Kiyan Foroughi charts inner search with Inner Light. Outer Space

Multi-cultural producer and storyteller Kiyan Foroughi has released his debut concept album Inner Light. Outer Space and focus track The Destination, featuring conscious rapper Substantial and Singaporean vocalist Rachelle Ruby.

A cinematic journey through cosmic neo-soul, hip hop and jazz, Inner Light. Outer Space is a linear odyssey through self-discovery, desire, transformation and integration.

“The album is about remembering who you were before you forgot,” explained Foroughi.

The journey spans ten tracks built from a lifetime of cultural translation. Born in France to Iranian parents and raised across Paris, Dubai, Boston, New York, London and now Singapore, Foroughi channels this cosmopolitan existence into cosmic R&B that bridges East and West.

Inspired by J Dilla, Kendrick Lamar, Nujabes, Massive Attack, Vangelis and the Soulquarians, Foroughi’s sound weaves neo-soul, trip-hop, jazz and boom-bap into cinematic storytelling unlike anything emerging from Singapore’s music scene.

Finding the destination

The album’s thesis statement arrives in the form of its ninth track, The Destination, where everything comes together.

“Substantial’s three verses chart the entire evolution: searching externally, transformation, integration. By the end, the protagonist realises: ‘I was always the destination.’ The voice guiding her wasn’t external. It was her all along,” Foroughi said.

Substantial, or Stanley Robin, delivers a masterclass in conscious rap – or political hip hop – across three verses, each representing a stage of the journey: external searching, transformation and self-discovery and finally integration and homecoming.

Foroughi said when he began crafting the album, he knew Substantial was needed to deliver the message with grounded clarity formed by true scars.

Rachelle, the album’s protagonist, appears here as the inner voice that has been guiding the journey all along. Her vocals create a dialogue with Substantial’s grounded bars.

Singles map the journey

The release of Inner Light. Outer Space has unfolded across a series of singles, each representing a chapter in the protagonist’s odyssey, with the debut single Seas of Space, from last November marking her first step into the unknown.

Subsequent releases, Beautiful Distraction, Footsteps, Beautiful Distraction and Shadow of the Enchantress capture different moments through a collision of hip hop, R&B and late 80s synth wave before The Destination completes the arc when all pieces click together and Foroughi’s Inner Light. Outer Space finally makes sense.

READ MORE:

Selah Sue, The Gallands release Another Way

Skye Newman releases defiant new single Walk

Mitski adds KL to Nothing’s About to Happen World Tour

Local band Smesta turns Mamak sessions into EP

 The Sun Malaysia