Biography
My name is Karim Philip, as a composer, producer and keys player I make a lot of music in my life. When I was still a toddler I fell in love with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Whenever my dad would put it on I would start dancing to the music. This is why my parents decided to put me on violin lessons as soon as I was old enough. I consider myself lucky to have started learning music this young.
After six years of playing the violin I decided to lay it down. I always enjoyed figuring out songs on the piano we had in the living room, so when I turned 14 I started taking piano classes. In my early years of playing the piano I mainly focussed on playing and singing songs, after a while I began to write my own material. At the end of high school I started playing in bands where we played my songs most of the time.
Bands
During my preparatory year at the conservatory of Amsterdam I got fascinated by synthesizers and music production. With this heavy interest I started studying at the conservatory in Utrecht in 2019 (Musician 3.0). From 2018 till 2020 I was the keys player of a Britney Spears tribute band called Kimberly Spears. In this band I was challenged to translate heavily produced music into live shows. This is something I still love to do today.
Interdisciplinary
In my study at the conservatory I did a lot of interdisciplinary projects as a creating musician. I wrote music for multiple movies and theatre plays and I did performances with visual arts. I love working with different art disciplines because it pushes me to look at my work in a different way. This way I learn a lot about my work and myself.
Music production and Engineering
At the HKU I did an honours track in music production and composition. Additionally, I took extra classes in audio engineering. At the end of my studies these newly found skills all came together nicely in an internship at E-Sound Studio’s. This is how I began recording, producing and mixing other people’s work. I find beauty in helping people with both technical and musical insights in their artistic proces and in helping them make great music. I believe my strength is that im both an engineer and a musician, which allows me to understand the musicians well and helps me achieve wonderful results.
Own Work
Nowadays I recognise the influence of that little toddler who played the violin more and more. Even though I am not able to play it anymore, I still make very melodic music. At the moment I am working on my debut album Beginning of There Ending of Here. For this project I have travelled with my fieldrecorder from train station to station across the West of Europe and recorded both trains and stations. By doing this I have found differences as well as similarities that I translate in to electronic music. I will release the album in the beginning of 2024.