RIYADH: Warchief and Chindy are not your regular DJs. The pseudonymous pair, who hail from Saudi Arabia and Oman, make up the musical duo Jazzy Spa Sounds, which Chindy describes as “a place where we explore music and sounds.”
The friends, whose real names are Mohammed Alhamdan and Mohammed Al-Kindi, first met in 2014 and have worked together on several projects ever since. Though they have never envisioned a full-time career in DJing, music has always been important to the longtime friends. Warchief is a singer and a producer — his first music video that he directed has over 30 million YouTube views — while Chindy counts music as one of his earliest passions.
“We’ve always been involved around music creatively, but I think we’ve been for the past, everything we’ve been doing is visual or experience-based. So we wanted to express more music through this platform,” said Warchief, who is also known by his moniker Abu Hamdan.
The idea for the platform was conceived in 2017 after a quick Google search for a massage parlor in Dubai, where they stumbled across a place called Jazzy Spa, which ultimately inspired the musical duo’s stage name.
But it wasn’t until the initial COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 and the subsequent lockdowns that the friends decided to explore music more seriously.
“We were stuck together in Riyadh and we launched a whole show on Twitch where we did everything from DJing live to hosting,” said Chindy. “We would go live daily for an hour, two or three hours. We were always performing.”
In addition to being a musician and producer, Alhamdan is also an actor and comedian. Meanwhile, Chindy is one of the designers behind cult streetwear label Shabab as well as a photographer and artist.
The multi-talented creatives note that music is a way to merge all of their interests and build on all of their different skills under one umbrella.
“In music, you can produce merch, which is the fashion aspect of it. You can create music videos, which is equivelant to directing shorts,” said Chindy.
“Music is a nice gateway to build a small world and explore it and let the audience imagine it. With music, you can develop and explore all of your skills,” he added.
Jazzy Spa Sounds recently played at the second edition of MDLBeast’s Soundstorm festival in Riyadh, as well as during the inaugural Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah last week.
The friends said that they plan to use Jazzy Spa Sounds as a larger musical platform that goes beyond just DJing.
“There are no rules to it,” Warchief said.