Sabda makes low-slung dance music, leaves a lot out, and worries about the small stuff.
Sabda makes low-slung dance music for people who notice the small stuff.
Basslines bend, drums shuffle, little sounds appear where they probably shouldn’t, and quite a lot is deliberately left out. Somewhere between all of that sits the thing Kami has been chasing for years: a groove that works immediately, with enough strange detail underneath to keep revealing itself later.
The curiosity started with DJing in 2003. Production followed in 2011 and made listening considerably less normal. Records were no longer just records—they became puzzles. Why did that bassline feel so good? Why did moving one sound slightly late change everything? Why was the almost-empty bit often the best bit?
By around 2015, the rabbit hole had become fairly specific: minimal, house and obscure records from the stranger, groovier ends of underground music. The good ones were often difficult to find, deceptively simple and annoyingly well made. So he collected them, studied them, rebuilt things, got things wrong and kept going.
Eventually that became Sabda.
The music tends to work by subtraction. Elastic low-end carries the weight while displaced harmonies, organic fragments, resampled mistakes and microscopic edits occupy the gaps. Repetition is useful. Accidents are useful. Knowing when to leave something alone is probably more useful than either.
There is house in there, certainly. Minimal too. But Kami has never been particularly good at keeping music in the correct drawer, so other things tend to wander in.
Along the way, Sabda has released music through The Magic Movement, UnderYourSkin Records, Sofa Beats, Hoomidaas and Micronica, and played everywhere from Flash, Gramophone and Sound Nightclub to BOOM, Rainbow Serpent and S.U.N.
When he isn’t making records, he is usually building some sort of audio tool, cooking, sweeping the floor, or doing absolutely nothing except watching clouds move and squirrels negotiate their way from one tree to another. Somehow, most of it eventually finds its way back into the music.
No manifesto, really. Keep the groove. Remove the unnecessary bit. Leave a door open for something weird.
Everything moves like a sine wave. From nothing, through the highs and lows, back to nothing. Music.
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