There is no small amount of irony that Dying Is The Internet, the newest collaborative release between the French producer Simo Cell and the Egyptian vocalist and multidisciplinary artist Abdullah Miniawy, will most likely be consumed on the internet. You live by the sword and you die by the sword. And in this case the sword happens to be a small handheld device that spits out AI-generated videos of Jesus Christ’s face emerging from a rock formation and spitting out gold coins into a small baby’s mouth. But the record’s critique stands, and beyond that, the actual music stirs: The record is a singular fusion of Middle Eastern music, rap production ideas, and gestures pulled from experimental and jazz. We sent some questions over to the duo, and they went deep. We went deep. Read their responses below.

How did the two of you first meet? At what point did you know you wanted to work together?

Simo: Abdullah and I were both living in Paris; I first played one of his songs on NTS Radio and we started exchanging a few messages online. Then we went to a bar a few weeks after in Menilmontant in Paris. A few beers later, we promised to each other to jump on a studio session, just for fun. The plan was to do a jam with no expectation, but after that session we knew we wanted to work together. It just clicked … It was so obvious, a magical moment. During this first session we recorded the initial ideas for “Caged in Aly’s Body” and “Locked In Syndrome,” two crazy tracks from our first EP. What a spark.

Abdullah: We contacted each other online, first showing admiration for what we each offer to the music world. Then we met in Paris, one of those meetings that gives you shivers. I feel in a state of a dream when I have a conversation with Simo. We share musical taste and spiritual desires, all those divine qualities that define a friendship and a music making relationship. At first we thought of a record that could be played in cars just for ourselves, without goals or targets, just meeting to free ourselves from our artistic identities and learn indirectly from each other. I use new plugins and tricks every time I meet Simo, and I’m aware that he opens up to more possibilities. One of my favourite moments with Simo was when we took a break in a park in Belleville and stayed there silent at night. One of the most annoying times was when we went to record vocals for Dying Is The Internet close to Nantes, when we got stuck in an unsolved philosophical question, then we were in the house for a few days trying to avoid each other hehe.

Could you talk a bit about the title of this record?

Simo: We’ve had loooong discussions about the dead internet theory while recording the album, it kind of seeped into the writing. Big topic but If I have to point out one thing, it’s probably this shift from Mass Media to Me Media. Everyone has a window to express themselves, which could be seen as a good thing at first (being more independent) but in reality everyone's just pushing their own version of reality, like their own truth, and being their own brand. Where we used to have tastemakers, journalists, editorial filters … Now we just have people giving their opinion and it gets taken as absolute truth. Mix that with the fact that the internet is packed with bots and AI-generated videos, that you can buy likes and comments, and it creates this pretty phenomenal distortion of reality. 

So for me this track is mostly a mantra I like to remind myself of, the idea that we've been living in this world for a very very very short amount of time and that it's not meant to stay like this. That we're kind of, on the scale of humanity, going through a teenage phase. Doing stupid things, testing our limits, hurting ourselves. Sometimes when I feel too suffocated by this parallel virtual life and all these screens I just repeat “dying is the internet” to myself and it helps. :)

Abdullah: Dying Is The Internet was a result of a conversation with Simo in Paris, one of those few debates we have. A reading into the future, one way or another the internet will end. In order to rise as humans we should free all psychological noises normalized and validated by the mass and promoted and manipulated by the internet. One simple thing when you look closely at the matter, we live in constant texting, internet zodiac preaching, identities created far from who we are. When people meet in real life they are tender. The arrogance heats up the space of the internet, makes people avatar. Moreover on a personal level I am a very social person, but today when I look at my life, family is on my phone, my friends, my reality, etc. those are all alerting points. 

I think we are devoted to the internet and we must re question those habits. If you look in some countries, under 16 years old are not allowed to use social apps starting from September, correct me if I’m wrong. I struggle with the fact that we like people online and not in real life. We share memes but laughing freely is far out from our horizon. We seek romance but we are barely able to love in closeness. So for me the title is a call for self awakening that I hope can influence others. The subject will not stop here, I am taking it to a platform on my

website to create a hub with only special visitors as a beta version to listen to my new podcasts and gaze at the world. I hope it can help someone. 

There are a lot of elements at play on Dying Is The Internet: spoken word, dance music, song structure, abstraction. How did you navigate the tension between these different impulses? 

Simo: It’s pure expression, we never really try to think about it. It's such a layered piece because we took a long time to write the album. Tracks span a pretty large window, between 2018 and 2025, some of them were just drafts we kept coming back to and improving. Abdullah and I evolved a lot during that time, personally but also musically, we both collaborated with different artists, toured a lot, gained a lot of experience. I guess it's a reflection of all the phases we went through, like there are different sediment layers mixed together. Imagine a big broth you shake up, and if you let it sit and settle you'd see all those layers.

