A New Chapter

I started Faded Grey, my lofi chill-out guitar-driven side project, almost two years ago, as an escape from conforming into the structures of songwriting. I’ve spoken about this before but, for context, I’ll summarize here.

In Greyfade, my main musical outlet, I write almost everything. I play guitar and I sing. I write full structured songs with choruses, intros, solos, riffs, breakdowns, and outros. I don’t impose limits on myself in terms of genres. I play everything from rock, hard rock, metal, death metal, alternative metal, acoustic stuff and everything in between.

However, I have to adhere to song structures when writing a song. The song kind of dictates what I play. For example, I can’t play a crushing thrash riff over a singer songwriter type of song and so on and so forth.

I love writing songs and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. The gift of songwriting that is bestowed upon me is something that I will cherish until my dying day. However, as an artist in general, and as a guitar player in particular, I love improvising. I love plugging in my guitar and just playing anything without thinking about what to play. I love watching my fingers slide on the guitar neck and just create. And, I absolutely adore the feeling of NOT KNOWING what to play next when I’m in the zone improvising and finding that melody that is to be created.

Faded Grey was formed because of that.

I have released six EPs in two years of mostly improvised songs that were created on the spot. The vibe was mainly easy listening music with chill out vibes driven by clean or very lightly distorted guitars. It’s the “shy” quiet alter ego to the loud and heavy Greyfade.

If you know me by now, you know that I like change. I crave change. And in music, it excites me a lot. The novelty factor in it brings me back to my teenage days when I started playing guitar.

I’ll be very frank here: after six EPs in two years, I started to lose that novelty factor. I absolutely cherish what I did in those six EPs but, if I’m being honest with myself, I started to repeat myself. And that excitement that came with novelty started to diminish.

Time for a change.

I wanted to do something that felt new; that felt revitalizing, while still maintaining the freedom that comes with improvisation.

I thought to myself, “Let us ‘unshy’ Faded Grey. Let us make it raw and dirty. Let’s add dirt to the guitars and make it rock, literally.”

Around that time, Hadi, my producer, called and told me that he can’t make the trip to Dubai to record and that we would have to record remotely. Similar to what many bands were doing during COVID days.

Honestly, I was a little skeptical that the recording process would work. How can two people living in different countries record live together? But that skepticism and the new recording method brought with it a newfound energy. I had goosebumps again. It felt like I was recording my first song. That vulnerability; that purity felt very exciting.

On a Sunday in mid June, we both logged in from our computers. He in Lebanon with his tools, Me in Dubai with my guitars. And we recorded three improvised songs. These songs are raw, dirty and chaotic. Even though we were in two different countries while recording, it felt like a band in a jam room creating in unison.

Adding to that, I recorded bass on two songs, something that I haven’t done since the very early recordings of Greyfade.

The aptly titled “A New Chapter,” “Faster,” and the ode to the original Faded Grey, “Reflections” are Faded Grey 2.0. I don’t want to say it's a revamped version of the OG Faded Grey, because it’s not.

The lo-fi and chillout Faded Grey is astounding and beautiful but, for me as an artist, it served its purpose…for the time being. Will I do it again? I don’t know. For now, I am focused on a more raw and dirty Faded Grey.