On Friday November 27, three musicians come together to combine their worlds of music into one fascination and adoration that goes by the name of Distant Karma. Their single "All I Wanna Do" represents who they are, and you are in for a treat. The band describes it as:
"10 years in the making. Sameer Khan, Oscar Seward and Khatima Lamani have been silently creating beautiful sounds through the styles that have inspired them most: Reggae, Dub, Soul and Psychedelic Rock.
After much deliberation and inspiration, the trio reimagine their influences to bring you the first single "All I Wanna Do," an eclectic take on the unmistakable culture of Sound System."
At its surface, “All I Wanna Do” can be described as simply a cool song. When you look at it again, it is a combination of cultures coming together in a melting pot of sound to create something that is retro enough to capture the attention of the original bohemians while remaining fresh enough to be a vessel in these current times. It is a beautiful and hypnotic song that pulls from reggae, dub, soul and psychedelic rock. “All I Wanna Do” is just the beginning of Distant Karma, but it will be interesting to see what the future of the band is and where their exciting sound will evolve into.
I had the opportunity to interview the band about their origins and shared connections.
You can hear "All I Wanna Do" here:
Bandcamp:
Spotify:
Distant Karma: Khatima Lamani, Oscar Seward, Sameer Khan
How did the band start?
SAMEER:
Oscar and I have been working together on various tracks of ours for almost 10 years.
We met on the train after my brother, over hearing Oscar speaking on the phone, asked, “Yo, what language is that?”
And what was to come of that 20-minute or so interaction, I swear has been really crazy, to think at how close we are now is like an unshakable brotherhood. A couple of years later, Oscar and Khatima had met each other and the love that had followed after really I guess brought us three closer together into some inadvertent collective. Khatima has this HUGE and POWERFUL range of voice when she sings and to think that Oscar was once a deep house producer to how he’s evolved is so great to see.
In the beginning, it was a lot of “Oh, we should get Sam to play bass on this” or “Yo, we need to get some of Sam’s guitar on here!” And slowly, slowly, that turned into us secretively creating our first great collection of songs together. I think it really clicked after we recorded one of the songs coming from the EP. After we had finished we just got into this heated discussion about how we just need to put all of what we’ve done into motion. And now here we are just a collective of human beings who love and respect one another, coming together from very different backgrounds and also having something in common. We’ve an international and spiritual connection that connects us to Sweden, Morocco, Pakistan and old blighty! (That’s Britain)
OSCAR:
The band started from a series of collaborations which ended up as us creating a collective. I have known Sameer for around 10 years and Khatima for nearly 8 years. In between those years, we have collaborated on a huge series of tracks through genres that I have produced such as deep house, electronica, dub etc.
The Dub/Reggae vibe started from me and Sameer making our first track together ”Rebel” which is an extremely hard hitting dub track. Khatima had already sang on various reggae tracks before I met her so it was only natural that she started singing on my Dub/Reggae tracks and we started collaborating. In recent years, we usually meet up for a week or long weekend with the purpose to just make music and spend time together.
Distant Karma was created of purely great vibes and a great human connection between us three.
KHATIMA:
I met Oscar and we started making music together as the group DistantCity and I met Sameer through Oscar who had known him for a few years. I loved the music Sam was making and vice versa. We started jamming together and it worked so well.
What are the origins of the band name?
KHATIMA:
We actually took our name from our bands that we had before Distant Karma - Distant from DistantCity and Karma from Karma Sheen. It had such a good ring to it when we created our WhatsApp group, so we just kept it and fell in love with it
OSCAR:
Me and Khatima were formerly a house duo called DistantCity. We have since taken a break from that project as we had been focusing on individual projects. Sameer’s band is called Karma Sheen, so it was actually Sam who came up with the name for a WhatsApp group. The name really stuck and felt super natural with the type of music we make, so we decided on that name.
How would you describe the band?
SAMEER:
Essentially it's a cluster explosion of passion shared and high energy again shared. We share our time and space with each other and take each other's ideas on board all the time. I describe the band most as a family. With three sorcerers all around this wicked cauldron of experience coming together creating new spells and utilising the old ones as a way to further to experience MAGIC.
KHATIMA:
The band has so much potential and ideas that are flying around us.
Sometimes I don’t know where to start but Oscar and Sameer are always there to put the puzzles together.
OSCAR:
I would describe the band as an extremely energetic power with a vision to break boundaries. All of the genres we mix are very familiar, but we have made them an unfamiliar mix which we all love.
What do you want to accomplish as a band?
SAMEER:
Not sure how to answer this one. I guess for me, I want to achieve everything and nothing. Because as long as us three are together wanting to make music together, then I don’t see why we would have any sort of accomplishment type goals. Yeah sure, maybe we could say play the festival scene and try and take this live. But with Covid around, that dream is on a hold. Ultimately, I guess I probably speak for us three when I say, we’re just happy making music together and creating CERTIFIED BANGERS.
KHATIMA:
We want to make music you can feel, enjoy and get your soul vibrations too. With today’s music you don’t have much psychedelic soul or dub so we are excited to come out with something fresh with a lot of feelings and excitement!
OSCAR:
Further to what Sameer mentioned, my personal accomplishment is always the same for any projects that I work on. To make people happy and feel good listening to the music. I’m in love and hugely emotionally connected to all tracks that I work on and to get heart-filled messages or to physically see people enjoy the music is the best payment I could ever ask for.
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