Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now)

This weekend (4th may 2026) I actually learnt the concept of arranging loops into whole songs on the Native Instruments Maschine. It’s taken me 16 years to truly understand through 48hrs of intense focus, patience and most importantly experimentation. When I say intense, I mean I was intentional with what I was doing. I made a conscious decision, when going through my Maschine beats a few weeks ago, that I wanted to start releasing the capsules: songs I made about a particular theme within the same period of time.

Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now across all platforms)

Concept

I began this excursion with a group of loops I aptly named the ‘Madrid EP’, which were a cluster of beats created over ten days between 9th – 19th May 2016. At the point in life I created these, I hadn’t yet been to Madrid or Spain itself but I always wanted to learn Spanish and visit.

Night of Inspiration

I remember heading out with my friend Mike White on a random drive on the night of Friday 6th May 2016. We drove from my home at the time in Deptford, South East London, picked up Mike from Queen’s Road in Peckham, then drove to the East side of London, specifically Brick Lane, which was still popping and edgy back then. I parked up somewhere off of Arnold Circus, headed down to Redchurch Street before we found ourselves at a random street party outside what was the Verge back then, on the intersection of Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road.

This night stuck with me as it was such a random evening. I can’t even remember what music was playing, the party in the road didn’t seem to be an official one, it was just a bunch of people dancing in the middle of the road through passing cars trying to exit through humans.

Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now across all platforms)

The Spanish Connection

We encountered a group who were trying to communicate with us but we were lost in translation. A Venezuelan security guard became the conduit although when I really deep it, observing chaos and surrounded by good vibes is a universal thing. I came away feeling inspired to not only learn a language because I could communicate and connect with so much more people but also create music, the thing that was at the centre of the chaos and brought everyone together.

Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now across all platforms)

The Sound

I was inspired to create House music, basic but effective vibes. This wasn’t a shut down the rave type of affair, I was on a mission to create something the whole world could bop to. House music in its essence does that thing where it captures a heightened sense of awareness, the loop, the foundation of the beat is almost trance like. That goes for electronic Dance music as a whole. Patricia Rose has a book that references that concept a lot which at the time defined the use of samples in Hip Hop as such. It’s one of the books I referenced and researched for my dissertation at uni.

The Process

I dug through samples for drums, created a House kit on Maschine as a template and got to work. Once I had the groove in place, I’d get some piano chords on the go, if it weren’t the keys it was the synth pad. I wanted something emotive, minimal and a basic groove in nature, with a few synth pads and piano chords over a four to the floor beat.

Each track contains the same or a similar drum kit which I created specifically for this series of loops. My aim, rather my instinct, was to capture the vibe and just flow, no questions asked.

Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now across all platforms)

Purpose

This is easy listening, the type of stuff you pop on and get on with your day whether riding around, commuting or chilling. It’s the sound of elation or deep spiralling, melancholic trains of thought. There’s no big builds or crescendos, it’s just progressively captivating and delightful. A soundtrack for both evening soirée or brunch, a sound fit for all scenarios.

Order of Creation

As I’m looking deeper into the creation dates and times, I realise the first three: La Rambla, Madrid, and Translation were created in the same night! Wild!!! But thats how it was back then. I’d spend hours making beats into the early hours, freely exploring, creating wide variety of SKUs. In the days after I went on to create a few more. At the point of writing this I’m still going through and mixing them but the way how I’m feeling, I may split them across other drops as right now I’m in my first night of creation bag. A thought after the initial thought now that I’ve changed my artist name across my instrumentals to ‘whereisko’ is to finally drop a follow up to the ‘Khabushka’ series.

10 years to create songs?

For years I had gone back and forth with what I’d like to do with these cuts. Different priorities, instabilities and life became a barrier of getting to them, overall I felt like the moment was bigger than I could ever conceive. I didn’t think I could ever meet the expectation that the loop required if I tried to make a song. There were a series of trial and errors which never materialised properly especially around the spoken word excursions I was doing in the early days. At the time I didn’t have the clarity or mastery over my skills that I have now hence why it took me the Bank Holiday weekend of May 1st to finally make sense of how to arrange in Maschine. I could now turn my ideas into into finished projects, which I proceeded to do across the 3-4 days I was away from work.

Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now across all platforms)

Studio Monitors

In recent weeks I invested in a pair of smaller studio monitors to the ones I previously, the Yamaha HS7s which I sold and donated some of the proceeds to Cat Cabins at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, now I have a pair of HS5s. They are smaller, have freed up room on my desk and sit on stands. These past few days have started out as a ‘test’ where I set up to level the loops which over the course of a few hours led to solving the equation of how to arrange in Maschine. I now know the science of arranging patterns into scenes and songs so the future is bright for my output.

Previous to this I was just using wired headphones but I get a lot more freedom from the studio monitors, especially when stepping away from the desk to another part of the room or standing in a separate room entirely.

I get a lot of benefit when adjusting delays and filters to create space in the mix as the studio monitors give me so much more freedom to hear things as they are.

Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now across all platforms)

Desk Arrangement

My layout for my creative is intentionally set out to remove the central distraction of having a display, instead I’ve placed it to the side with the sole focus of the machine in the centre. The equipment I use is intentionally hybrid: standalone and full integration with software, so I can have a more tactile and immersive experience away from the display and focused on embedding myself into the process to optimise the creativity, I won’t get distracted. My sole focus and attention is on whatever machine I’m using: Maschine, Push 3, MPC.

Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid (Out Now across all platforms)