Kamran Khan on the intimacy of uncertainty and dancing through the sadness
Photo Credit: Gabe Long
On his debut release, I Came From Nowhere and Nowhere Is Where I’m Going, Kamran Khan turns identity into something you can dance to.
Music has always been an exercise in getting personal, and on Khan's I Came From Nowhere and Nowhere Is Where I'm Going, intimacy takes on a whole new meaning. For the Berlin-born, London-based multi-instrumentalist, who has decided to release music under his own name, this comes with a willingness to question identity, home, relationships, and the monotony of everyday life.
"I think maybe there was an incentive to be like, 'Well, if I'm doing that, I may as well talk about very personal things, because I'm using my own name,'" Khan explains. With the personal aspect of this release, Khan gives himself almost total control of his recordings. Across his solo work, his work as a member of The Japanese House and Flyte's touring bands, and his role in the band Pencil, as well as his solo project Fake Laugh, Khan is a multi-instrumentalist with a background in guitar, piano, and drums, with his friends contributing violin and saxophone.
"I record almost everything," Khan mentions. This release was created alongside his friend Luciano Rossi, who supported Khan in turning his collection of songs into a release that doesn't settle into one particular sound.
It is a fitting approach for an album that frequently sits between opposites: sadness and euphoria, intimacy and abstraction, the mundane and the profound. This release feels quite deceptive: the songs can sound bright and melodic, but when the lyrics sink in, the song you were dancing to is so much sadder than what you'd expect.
"Daddy Just Like You" is perhaps the clearest example. One of the most emotionally devastating songs on Khan's forthcoming release, it's also one of its most danceable. This contradiction is what Khan is most interested in.
"I've always been really drawn to the combination of quite heavy emotions paired with upbeat music," he says. "For me, as a listener, I find it pretty cathartic." Khan sees dancing as its own form of release — whether the listener is consciously engaging with the lyrics or simply allowing themselves to be carried by the music.
“If I’m making a song, it’s nice when you can make something that’s coming from a bit of a sad place, but you can frame it in this kind of fun way,” he says. “Sometimes the sadder the song, the more upbeat I want to make the instrumental.”
Another track from the release is “Adventures in Monotony,” which Khan says was born from a period of uncertainty. In January 2023, Khan had just returned from touring and moved into a new home. There was an upright piano left behind by the previous occupant. He had no idea what he was going to do with the year ahead, so he sat down and played.
“I started to hammer away at chords and words and that melody just came out,” Khan recalls. The track became an expression of restlessness, the feeling of malaise that one feels when they are stuck somewhere between one chapter and the next. However, Khan thinks that boredom can be creatively useful.
“Being in a situation that’s actually quite nondescript and boring, it kind of puts you in a place where you can, if you’re fortunate enough to have the time to reflect on it and a piano at your disposal, maybe a song comes from it.”
That same upright piano was the starting point for another track “Diamond Ring,” where he had the chorus lyrics and slowly chiselled away at chords until the song emerged. “It felt like a very songwriter way of writing a song.” For someone who’s life revolves around music, songwriting is the primary way that Khan processes the less glamorous parts of being alive.
“I feel very lucky to have a musical outlet that I can go to.”
By the time I Came From Nowhere and Nowhere Is Where I’m Going arrives, Khan will already be looking ahead. There are release shows, headline dates and more live performances on the horizon. But perhaps more significantly, the next album is already beginning to take shape.
“I have many, many, many songs written for that,” he says. “I have a title.”
To be frank, it is a fittingly restless way to end a conversation about a record so preoccupied with uncertainty. Kamran Khan’s I Came From Nowhere and Nowhere Is Where I’m Going is a collection of songs written from a place of identity seeking — trying to find where he is, who he is, and what comes next.
There are no easy resolutions here. There is sadness, confusion, boredom, nostalgia and the occasional feeling of being completely lost. But there are also guitars, pianos, friends, movies, books, loud arrangements. Or, as Khan puts it when talking about the album’s emotional contradictions: sometimes you just have to dance through the pain.