When and how did you first get into music?
My uncle is and always was a music freak. He is a record collector and even had his own record shop. He actually recorded my first tapes. I remember how he used to take me with him to big record stores in Beirut every weekend to check out records and hot releases. We collected them all from Depeche Mode, to Roxy Music, Duran Duran and Michael Jackson. I used to wait eagerly for those long weekends. It’s too bad we were sometimes forced to skip weekends because of different types of freak; war ones.

Who would you say inspires you musically?
My family and my life in general, books and magazines, films, other people’s music. I am very open minded when it comes to music; my record collection starts off with obscure Japanese Ambient, continues with Classical, Jazz, Progressive rock, and believe it or not, ends up with Black Metal.

How would you compare the Beirut nightlife scene to other countries’?
Beirut clubbers are labeled by people in the business as Hot Clubbers - I couldn’t agree more. I call them the Beautiful People. They have rhythm running through their veins. They are party animals. They want to party till the morning light. It is like ‘Hasta la euforia Siempre’. Despite the long civil war and what came after, Beirut was and still is the hottest dance music spot in the Middle East, with due respect to Dubai, Sharm and Amman. In Lebanon we have the mainstream and the underground scenes. Comparing Beirut to northern European cities like Amsterdam, you rarely see regulars at both poles of the scene. Moreover, there are so many other totally different scenes maneuvering day and night that don’t even exist anywhere else in the Middle East.

When did you first start work on The Double Effect? How long did it take you to complete it?
I first started working on it sometime during the spring of 2009. It took me two days to compile it, two weeks to mix it, two weeks to edit it and master it (I had to return to it with fresh ears), but licensing the tracks took more than two months. The label, Daxar, did a very good job of incorporating the tracks that I most wanted to include. You know, it’s like a story, a chain of links: you need all the pieces to get the final picture. Sometimes, unfortunately, you don’t get everything you wanted adopted.

For full interview, check March issue 19.