It’s out! My new single – Find the Sun - just posted on iTunes and Amazon mp3. 2011′s first release is official.

I’ve expanded the list of stores for this release. In addition to the above two, you can find the Find the Sun mp3 for purchase on Bandcamp, Nokia Music, eMusic, Zune, and as streamable content via Rhapsody. Lots of exciting things about this change, one of which being the possibility of finally being able to share this music with fans in MALAYSIA! (iTunes = no dice, yet)… so, friends and listeners there, definitely check out the other available options, and drop me a line and let me know if anything worked.

If nothing worked, worry not, I will find a way… *jumps into waterfall* :) 

Check it out, spread the word, let me know what you think… you can send me an email from here, or else there’s the facebook option. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

Find more information about this track (includes cover art and liner notes) here.

Travel safe and talk soon.

-AF

When I think about Find the Sun sometimes it’s hard to separate the facts from the feelings. I remember this time of my life as being one marked by a strong sense of displacement. My third relocation in five years saw my idea of home turn into a bizarre combo of downtown Kuala Lumpur, upstate New York, and various airport lounges. Through all this I remember sitting at the baggage claim at Syracuse airport, waiting for the bus to arrive that would take me back to Ithaca to start my second semester at college. It was pencil and paper back then, and Find the Sun was one of two songs that were inching ever so tremulously towards completion. I remember the paper starting to wear thin as I tried out numerous different rhymes and worked on the patter of the lyrics, hoping that they would sound at least vaguely cool, or at least wouldn’t sound completely lame. I had little experience, and thus confidence, writing songs then; Find the Sun was only my second full attempt. The first had been a winding folk love-ballad, and I was eager to put down a tune that had more beef, something that stood a chance of being one of those songs that people hum in the car on their way home from the concert.

Other than that, I wrote with very little sense of direction back then, mostly relying on what little instinct I had, combining it with the unquenchable zeal of a teenager still new to the whole game. There was a lot of just stringing words together and hoping they’d fit, and on occasion perhaps even rhyme. I poke fun now, but in reality there is much from that process I can and do still bring into my songwriting today. Back then I didn’t think too hard about what I was writing about. Now, there are times I can get so lost in the rat-race of trying to say something significant, that seldom is it not helpful for me to take a step back and remember those early days, when the entire point was to have fun making interesting shapes out of words, melody, and harmony.

Check out these shots from 2010's Find the Sun Tracking Session...

Quick post! To all you visually-oriented types (and, let’s face it, aren’t we all?) – I’ve spent the past few months sifting through various sets of digitals from the past few years, and have at last set up a proper image gallery, in the form of a flickr photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamfarouk/
 
There are some great unseen-until-now shots from my work with The Breakers Vocal Band, plus some solo studio and performance candids, and I’ll be doing my best to keep the site flowing and up to date. Thanks, and happy surfing.

-AF

Coming soon!

For more information, click here.