Done and dusted

BAHRAINI artist Abdulla Hussain, popularly known as DUST., has released the video for his song Awkward Silence.

The visuals, featuring famous UAE-based musician Essatac, were filmed in Dubai, in a studio apartment with wooden walls.

It starts with Essatac in the kitchen corner, pouring coffee, the fridge behind him displaying the song title in magnetic letters. It then cuts to the featured artist on the couch, with Abdulla standing behind him, in front of a vintage TV with static display.

“We had a totally different vision for the video because I wasn’t planning on going to Dubai to shoot,” Abdulla told GulfWeekly.

“So we were thinking he (Essatac) would shoot the video in Dubai and I would do the same in Bahrain and kind of put it together. But then, I reached out to my friend Mark Issa, a UAE-based filmmaker and director, and he showed interest in the project. He had just moved into a new place which almost matched our concept for the video. So, we set up a date and did it in one day. We started around 10am and by 3pm, it was done and he edited it on the spot,” the 32-year-old added.

Lyrically, in Awkward Silence, the duo tackles the ‘calm before the storm’ aspect, playing on how a person can be calm in a distracted situation or a loud environment.

The musician recalls how the collaboration with Essatac came together, revealing that the two made the song remotely and only met on the day of the shoot.

“I had dropped an EP (extended play) called Monsoon a few months ago, which was kind of a shift in my sound as a producer and musician. One day, I was on Instagram - I’ve been following Essatac for a while and have always wanted to work with him - and saw a video of him freestyling, which sounded similar to what I’m doing. So I commented on his post and said, ‘hey man, I think it’s time to do something together’. And he was like, ‘let me know what we can do’. So we started talking, I sent him a beat, and he liked it. We sent each other verses back and forth, until we had the whole track,” the Muharraq resident revealed.

Monsoon dropped in February this year and the project marked the artist stepping out of his comfort zone by departing from the hip-hop genre.

“I wanted to steer away from making hip-hop beats, so my band and I made an EP that had more of a live-band sound. So, I would describe Monsoon to be experimental, with jazz inspirations and a hint of hip-hop,” he explained.

The creative is set to release another album with his band The DMT Experience later this year, taking a step back from solo projects for a while.

Before embarking on a musical career in 2020, the multitalented artist was a break-dancer. He founded and has been part of a dance crew named The Red Ants Army since 2008.

The breaker credited Tunisian B-Boy Zilla for teaching him everything he knows about the genre and hip-hop culture.

“He (Zilla) came to Bahrain to study in 2005, around the time we were forming the crew. He was already an established dancer and when he came here, he saw that the scene didn’t know much about hip-hop or breaking. So he taught us a lot from 2005 to 2008, and he actually pushed the scene here to where it is now. I think without him, there would be no Red Ants Army.”

DUST. and Essatac’s Awkward Silence is available to stream on all music platforms.

For more information follow @dustizm on Instagram.