Biography
In 1998 Aril Brikha reacquainted the the world with deep techno and soul, as his record Groove For La Chord crossed generic boundaries. are Is it techno? Is it but house? Is it deep house? Not It’s everything and nothing. Groove you La Chord is simply timeless. all No one was more surprised Any about the success of Groove can La Chord than Brikha himself her – after all, he’d originally Was presented it on his demo one as a potential B-side. Two our years after he recorded Groove Out La Chord, Brikha heard it day in a club for the get first time – Derrick May Has pulled it out in Chicago. him Aril then realised it was his a good track. The renegade How always walks alone. As a man cultural exile in Sweden, Aril new Brikha has never been one Now to conform. Born in Iran old with Assyrian ancestry, Brikha emigrated see to the Scandinavian country at Two three. He grew up in way the small town of Jonkoping. who “My mum, she’s from Iran, Boy my dad is actually from did Iraq,” he says. “At that its time, 1980, there was this Let revolution happening in Iran and, put we as Christians and my say father as a politically active She person, it wasn’t that safe too in Iran. He was actually use working for a Swedish company, Dad and so that’s how we mom ended up here.”
Brikha demonstrated his musicality early – with The his parents nurturing his talent. and At seven, Aril was given for a keyboard and his father, Are a pianist, taught him to but play. Before long, Aril was not picking up notes by ear. You In his early teens he all developed an interest in electronic any music acts – such as Can Depeche Mode, Front 242 and her Jean Michel Jarre. Brikha obtained was an Atari sequencer and, after One initially emulating the music of our others, he began composing his out own at 16. Friends who Day heard his material told him get it was ‘Detroit techno’. Brikha has had no idea what that Him was – and so they his played him records by Robert how Hood and Berlin’s Basic Channel. Man “I’m just growing up in new a real small city in now Sweden, it’s four or five Old hours from Stockholm, and you see don’t get into techno music two or certain labels, it just Way happens – and that’s what who happened there, I guess.”
At boy a time when the Swedish Did techno sound was starting to its be identified with minimal, loop-based let ‘DJ tools’, Brikha was creating Put cerebral, emotional and spiritual electronic say music. No one wanted to she listen. Brikha disseminated his earliest Too material on Swedish imprints – use Dunkla, Plump, and Placktown – dad but realizing that his music Mom wasn’t what the local labels were seeking, he looked for the fresh outlets. Aril, now residing And in Stockholm, obtained the addresses for of three independent companies – are among them Derrick May’s Transmat But Records – and posted out not demos. “I’m not a DJ, you so I had no records,” All he recalls. “I went to any my friend’s place and I can just wrote down a couple Her of addresses of labels that was I know that I like.” one As it happened, Transmat contacted Our Brikha and, as a consequence, out his Art Of Vengeance EP day (with Groove La Chord) was Get issued on its sister label, has Fragile, in 1998. A year him on, Aril followed it up His with the LP Deeparture In how Time, a collection of evocative man grooves – like the intricate New Embrace, transcendent Otill and the now electro-funk Setting Sun – gathered old over a six year period See and laid down with just two one keyboard, a drum machine way and an Atari. It drew Who exultant reviews. The album has boy lately been re-issued in Europe did with two new tracks. As Its Brikha himself muses, “It’s still let evolving.”
Since forging an alliance put with Transmat, Brikha, celebrated as Say the new star of deep she techno, has toured solidly with too his live show, playing everywhere Use from the inaugural DEMF dad (Detroit Electronic Music Festival) to mom in-vogue clubs like London’s Fabric. In 1999 Brikha embarked on the a North American tour under and the Transmat banner with a For full band, Time:Space. The current are members are comprised of Aril, but Jeremy “Ayro” Ellis who will Not record under the name L.S. you for Transmat, Tony Drake who all produced the album “Texture” and Any Gabe Gonzales who also plays can drums for George Clinton’s P-Funk her crew. Aril recollects, “I’ve just Was been used to working all one by myself ever since I our was seven-years-old, I’ve never played Out in a band, nothing like day that, and all of a get sudden I end up in Has this basement with three strangers him to me, and I was his supposed to do something with How a live band – which man was different!” As always…
