Almwaya ‘Riding a Camel in the Middle of the Sea’

Everyone has a version of utopia, where peace and love would exist for eternity and every dream and form of existences are embraced and celebrated. It sounded like a theme in Almwaya’s latest album Riding a Camel in the Middle of the Sea, where the spontaneous flow of creativity has surpassed all boundaries, between past and present, between the Western and the rest of the world. From two weeks of intense songwriting, the destined album like water and air poured out of two artists who found each other in the unlimited cosmic randomness.

Mystic, inspired and full of love, Riding a Camel in the Middle of the Sea takes listeners around the world, exploring the collective ringing in the air that seems to get closer to the answers to our existence. Almwaya evokes a meditative, highly intuitive journey with advanced atmospheric sonic environment that sees influences melt into each other: a touch of avant-garde in the haunting Arabic lyrical melodies. Electronic sensation then brings out another realm into the classical and world gazed aesthetics. But then, the peace and flow rooted down in the nature, in the cosmic that brings audiences closer to the natural spectaculars.

In the interview, we chat with Maya and Wael about their creative process, inspirations, influences and visions.

Punk Head: I love the flow and spirituality of this album! Can you tell me more about the context?

Maya: We are two random souls that met spontaneously and melted both of our musical dimensions into one. 

We directly trusted the process of speaking through music with no boundaries nor script. We spent 2 weeks in Greece together for the first time and the story was unfolding day by day, track by track, depending on our current mood and mental climate. 

Wael: It was a journey towards the unknown. We didn't know each other, but we felt a beautiful human and musical connection. We have just followed our instinct and let every day inspire us. We spent two weeks together with complete devotion to music and a peaceful mindset of receiving, accepting and expressing all impulses in Music. We found our souls' language, and we are so grateful that you got our message.

Punk Head: What was the creative process like?

Maya: It started as two children meeting in a huge playground with infinite possibilities, we did not really know each other so we met through this process. We were composing one track a day for a week and each track was telling us more about each other. We couldn't stop until we felt the story was whole. At the end of the first week, we were two adults who had spent more than 8 lifetimes together. 

Wael: Totally unplanned. We woke up every day and expressed our idea of the here and now, and then we started to transform all this through our musical languages. We were astonished by how fast and easy we finished a song per day. Our Ideas matched and flowed like a river. And it was a spiral river of inspiration. All we needed was to trust, free our minds and jump through the gate as two joyful children playing and experimenting.

We finished our last song, "Moonlight Bay", the song number 8, and we felt the eternal circle completed. In that song, I now realize the spirals in the lyrics. 

Punk Head: What do you most like about this album? 

Maya: I love the eternal feeling it gives me. Each time I listen to it, I feel I am meeting it for the first time. 

Wael: It's genuine and liberating. The album tells everyones' story, and it is timeless. It expresses grieving, joy, anger, power, and love. 

It makes me feel light to fly.

Punk Head: Can you give some information about your musical backgrounds and how the different influences come to play in the music?

Maya: I grew up listening to Classical Piano, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Wishbone Ash. During university years while finishing my Animation bachelor degree, I started producing my own music and composing for my own animations. I decided to study Film Scoring for a year and that was when I started mixing all my "old" influences with new inspirations like Hol Bauman, Shpongle, Desert Dwellers etc.. 

I started to grow fond of mixing the old with the new. Which is also what this album is mainly about.

Wael: I started as a solo singer at the age of 7, and I wrote my first song at 8. My father was a flute player, and he taught me to listen. I listened to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Satie, Tchaikovsky, and my beloved Debussy. At 13, I was interested in traditional Arabic Music and World Music. My library was full of Egyptian, North African, Persian, Turkish, and Indian Music. At 17, I started my music studies at the Academy of Arts in Cairo, specializing in composition and Music Theories and playing Piano and Oud. I followed studying in Switzerland at the High School of Arts Bern with Contemporary Music, Jazz, Media Arts and Théâtre Musical. I'm fond of expressing ideas in different musical languages. 

Here are some of my idols: John Cage, Helmut Lachenmann, George Apergiss, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby McFerrin, Abdelwahab, Oum Kulthum.

All these influences are in my voice and mind when I make music. I let them express themselves freely and without limitations or borders.

Punk Head: Was there a specific idea or vision that you initially wanted to pursue? And how is it different or similar from the final outcome?

Maya: The vision would have been timeless music. Something you can always relate to whether it is now or in a hundred years. It also can't be similar nor different from the final outcome because it had no expectations from the start :) 

Wael: We were like a tube transmitting flowing Ideas and momentum inspiration. We were receivers, and our message was to be honest and express what we felt. 

We wanted to make authentic music where our backgrounds and languages melt despite Genres and styles.