Listen :: Dead Nature streams debut EP, 'Taking My Shadow'

Credit: Amin Musa

Words: Ali Mack

Tarek Musa has released his debut solo EP under his new Dead Nature project.

The four-track 'Taking My Shadow', released through his own Dead Nature Records, is now streaming online, and you can hear in full below.

Opening track ‘Fire In Your Soul’ bolts out of the starting blocks with an incendiary blast of art-rock energy and was one of the earliest songs Tarek penned as Dead Nature.

“The voice note on my iPhone was just a bass guitar and a mumble of vocals, but I knew the message for this song was meant to be about pulling through challenging times," he shares on the song. "I had a close friend that was always on my mind, and I knew there was only so much I could do to help them. The overspill of emotions I had were channelled into this song as a message for anyone going through a tough time.”



Previous single ‘In My Heart’ brings in a wave of thunderous drum cascades and electrifying buzz-wire guitars. It is a song where the writer looks back on the relationships of yesterday with the wiser eyes he wears today. “My teenage years are all over this song,” he says, “it is definitely a song about escaping and leaving your past behind.”

Elsewhere, he channels the eternal philosophy of Marcus Aurelius in the cerebral 'Pride (Wake Them Up)’. Referencing the personal writings of the Roman Emperor published as the Meditations collection, Tarek found inspiration in his ruminations on the dichotomy of pride and its inherent deceptiveness. “Spending good chunks of my life touring and locked away in a studio, there have been moments where I have questioned my surroundings, and the effects they can have on mental health. 'Pride is a master of deception: when you think you're occupied in the weightiest business, that's when he has you in his spell' - Marcus Aurelius said that."

The cathartic and atmospheric ‘Rookwood’ closes the EP. A ballad written for Tarek himself, it is a diary entry about life in his childhood home dusted-off and opened up for the world to read. As spacial synthesisers hum and whirr into an elegant crescendo, ‘Rookwood’ moves the listener to a grandiose finale.