Azniv Korkejian is literally a world-traveling musician. The singer/songwriter was born in Syria, moved to Saudi Arabia as a child, and later moved to America, where she lived in Boston and Houston before settling in LA.
She studied sound design and has done quite a bit of work in Southern California in the arena of dialogue editing. A quick IMDB search reveals that she has dialogue edited for shows like “Preachers’ Daughters” and “Ultimate Soldier Challenge.”
For her self-titled debut album as Bedouine , she’s joined by a very impressive cast. The album was produced by Gus Seyffert and features guitarist Smokey Hormel (who are both known for working with Beck and Norah Jones), it was mixed by Thom Monahan (Vetiver, Devendra Banhart),…
…and Matthew E White is releasing it on his Spacebomb label. It’s got gorgeous string arrangements by Spacebomb’s co-owner and in-house arranger Trey Pollard, who also lent his talents to Matthew, Natalie Prass, Foxygen, and more. As you may expect from a team like that, the album hearkens back to ’60s and ’70s songwriting, and has a real smooth, calm feel to it.
Though she’s lived everywhere, it’s appropriate that she ended up in LA, a breeding ground for a lot of music like this in the ’60s (The Byrds, Linda Ronstadt, John Phillips, Tim Buckley, etc). If you like that stuff, you’ll probably find that Azniv does a lot of justice to that sound. Early highlight one of these day’s is so instantly familiar and instantly pleasing, that you’ll be checking to make sure it’s not a cover from that era. (It’s not.) solitary daughter has a spoken word/poetry feel to it, like Leonard Cohen or the trippier side of Paul Simon. “Summer Cold” embraces dark, queasy melodies, almost sounding like a psych-folk singer covering Billie Holiday. Songs like that prove that Bedouine is anything but a one-trick pony.
siding with the insane stereo 