New York City-based DJ and producer ZAINAB will release her debut EP, ‘Canal View’, on 14th August via Technicolour, the imprint of Ninja Tune. The announcement coincides with the arrival of the EP’s third single, ‘Banglahore’, featuring Surya Sen.
The EP’s title references the Lahore neighbourhood where ZAINAB spent her childhood. Its tracks, including the earlier single ‘Jadoo’, feature lyrics in Urdu, a language she described as “severely lacking in the dance music scene” despite being spoken by an estimated 246 million people worldwide.
“Banglahore is a mix of ‘Bangladesh’ and ‘Lahore’, the two places Surya Sen and I are from,” ZAINAB said. “The title came from his lyrics, and immediately I thought: ‘that’s the name of the track’. To me, it represents collaboration between Bangladesh and Pakistan. There’s a difficult history there, and a lot of animosity, so the song is symbolic in that way too. It’s about saying: we can get along. I love my Bangladeshi brothers and sisters, and vice versa.”
“I see the EP as an amalgamation of Lahore and New York: looking back and forth between both places and asking what those sounds become when they come together,” ZAINAB explained. “It symbolises a view from a specific place: my perspective as someone who grew up at the edge of town, looking out at the world and being influenced by so many different things. In a sense, the EP is my perspective on everything I grew up consuming in Lahore, and then later as an immigrant in New York.”
‘Canal View’ is out on 14th August via Technicolour.