Abdullah: It all came from poetry to me. Poetry is the genre, it combines the musicality of all the mentioned hyped categories. First ingredient, free yourself from genre.

What kind of influence does contemporary rap production play on this record?

Simo: Hyphy and crunk made a huge impression on me during my teenage years, and that's something you can hear in my music in general. During the recording of our first EP I was pretty obsessed with Astroworld from Travis Scott. Spent hours listening to it, broke down the whole production, the vocal work, Mike Dean's keyboard and mix work, the saturated drum buses, the arrangements with sometimes several tracks merged into one. I read an interview

where Travis explained he works on loads of different ideas and then merges them together. That's kind of how I work now. It really seeped into everything. And what makes it so easy is how much Abdullah can do vocally. He can rap, use his voice as texture/onomatopoeia, he handles Auto-Tune in a really musical way. For this kind of music that's like a dream, it opens up so many possibilities. Our new album is the followup to the first record so I guess we’re just keep pulling that thread. You can definitely hear the rap influences, mostly that hip hop energy, but there's so many other things going on in the background: synth sequences and deep pads that nod to Detroit techno, dub, jazz obviously, early 90s English IDM, some grooves with claps on every beat that could sit on a Deeon record, and more religious and spiritual influences coming through Abdullah.

Abdullah: I love rap, I used to enjoy rap a lot. I had a few attempts when poetry refused rap, or the other way around. They are two different things even if many try to sell poetry as rap. Poetry is the breath, rap is holding that breath. Production wise I think Simo has more to tell, but it is something familiar and lays deep in both our education I think.

How were these tracks constructed?

Simo: Really depends on the track. Most of the time we'd meet up, I'd play a few beat ideas and depending on his inspiration Abdullah would just jump on it straight away. He's incredible to watch, he finds a hook instantly, it's pure creative inspiration. Then he sings and we record, can go on for 30 minutes, he'll do variations, sometimes I respond by playing synths or a melody on top, we just jam. Other times we both go straight into improv, he picks up his trumpet, I test some synths. Or I start building a beat and he reacts, tells me what he likes, what he doesn't, and that gives a direction. That's the first step.

Once we have these jam sessions recorded, anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes, we spend A LOT OF time constructing the track, like post production, sound design, exchanging ideas, choosing the best vocal takes, doing collages. For example on “Reels in 360,” the trumpet comes from one session and the vocals and beat from another jam. Eventually the two got merged and it became this track where the voice and trumpet answer each other. On “Living Emojis,” Abdullah recorded this crazy vocal hook on a really simple beat we wrote for the live set, it worked so well live but didn't really translate on a three-minute recorded track, so I kept Abdullah's voice but completely rewrote the track: it was like working with vocal samples. On the flip side, “Travelling in BCC” is barely edited at all, it's just one part taken from a 20 minute jam, it came out like that. There's also a track that Abdullah wrote and I came in after and added a bass line and reworked some of the sound design, which was cool because it was the whole process in reverse. Bass is kind of my voice, it's what I can play naturally and spontaneously so it felt like singing over one of Abdullah's beats!

Abdullah: I sing, write, find melodies, harmonies, variations, blow trumpet, then Simo post produces. Then I revisit and then he finalizes.

What does your digital hygiene look like? Do you have to fight against any bad scrolling impulses?

Simo: All the time yeah. Especially when I'm tired during tours, that’s the trap for me. I used to have only a burner phone a few years ago hehe. Now I'm back at it unfortunately. I have a blocker, I can't open internet, email or instagram on my phone after 6 p.m., I also have a blocker on my laptop that I launch when I start making music. I also turned my smartphone layout into something like a burner phone, just a text menu with a few apps, no tiles, no app icons. I don't know if it actually helps and my phone looks like something an old person would use with huge text lines, ahah.

Abdullah: I don’t scroll, I dislike this feeling of alertness created by scrolling, it gets me anxious, which when I detect I just point it out lately and people surprisingly agree to name it, but I love every now and then trendy TikTok dances or some meaningful posts here and there. I have three meme friends.

What is “Reels in 360” about?

Abdullah: About fragments of images, not connected, that create that buzzing pain and dizziness that we all experience after scrolling all the way down our phones, almost scratching them like psychos. Then those images make no sense, exactly like our habits. Let’s end with something positive. 

What is something that makes you excited about music and culture in 2026?

Simo: There’s A LOT of crazy music being released, almost every week !!! In a world that feels pretty heavy most of the time, that's actually huge. It's simple but that's kind of the point. I don't need more than that to stay excited.

Abdullah: That the audience is more aware and almost impossible to lie to them.