assaad lakkis – aka: abstrakt
Founder of abstrakt collision, composer, guitars, sound effects, spoken-word.Background:
Lived and worked for quite sometime in the u.s, all musical skills were absorbed from there. Played with every concievable type of musician & various bands. With roots firmly planted in rock assad grew into experimenting with different musical genres such as : jazz-fusion-rock-funk-hip-hop-free jazz & the list goes on.
Frank zappa, john Coltrane, miles davis, steve coleman, john mclaughlin, medeski martin & wood, mike keneally & steve vai are major influences on his quirky compositional endeavours of what is now, abstrakt collision.
In the u.s assad played shows with batume’s brew (exp. Jazz). The band featured glenn burris, composer, sax player who had done work with miles davis, he was also featured on miles davis' album man with the horn & the song shout was one of his compositions. Batume’s brew was a superb band,and assaad walked away having learnt quite a lot from them, 1998-1999. During that period he met great talented spoken-word artist named eric g. bailey who played with arkology (exp. Funk-hip-hop-spoken word band) his residency in the band was short-lived as eric decided to form a new band and ended up cutting a cd with assaad & tim Donahue (keys&synth-samplers) called god’s pager, they cut an improv. album called heavy water blues.
During his years in the u.s (1996-1999) he sessioned around with different genre’s of bands, mostly rock. Assaad gigged around here and there, but his true love was experimenting with fusion, jazz, rock, free jazz and whatever sounded interesting and out there, hence music of non-music.
He left the u.s end of 1999 to be back in dubai, where his family was. Eventually he decided to put abstrakt collision into perspective. After writing a bunch of compositions, all a bit obscure and in high demand of good musicians, he searched for open minded musicians, who had no problems playing the sort of stuff he was writing. It was a mission as dubai is a small place & note-worthy musicians are in limited supply, but he pulled it off.
The collision crew you will soon get to know, click here, really helped him execute what he was striving for. Having worked with different musicians for different songs and projects, abstrakt collision came to life and was ready to explore the unknown!
Abstrakt Collision’s performance have been overwhelmingly positive. Whether opening for Stanley Jordan at the Dubai International Jazz festival, Curtis Fuller at Jazz at DMC, or throwing in MC’s and top turntabalists to any random show, Abstrakt Collision have proven themselves a dynamic, eco-friendly, and essential force in changing the way the general public listens to and perceives the world around them.In his own words:
"My idea was to put together musicians from different backgrounds & create some sort of stew with an essence of interesting, yet appealing genre of music that will somehow keep you in anticipation, and forever trying to figure out exactly how mentally disturbed these individuals are!"As of now Assaad Lakkis the founder of Abstrakt Collision is about to release his 3rd album 'polidicks' with the band which will include a dvd documentary done by film producer Maurice Bouri. watch out for that and check out the 'polidicks' trailer on the band's myspace page or on youtube.
peace!!
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