The new EP from Farhot, the Afghan-born producer from Hamburg, does something very unusual with its title – it specifies a BPM range. And there’s a good reason for that.
As a producer for artists as varied as Talib Kweli, Nneka and Rita Ora, and under his own name, Farhot has carved his reputation based on a singular blend of hip-hop beats with sounds and samples that celebrate his Afghan heritage.
But Raqs (105-118 BPM), released on his own Kabul Fire label, sees Farhot moving into the world of dusty disco and deep house with tracks like the ecstatic opener Mars, the Sirusmo collab Hooyoo, and the bumping closer Al Quds.
The word Raqs is the other major clue as to the new territory he’s exploring here – it means ‘dance’ in Farhot’s native language of Dari.
It’s all still recognisably Farhot, thanks to his ear for an arresting sample – on this EP mostly drawn from North and East African music – but the faster (albeit still moderate) tempos, low-slung basslines and insistent grooves are more likely to remind you of underground house heroes like DJ Koze, Max Graef and Theo Parrish than the hip-hop he’s known for.
The idea came to Farhot – real name Farhad Samadzada – after he began to be booked for DJ sets following the success of his 2021 album Kabul Beats Vol. 2. The trouble was, he wasn’t going to set the dancefloor alight with hip-hop tunes below 100bpm.
Music for dancing
“I’ve been producing music for 20 years now, and here and there during those 20 years, I tried making uptempo music and it always sounded shit,” Samadzada told Inflyte+ over Zoom from his home in Hamburg.
“A person in Turkey told me, music only makes sense if you can dance to it. It sounds trash, but I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, I want to give it another shot and try to make something that I would play’.
“At that time, I was listening to a lot of East African music – Djibouti, Somalia – so that was the area I really focused on. I started sampling old recordings from there, and after two or three sketches, I thought, ‘Okay, this would make sense’. I just make the music 20 or 30 beats [per minute] faster, only sampling from Arabic-speaking countries.”
Samadzada is refreshingly modest about his digging habits – “I’m not really looking for that music, it’s just music that I hear” – but he’s dug up some gems, particularly the joyful vocals on Hooyoo, and the chopped-up, whatever-the-hell-that-is sample on Al Quds, a collaboration with his friend Bazzazian.
“One of my former label employees sent me the sample for Al Quds on Instagram, so I sampled it from there,” he smiles.
“It’s the same thing [as before], just a different tempo. And I’m trying to learn more about music that happens on dance floors or in the club. I wouldn’t say that I’m there yet. It’s just me exploring different tempos. It’s fun.”
The joys of clubbing
Not that Farhot is a complete newcomer to dance music – he doesn’t get out to clubs much these days (“not since fatherhood”) but in his younger days he was a regular at drum and bass parties, and he talks admiringly about producers like Kaytranada, Daft Punk, Moodymann, and his fellow Hamburg native DJ Koze.
“I’m a big fan of his,” he says. “I asked him for a remix and he said ‘Yeah 100%, I’m gonna do it. But getting it done, that’s a different story! I’ve met him a few times, he’s a chilled person. Like no-one else.
“You have so much freedom playing in late hours. And there’s really a great element of enjoying music when it’s loud in the club. It’s just different. It’s a special experience.”
From Afghanistan to Hamburg
Although Samadzada was born in Afghanistan, Germany and specifically Hamburg is all he’s ever known, never spending more than a few weeks away from the city. Growing up in “not the nicest part of town” – he now lives in the bohemian district of St Pauli, close to the city centre – he got into music through American hip-hop.
“I wasn’t feeling the music coming out of Hamburg, so I really grew up on street rap from the US,” he recalls. “NWA and Wu-Tang Clan. I was obsessed with the Clan.”
It’s really by chance that he ended up in Germany at all. He was just a baby in 1982 when his parents fled their home country, and with relatives in Frankfurt, they went there first before settling in Hamburg.
“I was not even a month old and they decided to leave the country in the night on a donkey, going through the hills and the mountains to Pakistan,” he explains.
“My father wasn’t planning on leaving the country. He was okay there, he had his whole family there. But it was during the war with Russia. The invasion started, I believe, in ’79. So they had waited a little bit, but then decided, ‘Okay, it’s not great to stay in this country, having a family’. So my whole family moved out.”
Although the Raqs project is mostly inspired by the music of North and East Africa, Afghanistan has always played a significant role in Farhot’s music, and it stays with him in the name of his label, Kabul Fire Records. So does he feel connected to the country of his birth?
“It’s a weird feeling,” he admits. “I don’t know the country, but I know it’s a big part of my identity, of who I am, of my upbringing. The best way for me to connect with my country is through music.”
Raqs live
Much more interested in playing the new material live than DJing, Farhot has formed a band to do just that. Shortly before our conversation, he confirmed a show in Hamburg this September, and there’s more to come.
“We played in a record store and decided, ‘Okay, we’re not making it a one-time thing’. So it’s going to be a mix of me DJing the stuff and doing live effects and having a trio or, if the budget is good, a quintet, playing the project live.
“That’s my biggest achievement in music, I know the best musicians. And they have to be my friends. I have an incredible drummer who always supports me when it comes to live stuff.
“At the Reeperbahn Festival, we’re gonna play the project. And it’s available to be booked in the whole world.”
Put on your comfiest shoes, we’re going for a dance.