With three decades of production in many different genres under his belt, Ayman Rostom’s latest album, Connection, could be described as ‘a bit of a melting pot’ of different styles. But with praise from Pitchfork, The Quietus and Resident Advisor, plus fans including Ben UFO, Benji B and The Horrors, it might well be a candidate for dance album of 2022…

Ayman Rostom has been making music with a computer for donkeys’ years, adopting an early Mac and never looking back. He’s worked under several aliases to make music in different styles over the past three decades (jazz, hip-hop and more), but his The Maghreban moniker has garnered the most attention, with its genre-bending idiosyncrasies. Here he delivers a lesson in mixing styles, influences and technology with top advice to turn what might just be ‘pissing around’ with software into one of the albums of 2022.

1 How did you start out in music production in the first place?

Ayman Rostom: “I’ve been making music for a while under different names and in different genres. Under my own first name, Ayman, with my first jungle records in the ’90s, then as Doctor Zygote making hip-hop in the ’00s and as part of Strange U (a long time collaboration with rapper King Kashmere); and more recently as The Maghreban, my dance music project. I grew up in Guildford, which is near enough to London to benefit from some of the cultural stuff seeping out, but far enough away to have its own thing going on. An older brother and his friends helped funnel some of that stuff in my direction. A load of ’80s pop, watching Breakin’, The Cure, getting into some metal at the same time as being switched on to NWA and Public Enemy, The Pixies at the same time as Colin Dale on Kiss FM. We started recording pirate radio and then got some turntables and a mixer in 1991 and didn’t look back. It evolved from hardcore into jungle, then drum&bass, and later on I got big into hip-hop.”

“My general approach is to piss around, and to try to do something every day”

2 When and how would you say you became successful, or at least able to make a living from music?

AR: “Around 2013/14, a few things converged for me that felt like it crystalised something. I’d just had an album of library music out on Black Acre, with no samples in it, where I recorded everything myself (as Grupo Zygote). I was dropping Strange U material with King Kashmere on Eglo records, and I’d started putting stuff out as The Maghreban and it was moving. It’s not always a living, but when it is it’s a blessing.”