Aril Brikha

Berlin, Germany

Oceans, A Part.

ElectronicTechnoElectronicTechno

Behind the Music

Since I usually work with instrumental electronic music, I want to combine the dance floor-oriented beats with my love for cinematic soundtracks and ambient tones for this project. I've always been known to make emotional, deep, melodic techno music and not your usual dance-floor sound. This project speaks to me in the sense that it allows me to explore both worlds. I want to explore the sonic emotions around certain subjects in The Outlaw Ocean without necessarily relying on words.

Aril Brikha
About Aril Brikha

Born in Iran with Assyrian ancestry, Brikha emigrated to Scandinavia at three. As a cultural exile in Sweden, Aril Brikha has never been one to conform. In his early teens, he developed an interest in electronic music acts such as Depeche Mode, Front 242 and Jean Michel Jarre. After initially emulating the music of others, he began composing his own at 16. At a time when Swedish techno was being defined by minimal, loop-based “DJ tools,” Brikha was creating cerebral, emotional and spiritual electronic music. 

Since forging an alliance with the Transmat label, Brikha, celebrated as a star of deep techno, has toured solidly with his live show, playing everywhere from the inaugural Detroit Electronic Music Festival, to clubs like London's Fabric and Tokyo’s Air and Yellow. After a production hiatus, Brikha re-emerged with projects on some of Europe's most forward thinking and popular electronic labels, showcasing the width and breadth of his production style. 

Brikha, now residing in Berlin, made the decision in 2010 to set up a label of his own. A string of releases followed over the next few years. Israeli artists, Deep'a & Biri, and Iran-born Aril united for a project from which proceeds were donated to an Israel/Palestine peace organization. More recently, Aril acquired new hardware and moved his old synths from Stockholm to Berlin. This led to a new breeze and a surge in inspiration, which will allow a big batch of tracks and projects to be finished soon.



Winner of the 2021 Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Innovation in Journalism

The Journalism behind the Music

All music in this project is based on The Outlaw Ocean, a New York Times Best-Selling book by Ian Urbina that chronicles lawlessness at sea around the world. This reporting touches on a diversity of abuses ranging from illegal and overfishing, arms trafficking at sea, human slavery, gun running, intentional dumping, murder of stowaways, thievery of ships and other topics.

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