Zaki strikes back

The last collective piece of work he released as a solo artiste was a little more than 10 years ago. Back then, Aamir Zaki’s much-awaited album, titled Signature for the sole reason that it contained tunes that were original and entirely composed by him, was considered a promising first step to what was expected to be a successful and fruitful career by someone considered to be one of the country’s greatest guitar maestros.

But things didn’t go as planned and Aamir Zaki disappeared instead, surfacing now and then to perform at select venues, collaborating with individuals at small and at times incomplete projects, hopping in and out of the country to and fro from Canada.

For a little over 10 years, there was no second album, only a couple of compositions released via the Internet and/or released via CD by a local music magazine.

His collaborative effort with Hadiqa Kiani, Rough Cut, which had been generating buzz for the last three years released recently to disappointing reviews. This collaboration also saw Aamir return to the realm of music videos in the Jami-directed hauntingly brilliant (both musically and visually) Iss Baar Milo and the Sohail Javed-directed Living this Lie.

Sohail Javed is also expected to work on another video from the album, City of Fallen Angels, which is also the only song in Rough Cut that features Aamir on vocals. With all of that being done, Aamir is now set to finally release a second solo album, titled Radio Star. Unlike other musicians, he hasn’t turned towards a record label to release this project of his, but via FM radio stations.

In a rare but short interview, Images managed to get several statements from the reclusive musician himself about this album and what happened to the ones that were supposed to be released prior to it.

“This one is called Radio Star because I wanted to separate myself from the heavily video-dependant musicians of today. It’s kind of like a response to the Video Killed the Radio Star syndrome,” he said talking about his chosen title for the album and relating it to the infamous song by the British band, The Buggles.

This doesn’t come as much of a surprise considering that Aamir has, via his conversations or writing, always stressed on how music is a medium that should predominantly heard and not ‘seen’. But is he even considering making a video for the album? “No, there will be no video from this album, ever,” going on to add, “there might be a video about six months to a year later when I release another album. Let’s see.”

One has to wonder what happened to the much-anticipated album, The 10 Year Eclipse, he was supposed to release a couple of years ago? In fact he even released a video on a song from the album, Bhula Daina which showed him mysteriously appearing out of the darkness playing a bass guitar — a shot that was supposed to be symbolic of his comeback after a decade.

“I had to delete two albums before this one because I could just not agree with the expectations of the record labels wanting eye-candy videos,” he replied, “I had to delete The 10 Year Eclipse and another album before that because record labels and TV stations only seem to worry about videos and have no interest in music really. I’m just wanting to break away from the pretentious video/artiste expectations that accidentally came into my life through the release of Mera Pyar.”

About the videos he made for Rough Cut he says, “The videos had nothing to do with the lyrics of the song. The latter were the most important thing for me as a songwriter. The record label managed to print them all wrong, and after so many requests and resending of the lyrics file from my computer, they are still being printed all wrong. That is one very important reason for my breaking away from the videos and record labels in Pakistan.”

Talking about his plans Aamir says, “I will only be releasing music through FM radio and playing live, because that’s what music is all about. I also want to keep releasing albums regularly, at least one or maybe two a year through FM radio. I just want the music to be the most important communication between myself and the listeners.” Hopefully so, Aamir Zaki, though he doesn’t venture out much into the public eye, does have a tendency of announcing plans that... well, either don’t work out or take the longest time to do so.

First Published:
Images
October 21, 2007