Desert Experiment Session showcases the best of the UAE rock scene

Jay Wud poses for a portrait during the Desert Experiment in Dubai. Courtesy Desert Experiment

I’m frankly bored of listening to people tell me there’s no live music in the UAE. That there’s no talent, gigs or scene. There’s lots, of all these things, and more and more of them every year. Especially healthy is the emirates’s rock scene, which acts as a cultural epicentre for musicians from across the region, many of whom lack the venues and support to play in their home nations.

The most recent proof came on Friday May 29, when members of more than ten regional acts took part in the third Desert Experiment Session, an informal, collaborative concert series hosted at Bur Dubai’s The Music Room.

Spearheaded by local luminaries EYE – who hosted a headline tour of the UK last year – the night featured members of heavy-hitters including Absolace, Nervecell, Jay Wud and Svengali, as well as solo artists like Malikah and Noush Like Sploosh. Performing a cross-genre mix of covers, jams and originals onstage together – shifting members of the band line-up after every single song – the standard was uniformly high, a phenomenal number of top players sharing the stage in a single evening.

Best of all – it felt like a family. These bands, in any other city, might well see each other as competition. The very idea that such high profile acts would willingly play together, for fun, would be untenable to hardcore hopefuls elsewhere on the globe. But not here in the UAE.

So don’t be telling me there’s no scene no more. Just go out and find it.