Where Is KO? Maschine

Focused Intention – Khabushka Vol.3: Madrid

Khalid Omari — Fri, 29 May 2026 23:27:27 +0000

Read Time:6 Minute, 56 Second

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)

EPK | Press Release

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)

EPK | Press Release

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)

EPK | Press Release

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)

EPK | Press Release

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)

EPK | Press Release

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)

EPK | Press Release

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)

EPK | Press Release

Khalism Live – Ep.004/5: Beanie x Lunch Box

Khalid Omari — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 11:33:06 +0000

Read Time:3 Minute, 17 Second

The funniest thing about Saturday’s edition of Khalism Live is that I somehow managed to get a stream in and also pop into central. Usually its one or the other with me so to get a likely beat session in and a shopping trip, dayaaaaam I’m on some different ish.

The morning started just like any other. I woke up and had a glass of water and popped some boiled eggs on the stove. I jumped into the shower and got dressed. Once my boiled eggs were finished I served them up with some smoked salmon. I felt mega nourished. My girl popped out with her friends and I meanwhile was in two minds of what to do with my day. On one hand I wanted to make some music but on the other I really had no idea of what I wanted to make, on the other hand I wanted to grab a Maharishi and iPhone 12 Mini that I had been looking at online the night before. I was sure that it wouldn’t be in stock at END. if I went into the store so I made a plan to visit a Maharishi store which needed to also be near a Nudie store to pickup a pair of jeans. I had no idea of the type of jean I was after specifically but I was deffo wary when stepping out because I know that at the moment I’m losing weight so I wanted to try a few options.

Whilst eating my breakfast I rewatched Ep.003 and found myself amazed at how good the riddim sounded so at that point I was like “ok you’ve got about an hour to do your business and catch the train into Victoria and head to Oxford Circus”. I popped the 12 Mini onto the Joby TelePod Pro, opened OBS, popped the Maschine MK3 on the stand and got started…

My day was maaaad. It was different. I went out with a plan to go to Maharishi and Nudie. I was determined to grab myself a new beanie and maybe grab a new pair of jeans however when I got to Maharishi I spotted a lunchbox that I had been interested in for a long time so I copped it. Is £45 a bit much for a lunch box? Yes, but it is what it is. The beanie cost £60 and in hindsight it had me realising how easy it is to spend money, especially since I’ve been on self-imposed austerity since the start of 2020 to get my finances in order.

I walked from Piccadilly to Soho and landed at Nudie however I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice, how hot I was from walking and then putting on a mask, before just realising that I didn’t even know what I was looking for in a packed store. I aborted the mission and headed home to venture to East London the next day. On the way home I continued to watch what i had done earlier and I got GASSED!!! I had it in my mind that I’m going to head home and stream again.

This stream was special because I had someone tuned in from Canada who was really giving suggestions and responding to the choices I was making. It was the first time I had also been logged into my stream manager on a separate device and could interact with a viewer. It was a real eye opener because I felt encourage and it also made the stream more dynamic. I think what also helped is that I had a camera focused on me and I was talking my way through it from time to time so it added a new and more personable dynamic.

Hope to see you in the comments section of the next live stream: Twitch / YouTube

Khalism Live – Ep.003: Ambition

Khalid Omari — Sun, 10 Oct 2021 10:54:29 +0000

Read Time:3 Minute, 24 Second

Hey y’all! I’ve really been getting stuck into streaming lately since installing my newest and most ergonomic workspace setup. I can honestly say that it’s made going live a dream. I pretty much slip my phone into place, move my keyboard and trackpad apart, place the 3d printed drum machine stand in the middle and open the OBS app to get started. Due to using Restream I can broadcast to all services at once, aside from Facebook pages as I have to upgrade to premium, which is really good because I don’t have to heard people to different places.

Friday morning started out well. I stepped on the scales and recorded a low weight due to actually eating at a decent time and having more than enough sleep. Besides due to taking a break from the intensity of the gym for a few days I wanted to give my body some time to readjust. My bro sent me a message to give me the heads up about the Patta x Nike drop which I didn’t even look into a few weeks back as I figured why do I need two ticks on a crep but decided to try a ting. Surely this would be more democratic than an END. or SNKRS raffle right?

Click to view slideshow.

After losing out on the Patta drop, I sat at my desk staring at my monitor and loosly scrolling through Twitter feeling kinda salty for a good 40mins completely forgetting that Apple Watch Series 7 pre-orders opened at 1pm. By the time I got there it was 1336 and the shipping was saying some dumb shit like the 19-21st Oct and I was mad as hell. Thing is when I cop something I really want it on launch day ie. when its avails to the public or not at all but I still copped and for about 40mins I was set to own a Series 7 but in the time I was washing the dishes and boiling the pan full of eggs for a brunch, I said “fuck this” and cancelled my order.

Click to view slideshow.

I deffo made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t upgrade my Apple Watch Series 3 until the mythical feature of the blood glucose monitor arrives and have recently had it repaired due to bricking it with WatchOS 8 Beta and not being able to downgrade I figured I’ll run with it a lil while longer. Yes I’ve been going hard on fitness and taking it serious but I feel like as my guy Kayeman put it “smart watches are all fun and games, they shouldn’t dictate the work you put in.” In all honesty 400GBP is a lot of money to spend on something with no yield and I have a lot of pressing priorities so let me stick to my vow after my iPad Air 4th gen purchase of not buying anymore Apple products.

If anything, it goes to show that if you can’t identify the reason why you’re making a purchase or even what’s driving the urge then you really need to chill. In that moment of madness what drove me to get involved with the Series 7 is that I lost out the Patta’s but also what drove me to purchase them was the hype and influence from my brother which previously I didn’t give them a second glance when they featured in all the feeds anyway. I’m tapped. Sometimes we’ve got to gain a hold on ourselves because this consumption ting is very real and has a lot of folks who aren’t aware or in control of their emotions to spend themselves into oblivion thinking it’ll make them happy.

I started this Khalism Live with a roulette of what poetry to record but that quickly got dashed aside once I made the bouncy riddim and freestyled my consumption calamity. Hope you enjoy and give me a sub and a follow on the services such as Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and FaceBook.

Creating a Khalism Theme Song

Khalid Omari — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 23:02:50 +0000

Read Time:13 Second

Created a theme song for the Khalism Podcast using Native Instruments Maschine MK3 and the Maschine 2 software before going into Logic Pro X and finishing it with freestyle vibe vocals.

Available to Stream: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/khalidomari/khalism-podcast-theme