When Adam Khedheri was a young boy growing up in the wilds of New Brunswick, Canada, his father had a boom box with a problem. When a tape was playing, you could hit record and overdub onto one channel of the cassette. Much to his father's dismay, he and his sisters wiled away many hours recording themselves singing along with the likes of Gordon Lightfoot, Roger Whittaker, and Nana Mouskouri. They also leveraged this makeshift multi-track to make 'radio' shows like The Price is Wrong, where all the contestants were hamsters, with the first prize being, of course, a trip to Hamsterdam.
Many years later, when the first borrowed 4-track came into his clutches, that DIY sensibility came out to show itself again, with Adam using whatever he could find to get his tracks down on tape. His first song was recorded with a cheap violin pickup clipped to his guitar, singing into a set of headphones, and using an old dictaphone for effects. Some of the songs recorded during this era made it onto his first release as A-Ok, Red, Yellow, Purple, Blue, and Walter, a decidedly lo-fi collection that displayed Adam's quirky sense of humour and penchant for odd sounds, with songs like Had You Briefly Gone Insane?, Slow Your Pace, Dictionary, and Vicuna.
He followed that collection up with another disc, Comfort Breeds Living, which while still pretty lo-fi, upped things a notch. He managed to grab a bit more attention with this release, getting some more radio play, with Patti Schmidt of Brave New Waves calling his sound 'engaging', and inclusion on the Meathead Records compilation of Canadian artists.
In the ensuing years, Adam has continued working on a plethora of other projects, including being half of quirky recording duo Snow Goat's, performing as front man and one of two songwriters for rock band Parka, doing live mixing for drum n bass rock band, Sudden, guitar and synths for The City States, and producing electronic music, featuring the Japanese vocals of Akiko Nakada, in Picobot. He also continued to operate his studio Suburban Bungalow Sound, where he worked with artists as varied as jazzy outfit Fond of Tigers, pop band The Way Out, the bluegrass styled band Green Achers, heavy rock group Delusion Manifesto, and noisy punksters Shlonk!, as well as working on several radio and TV documentaries.
Now, A-Ok has a superb new record, Sisyphean Symphonies, a collection of songs that harkens back to the early years with sounds which, while certainly not lo-fi, have the intimacy and sensitivity of the four-track sound. Poppy melody lines, and folk-style guitars entwine with synth lines, and curious sounds abound, while lyrical themes, in songs like It's Getting Harder, Organ Grinder, and How Can I?, speak of the profundities and mundanities of life.
Adam is currently ensconced in London, UK working on the next A-Ok instalment.