Imaad Wasif

Imaad Wasif has an impressive resumé. Wasif has been part of collaborations for most of his career, so the pivot to making his own material felt like a promising turn. He put out three diverse, vaguely spiritual rock-leaning records in the late 2000s, and wrote three more that never made it to release. One Wasif withheld because he thought it was “too dark,” another due to contractual issues, and a third for reasons unknown. He of course worked with other artists on more projects in between these forgotten LPs, but nevertheless, the lag has left an eight year gap between solo records. As curious as one must be to hear all these lost transmissions, everyone should rest assured that Dzi (say: zee) is a commanding addition to his catalogue, and arguably his most impressive project to date.

Recently, the album was given a full visual treatment, featuring eleven videos synced to the music. A one-time collaborator of Wasif’s, Jeff Hassay, compiled the clips, which range from repurposed movie footage to psychedelic spiders. The official music video for “Carry the Scar” was not included, with Hassay opting to distort the color on footage of contortionists before setting their images ablaze. Flames lick across several of the videos, a symbol of both destruction and renewal, which is apt paired with the music of a deeply spiritual man. Fire and brimstone are said to line Hell, and safe to say Wasif endured his fair share in the creation of this record.

“The thing with this record is that I don’t understand it, even though I wrote it,” he told LA Weekly earlier this summer. He cites a period of disillusionment and hysteria, when he was, according to a press release about the album, prone to paranoid outbursts and frequently scrawled pentagrams to conjure demons. In the same way that there is no explanation for pure coincidence, the foundation of this record is also a sacred mystery.

It opens up with the methodically jagged “Far East,” one of the album’s promotional singles. The track introduces a lot of new elements to Wasif’s music that echo throughout Dzi, including metallic riffs as well as swelling waves of fuzz. He describes it as dream metal, which is also what he named the record’s trippiest song after. More playful iterations include “The Beautician” and “Astronomy,” the latter of which bleeds into acid rock territory. As you venture into Dzi, it won’t take long for references to fathers of the genre to float to mind–Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath. The raw clarity in these melodies can be largely credited to Wasif’s decision to record and edit in analog, without a computer at all–an attempt to avoid the obsessive nature of tweaking a recording for what can seem like arbitrary wavelengths. This call for simplicity gives Dzi a sense of familiarity, without stepping over the line of the derivative.

Wasif has been playing in some band or another for two decades, but his fourth solo record properly displays his honed skills. Sure, The Voidist has a few thrashing moments, and the volume did reach a reasonable height on Strange Hexes, but Dzi reveals a heavier, louder side of Wasif that we hadn’t seen before. And it is in these eleven tracks that he solidifies his place in the rock establishment that he has been brushing shoulders with for so long. - Zoë Elaine

Imaad Wasif, “Dzi” (Grey Market). The mercurial guitarist is best known for his work with the Folk Implosion and before that, the indie-punk band Lowercase. But that was a long time ago, and since then Wasif has become a solo artist, collaborator in projects including Acid and EFG and secret-weapon songwriter-instrumentalist who has worked with Swedish songwriter Lykke Li and New York post-punk singer Karen O.

Imaad Wasif - "Carry The Scar" (Official Music Video)
Imaad Wasif "Dzi" album available June 16 Limited Edition of 303 vinyl LP's with signed foldout poster and printed inner sleeve available NOW at: www.agreymarket.com Directed by ...
His third solo album, “Dzi” (June 16), is his first since 2009, and it revels in rock distortion that suggests the fuzzy work of desert rock band Kyuss and post-hardcore band the Melvins. Hardened melodies recall Boston hard rock band Dinosaur Jr., and imbue “Carry the Star” with a heavy density that’s pocketed with just enough space to breathe. - Randall Roberts

Imaad Wasif was headlining the night, and if he may be best known for his association with Lou Barlow’s Folk Implosion, I had really known him since his Alaska! days, when he was playing with Russell Pollard, who became later the frontman of the band Everest. Imaad has a unique style when he plays guitar, he basically changes the temperature in the room, this become an intense vision, mixing fire with ice, blending the psychedelic with the mystic. After touring and playing with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs around 2006-7 – he has even collaborated with Karen O for the soundtrack of the movie ‘Where the Wild Things Are in 2009 – he decided to focus on his own music and career. His latest effort, ‘Dzi’ was released this year, following three previous solo albums, a self-titled album on Kill Rock Star in 2006, ‘Strange Hexes’ on World in Sound in 2008, and ‘The Voidist on Tee Pee in 2011. He also collaborated with McBean on a project called ‘Grim Tower’.

The surprise of the night was that Bobb Bruno (of Best Coast) was playing bass with him, but that should not have been too surprising once you know that he produced Imaad’s ‘Dzi’. From a melancholic acoustic guitar tune (‘Out in the Black’ of his first solo album) to the heavy distortion of his latest effort, the set was diverse but mostly under the spell of the dark psychedelia of ‘Dzi’, And when Imaad Wasif plays songs like ‘Far East’ (and strangely I heard at one point an almost Bowie-sque ‘China Girl’ theme in the middle of it) or ‘Astronomy’ or ‘Carry the Scar’, you see the entire history of rock ‘n’ roll flies in front of your eyes, the music is dense, the melodies buried inside a maze of complex distortion and head-banging guitar solos.

But it’s not always head banging precisely, Wasif’s music carries you into a mysterious soundscape as it is executed with a lot of impulsivity and an almost possessed state of mind. There were drama, mood alterations, dark exploration of the mind, and triumphs leveling the pain. However, if the riffs were loud and intense, if some songs definitively reached some metal-level, I thought it was very tricky to categorize his music, and I was happy to read he had acknowledged it in an interview: ‘I think that is sort of problematic for my music. I don’t think it fits into one genre. I’m not really interested in what’s around me. I’ve struggled with that my entire life, of maintaining a sacred value to what is inside of me.’

A sacred value? This is how he seems to value music and the process of making music, don’t call it entertainment, this is not a light thing for Imaad Wasif, and calling his album ‘Dzi’, a Tibetan word meaning splendor and light, probably engulfs at once the sacred and the mystery he is talking about. - Alyson Camus

I saw Imaad Wasif perform for the first time in Los Angeles in 2008 when he opened for Darker My Love and The Warlocks. His music has always been haunting, mysterious and evocative, and his performance had an influence on my own musical sensibilities. The second time I saw Wasif perform was with his band, Electric Flower Group, as they shared a bill with Dead Meadow side project Old Testament at the Nomad Collective art space in 2013. The band sounded as powerful and eerie as Wasif's solo work, and I’ve continued to listen and watch out for new music for him.

Now the time has finally come for Wasif, who has worked with the likes of Lou Barlow, Stephen McBean, Lykki Li and Karen O, to release a follow-up to his 2009 solo album, The Voidist. After a long journey through three “lost albums,” he has announced the March release of his new, Bobb Bruno–produced record, Dzi, and an upcoming show on Feb. 23 at Resident to showcase his new music.

... - JORDANNAH ELIZABETH