Music
Aeli’s New Start
The Tunisian musician-composer celebrates turning 30 with an ‘autobiographical’ EP
Ali Aloulou knows what he’s getting for his 30th birthday.
The Tunisian-born, Dubai-based artist hits 30 on January 25, and will mark the start of his fourth decade with the launch gig for his third solo record – under his artist name Aeli – a three-track EP called “Zoetrope”.
“It’s a gift to myself,” he says. “A new chapter in my life.”
Aeli makes instrumental music (although his first LP featured collaborations with several rappers) that incorporates samples, programmed beats and live instrumentation. “Zoetrope” blends traditional Arabic and North African vocal chants with pounding kick drums and multi-layered instruments. (Aeli says each song’s session on his computer features around 80 tracks.)
It’s something of a concept EP – “some kind of autobiographical project,” he says – representing three different cities he’s lived in and three different decades. But it’s not quite as straightforward as that either.
Aeli
© Pyong Sumaria
“I’m trying to explain and showcase who I am right now,” he says. “Because I’m a mess of all these different things that have influenced and had an impact on me. It’s not like the three tracks just represent a different city and 10-year period. It’s all overlapping together. In each part, I have some other things going on from other places and parts. There’s a confusion of time and space. I’m trying to express the fact that where you are and what time of life you’re in is kind of an illusion.”
That’s why the record’s named after the zoetrope, the pre-film animation device that used a series of still images to mimic motion, kind of like a flick-book. “A zoetrope gives the illusion that there’s time and space in it – the illusion of movement,” Aeli says. “But it’s just playing with your senses.”
Taken in that context, the cinematic, evocative music makes perfect sense. It’s a jumble of past, present and future; in various parts quiet and loud, soothing and ominous, clear and chaotic.
The artwork, created by Hriday Nagu, fits the theme too. Grainy black-and-white imagery that isn’t immediately identifiable as belonging to a particular location or era.
“You don’t know where it is or when it is, or what the people are doing. I wanted to have a flavour of Tunisia, but at the same time I wanted it to be confusing,” Aeli explains. “Like, it could be the Middle East, but maybe not. You have similar stuff in Asia. It’s deliberately not clear. It’s related to the fact that we’re all a messy combination of different things that are all connected.”
Aeli’s own particular messy combination began in Tunisia, where he lived until he was 20. It was, he says, a pretty sweet, upper-middle-class existence; he and his friends lived in large villas which afforded plenty of space for, among other things, band practice. Aeli was the guitarist in a “hardcore experimental” band called The Ursula Minor, inspired particularly by The Mars Volta, “my favourite band ever in the history of humanity”.
Aeli
© Waleed Shah
“They changed my life,” he says of the Texan prog-rockers. “They changed my approach to everything; my perception of art, cinema, music, poetry, words, sound… life. They took it all to the next level.
“They created a style and a new identity; they had nothing to do with anyone else. They created something and then other people followed,” he continues.
The desire to create his own musical identity still drives Aeli’s work today. “Those inspirations are still there for me, in terms of just doing whatever you feel like doing without any guidelines,” he says. “I’ve never wanted to say, like, ‘I do this style.’ You know how you have some checklist to be ‘in’ some particular genre? I’m really not into that. I’m not forcing that, it’s kind of happening naturally. But at the same time, it’s something that is important to me; to not sound like anyone else.”
It’s clear from “Zoetrope” that Aeli is more focused on creating moods and dynamics to connect with his listeners, rather than traditional song structures and hooks. “I’m a lot about story telling – some kind of narrative approach to music,” he says. “I don’t really do the intro-chorus-verse-chorus-break-outro thing.
“I don’t know what you call electronic music, but for me, techno, house, all of that – house is OK because there’s a lot of melody sometimes – but techno I really have a problem with. I really can’t enjoy it. It’s like a loop of five hours to me. I don’t see anything going on. Nothing happens. I come from more of a rock and jazz background, so I’m trained in jazz guitar, classical piano, and some drums. I’m not an expert in any of them, but enough to understand what’s going on. And this part of the process is still there.”
The Ursula Minor were pretty successful. While Aeli was still in high school the band travelled to Germany to play the acclaimed Fusion Festival, and they played a bunch of university gigs around Tunisia. But when school finished, the members found themselves going their separate ways. For Aeli (and two of his cousins from the band), that was Paris, where Aeli continued his architecture studies.
It was in France that Aeli really started to explore making music by himself on computers. That was, in great part, due to necessity. Holding a band together in Paris was prohibitively expensive for a start. And finding the time to organise practice sessions was almost impossible when everyone was working and studying at the same time.
“That’s how I started producing hip-hop, because that’s the thing I was listening to the most then,” he says. “I went to the SAE Institute in Paris, and did the UMC – Urban Music Certificate. Six months of intensive training. I learned a lot and met a lot of good people. I’d already started programming beats, but I wanted to demystify the whole process, you know? I’m the kind of guy who always thinks that I don’t know. So I want to be… not necessarily guided, but I want to have the point of view of experienced people (in case I’m missing something). My professors there were producers who had worked with, like, Beyoncé and Pharrell Williams. So you learn all the production and recording stuff, but you also learn the business side – marketing, distribution, media training… It was a full package that was really interesting.”
Eventually, though, Paris became “suffocating”.
“In Tunisia, we had a very comfortable life,” he says. “To live the same way in Paris, you’d have to be a millionaire. Seriously. I was used to a good quality of life and it was important to me. I was depressed at the end, seriously.”
Aeli
© Waleed Shah
So, four years ago, he applied for jobs in a few sunny places and ended up in Dubai “working as an architect, but also doing music production and consultancy and sound design.”
He admits he had no idea what the music scene in the UAE was like, or even if there was one. But by that point, he’d already become confident in his ability to produce music from home, and since arriving he’s landed regular DJ gigs too.
Unsurprisingly, Aeli doesn’t feel Dubai’s creative scene is as evolved as Paris’s, or Tunisia’s. Even when it comes to DJing he says he’s been able to carve out a niche for himself. “People know it’s me, because no one else is doing what I’m doing. In Dubai, I mean. If I was in London or Paris there’s probably thousands of people doing the same thing, but here I’m lucky to be the only one doing what I do,” he says.
These days though, Aeli points out, the Internet makes it easy to feel part of a music community. “I love what’s going on on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. It’s incredible. Seriously,” he says. “Soundcloud makes me feel old, man. Those kids – 16 years old and they’re producing unbelievable beats.”
The launch gig for “Zoetrope” on January 25 at Boom Room will feature some of the artists Aeli has connected with offline in Dubai. Producer AY and his brother, rapper Moh Flow, will be performing. “Those guys I really respect and like,” Aeli says. “Moh’s good. You can recognise from the first note that it’s him, and that’s one thing I really like about artists, when they have a signature.”
Zoetrope Launch Party
© Zoetrope
Also playing will be Nigerian artist Nnamdi. “He does this cool trap/dancehall kind of thing, so he’ll be closing,” Aeli says. “And I’m going to play a special set with some of the old stuff and the new things.”
And Aeli’s encouraging his fellow performers to embrace the creative freedom that’s so important to him.
“I told them, ‘Those things that you can’t do; do them here. Be free to do whatever you want. No restrictions,’” he says. “It’s my event. I’m going hardcore.”
For details on Aeli’s “Zoetrope” launch event, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/208150116422811/