The Sound Of Reason Feature ™/ Text / Warsan Nur / Pic / Artists
16th January 2008

Francis and Ku two young men from Montreal Canada sought to revolutionise the world and the way we see it, to demolish injustice and transform the music scene back to something which had a purpose other than getting rich quick. Both are converts to Islam and have used their music to express their beliefs but not in the gospel equivalent way of other Muslim artists. Their music is very accessible to both Muslims and non-Muslims and they have collaborated with many artists such as Sean Paul and Outlandish. In less than
two years they have developed a massive underground following and are now better known as The Sound of Reason.

Their self titled album has circulated widely and has been epiphany of what they stand for with songs on it such as ‘Help Me Change The World’ ‘Rise’ and ‘Palestine’ they have stirred up emotions and encouraged many listeners to liberate themselves from apathy and not only care about what’s going on, but feel like they too can make a difference. I caught up with them at the ‘Global Peace and Unity’ event held at London’s Excel, where they played to 25,000 people, to find out a little bit more about them.

So with the sound of reason, how did it all start up? What made u want to do it?

KU: well 1st it started out as a hobby of ours I was producing music for fun just as a simple past time, and one day I showed Francis the material that I’d worked on, and he was like ‘that’s pretty good’, and started singing to it and I was like wow! You can sing? And it just kinda rolled out from there.

Do you have any great influences or people you want to aspire to musically or just in general?

Francis: Our biggest influence is obviously Islam, that’s 1st and foremost, as far as musically to be honest it’s the lack of influence that sort of drove us to make music like this, with actual content instead of you know just rubbish, right now were living in a time where the youth look up to and listen to music artists and actors and people in that industry and if there’s no one there to speak up about what’s going on in this world its just going to be void and nothings going to change.

How have you dealt with the fan base? Mainly the female fan base and how has this lined up with your faith?

Ku: Mainly its good, the majority of fans are normal and others are well erm...
Francis: Not normal! (Ku laughs), yeah some not so normal, and that just comes along with the position were in, and the way we deal with that is to understand our limits. I don’t know if its appropriate for us to go in to details but yeah you get all sorts of weird things that really catch you off guard and your like woaah!

Are you signed to any record labels?

Francis: Right now were doing everything independently, we have been since we started, just because to get with a label you really have to sell a big chunk of your image and what you are and were not prepared to do that.

Did you find it really difficult to get in to the music industry?

Ku: It was VERY tough, but we’ve been blessed to have a really successful career in the very short span we’ve been around. But in the sense of the main stream that’s always been a problem and still is a problem because of what we talk about, we have a song on the album called Palestine so that’s not exactly looked on very kindly by mainstream record labels or radio stations, they cant play that stuff if they wanted to which they don’t but even if they did they couldn’t because of the powers that be. So for us to get in to the mainstream it would be very difficult.

Speaking to the Sound Of Reason was a very refreshing experience. They were both chilled out and unlike most of the other artists that day; I didn’t find them in the VIP room, but instead in the midst of it all getting to know their fans. They are currently working on a new album, so keep a look out for it.

To hear their current album check out: www.thesoundofreason.com

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