Cover ART
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- akawave
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- akawave
The album
Yaquanu the Album
After many years of performing, I finally got to a place where I had time to focus on another big project.
I decided to dedicate this new found time to recording another album.
I had been very active in the breaking scene (breakdance) for many years and felt like now it was time to let go and explore some of my other musical facets.
I thought about letting go of Hip Hop for a while and just creating what ever came up. It had been a long time since I was free from any musical obligations and did not have to be concerned about sticking to a specific genre.
As I like and explore all kinds of different music, genres can actually be a limitation when just wanting to let creativity flow.
How ever as Hip Hop has been a big passion of mine since I was young I still felt like I had to make my contribution with this instrumental album.
In the recent years Lo-fi has taken over the internet.
While I like the genre and often listen to it. I feel many of the beats are extremely simple and do very little to bring something new or original to the beat scene.
24/7 youtube channels kind of turn beats into something disposable.
During the 90s “golden era” of hip hop, I was highly inspired by the greats like ¨Pete rock¨ and ¨Dj Premiere¨. Their beats where anything but disposable and often became a part of musical history. A mix tape called ¨boombap continum¨ and producers like Madlib showed my how beats instead of just being backing tracks could really tell a story on there own.
So I set out to create an instrumental Album that offered more depth and stood out of the rest. While I do drift off into psychedelic/ambient/abstract realms I feel the core and foundation of this album is Hip Hop. Perhaps I drift to far from the genre for some die hard fans but everything I have done has come straight from the heart.
I have also added some vocal tracks to express some of my ideas but overall I would call it an Instrumental album.
It has many hours of work dedicated to the smallest details of sounds and textures to give depth and dimension the the beats. Smooth transitions that morph from one vibe to the next. The Album is actually intended as a continuous session as many tracks fuse together and actually grew out of each other during the process of creation. Yaquanu is a journey through sound, creating contrasts between shamanic trips and the cutting edge of technology. Between dark and suffering pain and sweet high lights that drift out of natures urge for balance and harmony.
Yaquanu – Stands for a concept, it talks about the pain that is felt when a modern world has forgotten its own roots.
The problem is, that some where along the way, we as humans started to build our own system along side natures system.
PHOTOS
Biography
Bio
Edgar Weltens – akawave.
- Music-producer / Artist
- Wave is the alias of Edgar Weltens.
- A dutch music producer that has lived in the south of Spain for the past 24 years.
- Wave´s sound is eclectic, he has tried his hand at almost anything non-commercial.
- From house, drum and bass, hip hop, ambient chill out etc.
- Wave grew up as a kid on the 90´s golden era of hip hop.
- The raw energy and sound of that era is definitely something that stuck with him.
- What got him to start producing where albums like Nightmares on wax – Smokers delight and some of the Cafe del mar chill out series.
- Pete rock with his album Petestrumentals and later on Madlibs Beat Conducta where big motivations in making beats that told stories of their own.
- Ninja tunes and Stonesthrow artists in general had a big influence on Waves connection with music.
- Even years of mountain exploration played its role as it brought him closer to nature.
- It made him pursue and investigate the sounds of tribal cultures and nature itself.
- Making sound to video is another big passion of Wave which has led him to develop his skills in creating vibes and atmospheres.
- To pin wave down to a genre is tricky, but he is very active in the Hip Hop Culture.
- In his earlier years Wave performed with several bands.
- While he really enjoyed this and developed a lot of skills with theses bands they did not work out in the long run.
- Eventually he set out to do a solo performance based on a technique called live looping.
- This led him to become very active making live beats for the breaking scene (break dancing).
- He created his own live looping rig and is currently is using the 5th generation of is custom setup.
- Always working on increasing the capabilities and portability of the system.
- Playing drums, keys and flutes amongst other instruments, he creates organic funky grooves that are created live on the spot.
- Once the groove is build, Wave uses his voice to rap or sing and perform his set of original material.
Custom build LIVE RIG
LIve Performance
