The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.
Oakland ambient music composer and multi-instrumentalist Leila Abdul-Rauf is the singer and guitarist of the death metal band Vastum, and in this episode of The Sunday Music Drop, she shares about her song “Pull.”
“The music scene is what brought me to the Bay Area, and I think it’s still a very special underground scene,” said Abdul-Rauf. “You can always discover new music, new communities, and new venues that support these kinds of music. And I can’t really say that about a lot of different places.”
She also has a solo project where she delves into more cinematic work, which she says is a space to explore all the things she doesn’t get to with a band, including digging deep into her dreams.
“I recorded just a bunch of free-association piano parts and I just took one section of it and made a loop,” she said. “For me, it’s a very haunting song. It’s tapping into lost memories, forgotten places … the sensation of desolation and a sense of melancholy.”