Saturday September 18 * 6pm * outside at Rhizome * masks required * TICKETS

AMAL
Our nerves tell us more about a sound than whatever names we might attach to it, so it makes sense that Amal — a 24-year-old D.C. producer with tiger stripes dyed in his hair — sees his music more as a union of textures than a mixture of styles. Yes, he’s drawing from trap, punk, drum-and-bass and more, but everything on his surging new EP, “Gleam,” feels bright, colorful, thick and wet — the kind of music that resists taxonomy while asking to be heard, seen and touched.

He built his confidence through experience, slowly and all over the place. At 14, when his family was living in Nairobi, Amal got his first part-time job editing sound files for a company that made ringtones. At 16, his family moved back to Silver Spring, where he started playing drums in the jazz band at school and in punk groups on weekends. (His mom already had him playing djembe when he was 11; his dad was playing him Bad Brains records before that.)

At 17, Amal began volunteering as an engineer at the University of Maryland’s radio station, and at 20, he landed a summer internship at Sony Pictures in Los Angeles working on sound design for a “Jumanji” movie. At 21, he was home again, producing, engineering and DJing for an array of D.C. rappers — including WifiGawd and the Khan.

-Chris Richards (Washington Post)

https://amaldc.bandcamp.com/album/gleam

AUTO LOLA
https://linktr.ee/laboostmob

NONSITE
Blasted techno born from PGH warehouses