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If you go 6-7 years before the release of
"One Light Year At Snail Speed", Sajid
and Zeeshan were just two people who used to live quite
near each other in Peshawar, Pakistan and got introduced
to each other through mutual friends. Years went by
when suddenly they got together to do some recordings.
As they recall, thats how their first released single
"King of Self" was made and after a year,
Circa 2004, was on Pakistani television channels in
the form of a low budget, unpolished video that told
a story of two musicians (not Sajid and Zeeshan themselves)
endorsing a brand and unable to get out of their contract
deal which is taking control over their artistic abilities.
Since this video hit airwaves, radio was soon to follow.
That was how their music project started.
Sajid Ghafoor and Zeeshan Parwez, of Peshawar, are
a duo who have fused together electronic music and elements
of acoustica / alternative guitar styles to come up
with a fresh sound. This project makes them come on
one ground with Sajid on Guitars and Harmonicas and
Zeeshan with synths, laptops and FX modules to perform
a set of songs, written by Sajid and arranged by Zeeshan,
that vary from each other in terms of feel and expression.
The people accepted the new change and enjoyed the
different sound produced by the two guys from Peshawar.
The song became popular and it even won an award, winning
the dance / electronica category all over the world
and also made it the finals in the ‘song of the
year’ contest (www.songoftheyear.com) for 2004.
Subsequently they received an award for the same song
at the 2nd Indus Music awards for the best “foreign
language song” category. The television and radio
channels heard from them after a few months with the
release of their second song/video “My Happiness”
which was also highly appreciated. And it stayed on
the Indus Music and The Musik Charts for sometime in
Pakistan. In 2005 they released their third track/video
“Freestyle Dive”. Being supported by a complete
animated video, the song and video both got popular
and the same song received an award at the first Indus
Music Video Awards and also got nominated in “The
Musik Awards” (TMA) for Best video and at the
"Lux Style Awards 2006" (LSA) for the "Best
Video" category. Sajid Ghafoor and Zeeshan Parwez
released their debut album titled “One light year
at snail speed” through EMI Pakistan along with
a video release of their 4th track “Have to let
go sometime”.
Their first album, "One Light Year At Snail Speed",
is a collection of 11 songs and an instrumental track,
all written and composed by Sajid Ghafoor and arrangement
& produced by Zeeshan Parwez. This effort took them
almost a year to produce. The album has done quite well
in Pakistan and remained in the charts for 11 consecutive
weeks, according to polls of one particular news papaer.
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SAJID
ALI GHAFOOR - born and raised in Peshawar. He received
his primary education in Peshawar and did his Fsc. from
PAF Degree College Peshawar, BA from Islamia College Peshawar,
LLB from Peshawar University, LL.M from Hull University
UK and got a diploma in International Environmental law
from Oslo University, Norway. He's currently lecturing
at the Law College, Peshawar University. Sajid was responsible
for creating an underground music scene in Peshawar in
the mid-nineties by establishing a band called "Still"
with his younger brother, Sarmad Ghafoor, and also gave
guitar lessons to young guitar enthusiasts. Sajid recorded
a number of songs for the band "Still" but never
got around to release them commercially, even though one
of his singles was received very well in the Pepsi Battle
of Bands that took place a few years back.
"One Light Year At Snail Speed" was his first
album with Zeeshan that he worked on and plans to do more
in future. |
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ZEESHAN PARWEZ - born
in Peshawar, received his primary education from Karachi
and Peshawar and graduated with an MBA in Marketing
from the University of Peshawar.
He has been studying music production and synthesis
for a couple of years now and has been responsible for
producing tracks for a couple of underground bands.
"One Light Year At Snail Speed" was his first
full length production which was done at his studio
setup, Zeepar Studios, established in 2004. Since then,
he's been busy making music videos, documentaries, movies
for educational institutions and creating music. Other
than this, he also directs a programme for MTV Pakistan
by the name of "On The Fringe" with host,
Fasi Zaka.
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