Playing the piano keyboard might seem as simple as pressing some keys, yet it is much grander than that—an intricate dance of rhythm, emotion, and skill.
In his home studio, Lotfy Mohamed Lotfy, a 29-year-old pianist and experimental musician, pressed the long white and black piano keys with ease, producing a rich and complex tune.
“I like listening to and playing intense and complex tunes,” Lotfy told Egyptian Streets during an interview. “It doesn’t need to be happy or sad or even defined. Music can express emotions much more vividly than lyrics.”
As he struck keys, a tune in the sound of the yueqin, also known as the moon guitar, a Chinese musical instrument with an Eastern tone, played. Lotfy layered it with a synthesized, white-noise-like ringing in the background. Shortly after, a fast-paced drum was added to the track, followed by a buzzing, fly-like sound, before his swift fingers played the piano, birthing a Western tone.
The track playing in his studio was Attune, one of his favorite tracks on his album, SWLD, released on 1 December 2024 on Spotify, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp, he explained to Egyptian Streets.
“This album is an expression of my most sacred, deep, and unrecognized feelings,” Lotfy said. “I wanted to create a body of work that is coherent. Sort of like an extended track that takes the listener through a journey they can relate to in their own way.”
SWLD explores the process of mind over mayhem, trying to make sense of scattered parts of an experience dominated by strong emotions. The album is a form of catharsis that allows for the simplification of complex ideas, bringing them clearly into consciousness and enabling their expression.
The album relies on the piano to transform these scattered parts into a clear expression that resonates with the listener, while the syncopated beats emphasize the urgency and intensity of having to deal with, process, and make sense of them.
For Lotfy, music creation is similar to journaling, but its intention is discovered rather than initiated. His music, often improvised prior to development and curation, is rooted in his emotions and human experience with its good, bad, and mundane moments.
“I use music creation as an output. I play from my heart and when a tune makes me feel something untouched before, I develop it further, hoping listeners can also discover something about themselves through my music.”
On the other hand, when creating a film score, his keystrokes are planned, following a fed context. Lotfy has worked on three independent and local short films, El Balacona (The Balcony, 2020), Hadith Moshawash (Incoherent Speech, 2020), and Rokn Motgawez El Aba’ad (A Corner Beyond Dimensions, 2022), which was final-listed in The Marrakech Short Film Festival fifth edition in 2022. When composing for a film, he lets it guide his music, translating how he felt watching scenes and the plot to his music.
During the interview, Lotfy shared the unraveling of his love for music over the years. As a middle schooler, he used to play his twin sister’s accordion, which she borrowed from school to practice. He did not give much thought to practicing or dedicating himself to music until years later.
At the age of 20, he took an interest in his sister’s childhood mini-keys keyboard and learned how to cover some of his favorite songs and movie soundtracks on it. As he explored more genres, his music taste expanded from listening to electronic dance music, dubstep, trap, rap, R&B, and pop, to include rock and indie/alternative music.
Sharing a liking to the English rock bands, Muse and Radiohead, with his friends, they fantasized about forming a band and playing music. The dream grew bigger and, encouraged, he bought a musical instrument. He narrates his experience of going with his then-girlfriend, now wife, to buy a Casio keyboard, while she bought a bass guitar.
“We covered our favorite music of all types. But a couple of months later, I wanted to do more and felt that the keys were not enough, so I dabbled in music production, bought a MIDI, and started discovering more sounds and ways to create tunes,” Lotfy said.
Influenced by the untraditional tunes of his favorite Radiohead album, Amnesiac (2001), he explored new music and experimented with fresh tones. During his first year of playing and producing, 2018, he created tens of tracks with no specific plan or structure, just fitting tunes and harmonies together to his liking.
“Music is an outlet for me,” Lotfy described, noting that it is a way he can communicate with himself and his listeners.
“It’s not always easy to recognize how I feel, and sometimes music, by other artists, or mine, can shed light or draw my attention to feelings I didn’t know I had,” he said. “Sometimes I would play a melody or put something together and it immediately feels familiar, yet new, alien, and intense.”
It is so powerful how music can make its audience feel something they could not before, be it at a comfortable or sorrowful time, he believes.
“The ability for music to help me tap into buried, unprocessed, and subconscious feelings and thoughts made me want to create music for two reasons,” Lotfy said. “First, to express things I do not usually express on demand by weaving a relatable and influential piece of music.”
Another driving force for him is the hope that people will connect with his music and discover more about themselves through it.
“I want my music to be a tool for listeners to dive deeper into their emotions—the familiar ones and the completely unknown,” he said.
Inspired by films, visual art, and his biggest musical influence, German musician and composer Nils Frahm, the pianist experimented and practiced. With gained experience, his music evolved into structured and intentional compositions.
“While my music is a canvas for my repressed and bottled-up emotions, which are often unstructured and unclear, I try to make my tracks the opposite: polished and deliberate,” Lotfy noted.
During his years of practice, he studied and analyzed music charts, notes, structuring, composition techniques, improvisation, experimentation, sampling, synthesis, timbre, texture, mixing, mastering, and counterpoint. He added, “I also learned about scales and the moods or atmospheres they create for the listener, which helps me make my music more calculated and conscious.”
The concept of Lotfy’s album reflects the very reason Lotfy plays music—to express his raw emotions in their full intensity, as the album explores the process of mind over mayhem, taking the listener on a cathartic journey that transforms scattered emotional chaos into clarity.
“The curation of the tracks within an album is crucial to its creation,” Lotfy shared. “You don’t want the album to feel overcrowded with too much happening, nor do you want it to feel random, lacking a clear beginning or end. There needs to be a recurring sound or motif to tie the tracks together and carry the album’s flow.”
Starting with 20 tracks for the album, Lotfy had mixed, cut, and refined tracks and “weaved the story” he wanted to tell. Yet, he was not sure where he fit in the music industry.
“There is an underground electronic music scene in Egypt and good musicians such as ZULI, Amr El Alamy, and Youssef Abozeid,” Lotfy said. “However, it’s a very tight-knit community that supports itself. Very few people from outside the scene, which is obscure, know of and support it, so breaking into it is very challenging.”
Many artists with diverse sounds and styles have paved the way for experimental music in Egypt. “Many new Egyptian artists are emerging and putting out music that is influential locally and internationally.”
People who actively look for new and experimental music will find it, and in a saturated market with so much content and music, exposure and reaching people is a challenge for Lotfy.
Because there is an audience and a scene for experimental music, he has been encouraged to do more and put his music out. The promise of his music being heard and reaching people is why.
“I want my listeners to feel something new, get in touch with their most intimate emotions, set into an uncharted atmosphere, and acknowledge their simple joys and struggles of life,” Lotfy said.
He tries to curate fresh and untried music, using different methods and sounds to guide his listeners.
“The more novel the harmony, the deeper its emotional resonance.”
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