleveland P. Jones to the world as the soloist and the headliner (not background singer), that he was always meant to be! For me, it was the opportunity to test my musical and production skills  by creating an orchestral arrangement (which took me a week to do) that actually fooled many DJs and musicians who thought we had a big production budget and hired a small orchestral ensemble of instrumentalists and vocalists, instead of the actuality of it being just one man singing all the parts and another man playing all the instruments on keyboard...while in the hood, in a second-floor apartment in Boston where we had to wait sometimes for dogs to stop barking and occasional sirens to pass by before we could continue recording!

Just as we embarked into new territory and had no idea what would happen when we finally released this song to the world, it's revisiting that same kind of feeling as we release this NFT version of this song to the world and honestly have no clue what to expect as we embark in new territory yet again. To the lucky collector of this one-of-kind song (and one-of-one version that isn't even available anywhere else on other streaming & download platforms), we are thrilled to offer this to you and hope you value it as much as we have over the years and for many years to come as we now know this song will far outlive us!

Good luck, everyone!

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"Sensitive" (special NFT edition) - Cleveland P. Jones & Ahmed Sirour

Before I give you the backstory of this track, I just wanted to mention that this is my genesis NFT, thus these are my very first steps into this blockchain world (forgive me if I’m using any terms incorrectly). Oh, and if you're wondering why the price is "0.22277”, that's my birthday, actually. 😉

In the late Summer of 2008, I flew to the U.K. to begin my Masters degree program in Audio Production (sound engineering and design) at the University of Westminster, London. At the time, I was renting a room in a flat in the South London neighborhood of Clapham North, and my roommate also happened to be my landlord as he owned the house we lived in. He is a contemporary artist/landscape painter, primarily, but also an online radio DJ, and so he was always having artistic types come by for dinner, and usually Asian artists since he is Japanese, himself. One of the artists who came by one afternoon for lunch was a Bangladeshi poet/spoken word artist. I came to discover that she was considering recording a CD of her work, and my roommate wanted me to meet her to possibly help her with that, musically and production-wise. I was still learning how to record in the studio on my own, early in the semester of my course work at the university, but at that point I knew enough to be able to conduct a session without any help from my professors, so I set a day for us to meet and do her recording session. She recited a poem she called “Moon’s Eye”, which we did in a couple of takes, just to have some variety and pick out the best parts for the final vocal track. Then while she sat there, I randomly played a few chords on the keyboard just to warm up (and set it to a Yamaha grand piano), before I finally pressed “record” and just started playing. The interesting thing about this track was that I did the piano part in one take, which even surprised me, so what you hear in this recording was only played once. I later arranged, played, and recorded the harp and upright/double bass parts to compliment the piano part. Funny enough, the poet didn’t end up using the track and I’m not sure if she ever went through with the rest of her project, but what I did see develop was her and my roommate getting closer, and now they’ve been married for over a decade now with 2 children 😉. As for the track I made, well...I decided it would be a good song to use as the intro for my EP project I released on Bandcamp to little fanfare in 2011, but would later turn into my full debut LP in 2012 that did get a much better reception; and, consequently, it did catch the ear of a Day 1 fan/supporter who over a decade later would become a curator for a site called Catalog and chose to onboard me as an artist in recognition of his appreciation of the positive impact that album had on him (thanks Dutchyyy)!

The title, as you can now see, was inspired by the original poem’s title, as a nod to what it was originally intended for. Also, the song made me envision a couple romantically slow dancing to this, in a secluded garden at night , under a full moon or “in the moonlight”, but it's really up to the listener to interpret whatever they feel or perceive when listening to this song–mine is just the origin story.

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In the Moonlight

This project  started with me collecting recordings of small snippets of ideas I would have, over a few years, a while before I first started releasing music to the public, and definitely before the public even knew I existed as a recording artist/producer. 

It was obvious I didn't take myself very seriously when I finally decided to take the 6 tracks I finally collected to create and drop an EP to the world on May 5, 2011. I couldn't have taken myself seriously to drop an all-instrumental and very slow project that would definitely get no play from club DJs who had been rocking my mid-tempo to house remixes I had been cranking out previously. I had very low expectations, obviously.

I was rather surprised, however, by the reception the EP received, so it did kind of give me a little more confidence to take it a step further and add 6 more brand new tracks to create a full-on LP of 12 main tracks (plus 2 hidden bonus ones), that I released on May 15, 2012. I completed it while I was living for a few months in San Francisco. It was an unorthodox approach and was based on utilizing 3 themes of Love: The Romantic, the Erotic, and the Spiritual. 

The main goal was to create a soundscape that completely transported the listener to another place from their sometimes chaotic reality, and to use these songs as a means to set a peaceful mood, to stimulate the senses, and to rejuvenate the soul. Over time I would realize how much this project would do more than it was intended or expected to, and who knows how much further it will go, so long as it retains the "magic" it had from the start and the listener feels all the better from experiencing it, in full, than they felt at the start of it.