Rebirth — a treasure for some, trash for many

Guitarist Asad Ahmed takes daring decision to launch album solely for a niche audience

KARACHI: Ye sub to sahi hai, per gana kub shuru hoga (this is all fine and dandy, but when will the song actually start), is the general reaction that you get if you make Pakistani music fans listen to an instrumental song. For them, the ‘song’ is the vocals.

Our musical heroes, therefore, are almost all great vocalists — Mehdi Hassan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Atif Aslam, Junaid Jamshed to name a few.



Music in Pakistan has almost always revolved around the vocalist. Even in bands that were supposed to transcend this trend — rock bands such as Junoon, Entity Paradigm and Call to name a few — it was the vocalist that invariably got the most recognition. It is bordering on the criminal that the great Amir Zaki was known among the masses primarily for Mera Pyar — it wouldn’t even be surprising if he had grown to hate that song.

Asad Ahmed has been in this industry for almost 30 years; he knows this harsh truth better than anyone. He has been a part of the country’s holy trinity — Awaz, Junoon and Vital Signs. He knows that in Pakistan a band is only as good as its vocalist. So what does he do? Like any reasonable man, he goes out and produces an instrumental album.

As much as this is a middle-finger to the masses, it is also a celebration of the select few who appreciate the finer details of a guitar virtuoso. If ever there has been an ode to Joe Satriani and Steve Vai from Pakistan, then this is it.



It is impressive that Ahmed took the daring decision to make an album solely for such a niche audience. Or perhaps, he made it for himself; the album is, after all, named Rebirth. But what is even more impressive though is that he managed to pull it off.

PHOTO: PUBLICITY

The problem that many instrumental albums face is that of monotony. Most guitarists are defined by a certain style. A discerning listener needs just one riff from the guitars of Jimi Hendrix or Tony Iommi to recognise them beyond all doubt. For many, this ‘style’ is even more recognisable than the vocals. But the average listener can find this quite monotonous. Fight this and the guitarist may end up losing his unique style — most would rather cut of their right hand than do so.

Unless you are as versatile and gifted as John Petrucci or Satriani, you can’t possibly have enough in your arsenal to have your cake and eat it too. For mere mortals, it’s usually one or the other.

Ahmed takes the approach of starting off most of his song differently — ranging all the way from vaguely funk to power metal. Yet, somewhere in the middle, almost all of the songs end up being — for lack of a better word — typically Asad Ahmed.



The only notable exception to this theme is the song Strip and Strut, which stands out not only for its unique styling but also for its strange name.

The image of a butt-naked 46-year-old Asad Ahmed performing this song while strutting around a la Angus Young (Ahmed’s picture on his Wikipedia page does have him wearing an AC-DC shirt after all), may be more than a little disconcerting, but instrumental bands tend to pay particular attention to the names of their songs.

PHOTO: PUBLICITY

The challenge, they say, is to make the listener feel a certain way without uttering a single word. Red Sparrowes, for example, tell entire stories in their song names and then produce music to match those stories. The best thing about this is that, if you’re good enough, even abstract thoughts can be communicated via the music alone.

If Purple Rain existed and it was to make music, it would sound exactly like Petrucci’s song. Nobody would argue that the name of arguably Buckethead’s most famous song, Soothsayer, doesn’t make perfect sense; that it doesn’t somehow conjure up an image of a powerful sorcerer. Satriani’s Flying in a Blue Dream makes you almost feel like you’re flying in a blue dream; whatever that may mean. The list goes on and on.



This is the one place where Ahmed has failed. Maximum Throttle doesn’t really feel like, well, Maximum Throttle. The modestly named Will You is more encapsulating than a song boldly titled The Grand Design. Into the Vortex is an inexplicably slow song that feels quite the opposite of being sucked into a vortex.
It may seem counter-intuitive in saying that an instrumental album’s biggest flaw is in its wordings, but that is quite the praise for what Ahmed has achieved.

Still, he would know better than anyone else that this is an album geared towards a select few and a select few alone. For some, Rebirth can be regarded as one of the finest instrumental albums to emerge from these shores. But for most, the song never even started.

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