At a young age, just in his twenties, Danyal Zafar aka Danny Zee can create content that caters to young tween fans and appeal to an older demographic as well. He has managed to do so by first releasing the mostly English-language album, Blue Butterfly and scoring a huge hit in ‘So Long, Goodbye’ that has picked up over 400,000 views on YouTube alone since first releasing this year.

Danyal Zafar can also comfortably switch between Urdu and Punjabi and perhaps this is why one of his tracks, ‘Udh Chaliye’ cut across demographics and scored 1.3 million views on YouTube. ‘Udh Chaliye’ has transformed into an upcoming album with two singles - ‘Udh Chaliye’, ‘Akhiyaan’ - released with their own music videos, which brings us to the present.

This week Danyal dropped a new track called ‘Udhi Udhi Jaave (Make U Mine’), making it his third single from the upcoming album.

Trending at one point on YouTube Music, the track is ambient and lo-fi in sound design merged with multiple languages lyrically. The music video captures Danyal in various spaces; alone and with a beloved, echoing what seems to be a modern relationship.

The song is surprisingly sonorous but at the same time flows, in certain places, like ‘Psycho‘ by Post Malone ft. Ty Dolla Sign. To be fair, while there is nothing wrong with the song overall, ‘Udhi Udhi Jaave’ would’ve sounded much better had Danyal stuck to the stronger Punjabi lyrics and bits of Urdu without the English. It would also be best if he stuck to his own evolving style rather than allow inspirations to steep in.

Ahsan Bari drops solo EP in collaboration with Salt Arts

It was a while back when Ahsan Bari, leader of music group Sounds of Kolachi (SOK), had said that 2020 would be the year when he would fly solo, without dismantling the endearing Sounds of Kolachi. True to his word, he played producer to certain songs on Paanch – The Mixtape that also featured an original Sounds of Kolachi tune. Bari also contributed to Natasha Baig’s album, Zariya and is also involved with Quaid Ahmed’s upcoming solo EP.

He has now dropped his first solo EP titled Guzarish, curated and produced by Ahsan Bari Music and Salt Arts; it is mixed and mastered by Sohail Lari at Ahsan Bari Music. Featuring five songs in total such as ‘Guzarish’, ‘Aashnai’, ‘Bandagi’, ‘Khamoshi’ and ‘Tumhara Geet’, it counts Ahsan Bari as music director and Raania A. K Durrani (of Salt Arts) as artistic director.

To mark the collaborative release, a lyrical music video from Guzarish has been released. Titled ‘Bandagi’, the video features the lyrics in Urdu and is a soothing work of interdisciplinary arts, such as sculpture, directed by Raania Durrani. ‘Bandagi’ has been described by Salt Arts in the following words: “Devoting the body and mind to one’s practice is a way of godliness. Working with one’s hands is prayer. This video features a return to a potter’s wheel, after years - a struggle to find centre physically and creatively. Our individual artistic practices have shown us meditative ways to save our creative and emotional health during this global crisis. We dedicated ‘Bandagi’ to art and its teacher. Integrating creative mediums is at the heart of what we do, we hope that with our interdisciplinary work we can reach out to diverse, peace and culture loving audiences worldwide. Love from Pakistan.”

This is not the first collaboration between Ahsan Bari and Salt Arts. However, during this time of a pandemic that has made live concerts in public spaces a serious health concern for all involved, this kind of collaboration is certainly a work of heart, innovation and imagination and therefore, arresting both visually and sonically.

Dynoman releases two EPs in 2020

Electronic music producer and artist, Dynoman (Haamid Rahim) co-founded the net label, Forever South (FXS) with Bilal Nasir Khan aka, Rudoh out of Karachi several years ago. He may have moved base to the US but is still dropping music, as an artist.

After releasing several compilation albums featuring FXS artists and others as well as releasing a multitude of EPs and hosting a number of shows at home via FXS, Dynoman moved abroad to pursue higher education and stayed back.

Presently residing in New York, he revealed to Instep that he has released two albums in 2020 - Mind Control and Resume Transmission - that are available for streaming and downloading on sites such as Bandcamp. According to Dynoman, both EPs hit all stores by end of July including Spotify, Apple Music and so on.

While Mind Control contains three songs making it an EP, Resume Transmission carries six songs, which means Dynoman has collectively produced an album’s worth of music and the year is far from over.

However, at the moment, the electronic producer has stopped work (production-wise) due to coronavirus outbreak. As for the rest of it, he told Instep from New York, “New York has been in lockdown since mid-March.”

While he noted he has become somewhat accustomed to it, Dynoman has gotten a dog while his radio show is on pause.

As for surviving, he maintains he has always held a full-time job and does music full-time at night. “I slept very little to get this music completed but now I’m resting.”

Both EPs are the electronic producer’s first release(s) since 2014 and as he noted are very different from his previous records. “Sound-wise, it’s techno,” Dynoman confirmed to Instep.