Saturday 9 May 2009

Blank Notes


It's been a while since i updated this blog. I got a little depressed when we lost the MTV Arabia New Act... Nah, thats not the reason, i suck at updating the blog, period. But i got good news, we have a new website up (Thanks Creative Concepts) www.abriband.com & more importantly we are releasing our new album Blank Notes on the 20th May. We are so excited about the album finally coming out. We have all been mad busy getting things ready for the release. We got an album signing session at the Mall of the Emirates on the 20th May (Come down if you live in Dubai) and then we are having a party at Club Alpha (Come down to that too). 
So I'm back on the blog circuit, i will try my best to update our blog as often as possible, keep y'all in the loop as the date of the album release gets closer. Peace.

Tuesday 14 October 2008

ABRI'S "A PIECE OF YOURSELF" - EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PREVIEW
can be seen @ www.Brianceau.com
MTV Europe Music award nominee "ABRI" just recorded their first music video in Dubai, UAE. The video took place over two days at the SAE and at a private villa in the Marina.
"It was a lot more involved than I'd thought it'd be, but also a lot of fun. The production team, we're really patient, positive and professional. I think the lookof the video really goes with the song. The video's warm tones really seem to compliment the analogue sound of the song." Julian Symes
"A Piece of Yourself" was created by an upcoming director "A.M". "It's a feel good song and I wanted to convey the message of leaving a legacy behind of speaking and understanding within each other. Working with the boys was an absolute pleasure, given the timeline and pressure that we were under.The song and the chemistry of ABRI on set made it an easy job for the director's chair".
A BIG Thank you to:
AM Director
Markus Director of photography
Stephen 1st Assitant Director
Rene 1st Assistant Direcor
Diego 2nd cam / ART
Slam Graphic support
Linda Stylist
Simone, Saadia, Shahi
MTV Arabia (Nadine, Lydia and crew)
Clothing provided by:
The Paul Frank Store and Five Green

"A Piece Of Yourself"


Tuesday 23 September 2008

ABRI'S QUEST TO LIVERPOOL


Hey, here is the short video i was tellin y'all about. We decided to make short promo videos of our campaign to win the MTV ARABIA NEW ACT award so we that we could perform at the MTV EUROPE MUSIC AWARDS in LIVERPOOL. So here is the first of the promo videos on our quest to get to Liverpool. It was directed and shot by our trusty manager Rebecca Brianceau. The location was a newly constructed highway in the outskirts of Dubai. It took less than ten minutes to shoot, not only because it was a breeze(excuse the pun) to shoot but because we it was insanely hot outside !!!!, it was around midday when we went out. I think it came out pretty well. i love the shot where we are looking at the car pass us by..... we look hilarious. We definitely want to do a couple more promo vids before the voting ends, so watch this space.

Laters,
H.

Monday 22 September 2008

'VOTE for ABRI' campaign




I'm back peoples. As i was telling y'all , Rami & I were busy working on the artwork for the MTV ARABIA NEW ACT nomination. Well, its finally done. I sketched out my idea, told Rami what i was visualizing and he cranked it out on Photoshop and Illustrator. I think Rami hates me now, i was watching over his shoulder the whole time he was working on the image, i kind of got on his nerves. I can't help it, I'm a perfectionist. But anyways, he did an amazing job of putting it all together (We took the pictures of each other and the instruments at Julian's place, we used an old shot of Dre cause he's up in the UK). I love the fact that the image has got an old school feel to it. I was looking into back-in-the-day USSR political propaganda posters as far as the composition goes but i still wanted to have an urban twang to it, does that make sense? I'm planning on putting this image everywhere; the net, e-mail, t-shirts, flyers (More on all that in a little bit)... you know, just to get some buzz going about the nomination. I would still like to use the image alone later on in the future though. let me know what y'all think.
We are steadily getting some more press. UAE based newspaper gave us a whole page in their paper. Check out the article:
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/09/20/10246487.html
Big ups to Gulf news for that.
I will be back quick. I have got a really short video to show y'all next time, so stay tuned.

Peace
Hamdan

Friday 19 September 2008

We Are Going To Win!!!!!




The votes for MTV ARABIA NEW ACT are still coming in. Big ups to everyone who has been voting so far. Keep at it my peoples, we are going to win this!!! We are starting to get some press about the nomination which is really cool. One of them is Dubai-based newspaper XPRESS. We are sharing the article with another nominated artist Karl Wolf. To read the whole article go to http://www.xpress4me.com/life/general/general/20009648.html .


As y'all can see from the pic our man Dre a.k.a Planet Mohawk a.k.a PHawk is M.I.A. Well, since our UK trip he stayed back in London until things started to take off in Dubai. Now that we have been nominated and got a few gigs lined up from October onwards (more on the gigs soon) Dre will be back in Dubai by the beginning of October. We are all pretty excited to have the whole band together. I'm itching to get back to performing live, thats where i belong.


Julian, Rami and I have been holding down the fort, we been meeting up regularly, practising and all. We came up with an amazing idea for the 'VOTE FOR ABRI' campaign. I have been working on an artwork just to get more people aware of our nomination. An art piece which we could use to make t-shirts, flyers, etc... It will look amazing. Rami is a graphic designer so we will be working together to make the image a reality. I will definitely give y'all more on that when we are done.


Last but no least, i just want to a huge shout out to my boys at Dubizzle. They have shown us nothing but love ever since ABRI formed. They posted a blog on our nomination on their website. Check it out http://www.dubizzle.com/blog/community-blog/abri-up-for-mtv-arabias-best-new-act/ . Much love to my boys at Dubizzle. Thanks guys.




Don't stop voting for us. Let's make history and win this!!! http://ema.mtva.com/vote/ .




Laters,


Hamdan.

Friday 12 September 2008

ABRI - MTV ARABIA NEW ACT

Well, here it is, ABRI's first blog entry. And what a better way to start it by telling y'all that we got nominated for MTV ARABIA NEW ACT !!!!.We are all pretty excited, this is huge for us. We are up against some stiff competition. The winner gets to go to MTV EUROPEAN MUSIC AWARD in Liverpool and perform live. So my peoples, head down to this site ema.mtva.com/vote and vote for us in the MTV Arabia New Act category as many times as you can.
It's been a crazy year so far. We recently got back from the UK, London to be exact, and it was amazing. We did a gig while we were there and crowd just got into our music right off the bat, loved it.
So we just wanted to get this blog up and running, let y'all know what we are up to, give you a little insight on the band and post our thoughts and ideas. So tune in and check us out every now and then, cool? In a bit.

Hamdan.