After making waves with his Zalmi anthem for Pakistan Super League 2021, Kingdom, Abdullah Siddiqui is now dissecting music to explain the process behind creating the PSL anthem ‘Agay Dekh‘.
The electronic music producer broke down the PSL anthem ‘Agay Dekh‘ for Spotify, giving us a look into his musical process. After all he was the composer for the track sung by Atif Aslam and Aima Baig.
In his feature for Spotify, ‘How To Sound Like Me‘, the electropop singer
“When I knew I was going to be doing this anthem, I knew that the first thing I wanted to make sure [of was] it had a dance beat because these anthems normally don’t have dance beats and I love a good club beat. It has more of a dance hall pattern.”
He explained how he found a trumpet loop that sounded ‘instantly super catchy’ so he added that to the mix. Then he wanted ‘a lot of crowd sounds’ so he added that to the mix. Then there were ‘big cinematic drums’, another key foundation of the track.
As for the vocals, according to Siddiqui;
“Vocals that are very tightly treated, like very crisp pop vocals, … There are some synths happening and I kept building and building just to add more intensity because I felt like this song needed to be super intense and upbeat.”
The electronic music producer first gained national fame with his single Resistance. Which was later recorded in a Nescafé Basement session with Xulfi.
Later his super hit Peshawar Zalmi anthem for PSL6 ‘Kingdom‘ even sidelined the main PSL6 anthem.
The singer-songwriter has three albums under his belt, Heterotopia, Metannoya, and Dead Beat poets. Additionally, he was featured on United States (US) Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s Spotify playlist called ‘Muslim Vibes’, along with Shamoon Ismail.
He has also been featured on Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list.
Abdullah Siddiqui is currently an associate producer for the latest season of Coke Studio.
