Bringing EDM to Life in Bangladesh
“When I had started music production, I never knew how addictive it would be. Whether it’s a rough idea or a full track, the feeling I get when a certain sound fits with another or just laying chords that set a certain mood is euphoric,” notes Albab Rana. The Bangladesh-based producer who explores house, funk, synth-pop, and sometimes trap music, is known by his stage, Messup. Albab is one of few taking after electronic music to inspire alternative sounds locally, writes Tunajina Islam.
His journey began at an early age when he was encouraged by his parents to pick up and learn a new instrument. Being eager to do so himself, he started playing the piano and covering songs in his spare time which was the stepping stone to his music career. High school was another turning point for him where he began to develop new tastes and try out new things. “I started listening to progressive house giants such as Swedish house mafia and Alesso and it made me try my hand at electronic music,” he recalls. It took about a year of figuring out the FL Studio software before he finally released his first track which was a remix. And due to the tremendous support, he was keen on learning and expanding his capabilities to see what lengths he can go to.
Till now he has worked with many artists, but the track that kick-started his venture into different genres and made him what he is today is “Circles”. He worked on this with two other artists known as Bedheadz (consisting of Zayan Khan and Kadin Ehsan) and Samin Ahmed. Working with others had never been his cup of tea but the aforementioned artists made him step out of his comfort zone which resulted in something wonderful. “By helping each other we grew as artists and honed in on our craft. It inevitably led us to build a strong friendship,” he says. Not too long after, he released his debut EP titled ‘Lost Cause’ consisting of five tracks – each with a genre of its own but the main core of all them being electronic music. “I had never worked so hard on a project before and that motivated me to look up ways, to promote it and send demos to many artists. I wanted to solidify my ground as an artist with this EP,” he says. One of the tracks, “Illuminate,” was later featured on one of Spotify’s editorial playlists which were a huge moment for Albab. Indeed this solidified his ground.
Looking into his process, Albab mentions that whenever he starts a new project, he always visualizes a scenario in his head and tries to make a soundtrack to it. Trying to tell a story through his music and lyrics. His inspirations were always Daft Punk, Michael Jackson and Eriz Prydz. Eriz Prydz was the first artist he ever listened to when it came to electronic music and the reason he fell in love with it. Albab states “I want to show what electronic music is capable of doing in Bangladesh. I believe rock music was shunned when it first arrived in Bangladesh but now you have so many enjoying it. There are also many Bangladeshi bands making so many different sub-genres of rock. I want electronic music to have the same effect in Bangladesh because electronic music has such a variety when it comes to sound. It’s not just the commercial EDM you hear on the radio, it’s much more. I want to inspire more people in Bangladesh to create it because we sure do need more artists who do.”
