Waleed (USA / UK)

Waleed was born in Washington, D.C. to Iraqi-Puerto Rican parents. He grew up with his mother's Latin stars (Juan Luis Guerra, Marc Anthony, Danny Rivera, Jerry Rivera) mixed with the sounds from his Iraqi grandmother's flat. ‘The Iraqi satellite TV would be on all day, playing the top 40 tracks in the Arab world’ Waleed recalls, ‘it was a really beautiful way to grow up, these two cultures mixing while also being surrounded by American culture and an American life’.

This childhood influence - combined with his day job as a programmer, a much more binary process than making music, where Waleed loves the fact that you can always make tangible progress - gave Waleed a unique perspective on dance music. With a strong focus on sound design, Waleed creates music that is simultaneously ecstatic and melancholic by meshing cultures and references.