Shaz Yousaf – Some things

Shaz Yousaf, an exotic sounding name, is a musician in the industrial field, based in Harrow, London. He is also active in an industrial rock band called ‘Serca’. On this demo cd you can find a collection of songs he made in the past year, showcasing quite a variety of electronic styles. Not so strange, when you consider that he names as his influences acts as Nine Inch Nails, Sepultura, Tori Amos and Aphex Twin. Not that these names would directly come to my mind when hearing his music. Don’t expect any guitar driven metal/crossover music like NIN, though some textured guitar layers certainly can be heard, but in a subtle manner. The music is based on electronics, mostly with a midtempo pace, sometimes adorned with ethnic sounding samples. On some tracks IDM influences can be heard.

My favourite compositions are probably the softer tracks, like ‘Funeral’, with an interesting mixture of soft tribal percussion and an atmospheric electronic layer. Also nice are ‘Mesh hd’ and ‘Hall’, with moody electronics and a few more classical sounding elements. But there are also some more noisy pieces present on this varied cd. Though not all tracks are direct hits, there is enough interesting material present to keep an eye on how this artist will be developing in the future.
In case this review aroused your interest, you can download the tracks from this cdr from Shaz Yousaf’s website.

artist: Shaz Yousaf
label: self-released
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