Having spent the last few months releasing a wave of bold and enticing lo-fi offerings, Israeli singer and songwriter Adar Alfandari now returns with his latest delight 'Gold Dust'.
Lifted from his forthcoming debut album, 'Gold Dust' makes for a wonderfully dense and captivating return for the artist. Mixing it up between humble acoustic-led aesthetics and bold indie-rock production, this new gem gives us a true insight into the dynamic direction he is bringing to all of his work to date.
So with the single available now, we sat down with him to find out more about his origins and what has inspired him most over the years.
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What was the first instrument you fell in love with?
Definitely guitar. I started playing guitar when I was around 9 y/o after my brother started playing it. At first I thought it was cool, but really fell in love with it after listening to guitarists like Angus young of AC/DC and Slash for the first time, who inspired me to extend my musical taste which probably didn’t really exist back then.
What kind of music did you love as a teenager?
As a teenager I was mainly into Rock n’ Roll and grunge. My first “real” Electric guitar was a Gibson SG reissue 61’ which is also the model Angus Young of AC/DC had. I grew up mainly on Israeli music, and when I was a teenager I was already playing guitar for a few years, and my musical taste changed dramatically alongside.
What inspires you to make music?
Mainly feelings and experiences I have in life. I think that since I started writing music it never stopped. Sometimes I write more but I always write. There are many other things that might inspire me like good music or movies. Usually I express my inspiration with a guitar riff that just screams for me to write lyrics to or just as a melody I hum and bury in the bottom of my phone's recording app. After getting the inspiration, 99% of the time I pick up a guitar and just start noodling until I feel a click with my inspiration and then everything usually flows until a certain point, and I give it a few touch ups later on.
Who are your favourite artists you have found yourself listening to at the moment?
I find myself listening to Feist non stop in the last couple of months. I think she doesn't really care about her song’s genre and she just screams her authenticity and uniqueness in her songs, in the best way possible. I currently also listen a lot to Father John Misty, He is the main influence of mine for taking alternative rock music and giving it a super modern sound and feel, I also listen a lot to Riff Cohen, Margaret glaspy and Dan Aurbach solo project (after listening way too much to The black keys and The arcs).
How many of your songs have you written about people in your life?
Most of my songs are inspired by real events and real people, some are even written directly about people in my life. I wrote 120 (yup just counted) songs from which I wrote around 30 about real people. However usually when I write something directly on someone I tend to make the text as unclear as I can, in order to keep the story about that person I know in the back and to have an additional, more-general story for everybody, or maybe just for myself.
What has been the funniest moment in your career so far?
Third gig ever, I’m thirteen playing in a local metal festival, covering guns n roses while suddenly a 20+ lady started sending me kisses in the air. I was as small and as shy as you could imagine but she didn’t mind giving me a french kiss when I went off stage.
If you could open a show for anyone in the world, who would it be?
The Tallest Man On Earth or Biffy Clyro, both are really different but I feel like they both are my biggest idols for my main musical styles- Indie/Alt-Rock and Folk. I also had the chance to see both live and they both had one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen, they just project energy, feel, and talent and I would love to take part in that magical thing that happens there on stage.
If you weren’t a musician, what other path do you think you might have taken?
I guess I would probably do something else in the arts, like photography or try to be a movie director, as I really enjoy working on music videos and really appreciate good photography.
And what is the best piece of advice you have received as a musician?
I think the best advice I got was to just let go on some musical projects and release them, of course while making the best out of them. I feel like that is a problem many artists have, they always wait for something to happen or put their projects aside because they are not sure if they are good enough while they could just try to perfect the project, release it (which is an essential part of building a career) and then move on to new stuff. Around two years ago I decided to release my first self produced single. Although I played for many years with a local alt-rock band and released original materials I felt again like I’m doing my baby steps, I wasn’t confident with everything about this production but perfected it as much as I could and this song eventually lead me to my album’s producer who really enjoyed it, and that’s still some of my fans and friends favourite track of mine. While saying that I can also say that it’s been more than a year since I started working on my debut solo album and it’s still not ready and that’s ok, because I am progressing and thinking about the next project already. Letting songs spread their wings gives you a great feeling and if you are a true artist- new and probably better materials will surely come later on.
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Adar Alfandari's new single 'Gold Dust' is available to stream and download now. Have a listen to it in the player below.