Photography by Ṭaüs
New Vibes/اجواء جديدة gives a snapshot of emerging and established independent, experimental, and underground sound artists and projects in their own words <3
Ṭaüs Jafar (he/they/we) is an Arab diaspora transdisciplinary artist whose work reflects the energetic connections between natural elements, the self, and soundscape. They’re committed to the liberatory potency of sound and sensuality, meaningful collaboration, and the narrative possibilities of storytelling through their music and sound design in records as well as film, video-game, and installation scores. Read more of their reflections below.
You can find more of their work on YouTube, Bandcamp, Instagram and Spotify.
Tell us a bit about yourself…
Response delivered by Taüs through original photography
How do you describe your sound?
Working with sound is an opportunity to create with a very subtle fabric of energy, air, space, and raw sensation — the quilt of things underlying everything. My sound is a conscious effort to, at the subtlest levels, co-create new world orders based on fusions of sonic relationships that I organize and blend in ways that open liberatory possibilities. The base is an ecstatic state, which allows me to work in many directions, including toward the sublimation of fear, despair, and pain, without bypassing their presence. This keeps me safe to explore many realities without doing harm to myself.
Love is what fuels this project of rearranging sonic hierarchies into harmonious relationships. It’s both political and an offering to collective healing.
Can you tell us about your latest project, and what you’re looking forward to?
Last year, I started releasing albums — Arranged Marriage and The Single Years. It felt exciting and vulnerable, and I’m in love with the storytelling process that goes into making full length records. While I’ll keep making these, I am increasingly attracted to weaving in other art forms. Along those lines, I’m working on something now that is pushing me to the limits of my creative comforts and capacities, which I welcome. I like working at the edge of possible-impossible.
Alongside these personal projects, I just finished scoring a few soundscapes that support the creations of other queer artists, Ngozi Olojede, Banyi Huang, and Pedro Lavin. As I work with them, I feel like I’m witnessing queer artists who are standing on their genius and channeling their creative prowess toward the expansive possibilities that are going to save this species. It’s one of life’s deepest honors to have the opportunity to hear someone and reflect them back sonically. I feel blessed to work with people who understand the stakes of the moment and who are taking responsibility.
What is one of your tracks that you connect with the most, at the moment? Can you tell us more about it?
“Conscience,” from my record Arranged Marriage. It was the first song I wrote for that record, and it created the space through which all the other songs came. The song contains the kinetic charge, growing pangs, and transformative interchange between two poles, which are reflected by two memories embedded in the piece. One, a shame-imbued moment when, closeted, I went with my then-partner to a roadside motel so that we could be together without being seen publicly. The other, while in the thrusts of liberated revival, I checked myself into a roadside bed & breakfast alongside the Pacific Ocean, solo, and made love for the first time, to myself, on my own terms.
Reflecting on it further, it also turned into a memoir of the moment when— as a person and a performer — I walked away from basically everything to transition. The song still feels so completely private and personal to me, and it’s also out there to be anything to anyone.
Reflect with us, is there something on your mind you’d like to share?
حضارات سادت ثم بادت
Some of their audio/visual work:
Safety in Motion Pt II – produced/written/performed | directed, shot, edited
2nd Coming – produced/written/performed | directed, shot, edited
Mood of Water – produced/written/performed | directed, shot, edited
Total Habibi – produced/written/performed | original paintings, animated by Fabiola Rossa