"I'm a silly-wave advocate. There's beauty in the absurd." – a conversation with Ahmed, With Love.

It starts with me being passed a can of Four Loko. Sláinte, brother.

Ahmed, With Love. can only ever commit to the bit. Preparing for the launch of his mixtape, his friends are doodling on CD-R copies of his mixtape COMMA, FULLSTOP. He's wearing a custom Four Loko t-shirt celebrating Clash At The Quays, a hybrid pro-wrestling/music venture that he put on with their sponsorship at the Dublin Fringe Festival. Clash is an ongoing arc - he's been bringing a mask and tournament belt to his gigs. At this mixtape launch in Hen's Teeth, one of the first things that catches your eye is the modded Xbox projecting onto the wall – there's Mario Kart and Tekken on it, but most of the time, it's running a WWE game, into which he's diligently programmed not only custom characters for Curtisy, E The Artist and himself (wearing another custom t-shirt - this one emblazoned "RIP AHMED, WITH LOVE."), but a full Clash at the Quays arena with custom graphics, and yes, gratuitous Four Loko sponsorship.

It's only looking back at this footage now that I realise there's somehow even more detail in this than I realised was possible to do on an Xbox controller. One of the spectators in the crowd is holding up a sign with Curtisy's logo on it?

Anyway, where were we? Four Loko?

"Oh that’s that new Tutti Frutti flavour. Delicious. One of many very delicious flavours. Mm, mm, mmm."

At that point I just had to ask.

"I just DM’d them once and I was like, I'm doing a wrestling themed music event. Can I get free drinks? And then they're like, you want money too? And I was like, if it's going. And the rest is history.

I'm just, like, constantly wanting to do silly things. I just like making stuff. I feel like music is just like a good excuse to give you something to make stuff, like merchandise... I made this t-shirt. Four Loko paid for it so I put two cans of Four Loko on it. Like, I just like making stuff. I feel like music is like a good excuse to be like, you can do a load of stuff, auxiliary and accessory to music and just build stuff. I just like making like a load of random stuff and just giving myself the challenge of 'This is what's come up in my head. How do I make that real?'"

This mixtape has been cooking for a while, and many of these silly auxiliary projects have come with it - single World Cup! came out last April with a ridiculous baking-themed music video and his first headline solo show came with a full birthday party theme. Clash followed in September 2023, and a Valentine's Day prom night-themed gig in 2024. The run-up to COMMA, FULLSTOP. saw the release of a full A,W/L. GAA kit and a set of trading cards.

I was somewhere down the country for Clash at the Quays, the wrong side of city for the preview press conference gig that he ran, but the gigs ended up legendary enough that I've heard endless chatter about them since. Naturally, I wanted to know how that plan came together.

"I just really love wrestling as much as I love music. And I was like, how do I, like, figure out a way of putting the two together? And moreover, how do I figure out a way of getting people to pay for me to be in a wrestling ring? So, like, I've kind of had the idea of putting a show on like that for ages – I had been planning Clash outside of Dublin Fringe Festival since like November 2022 – but I had to wait for like all the pieces to fall into place. I'd done like a something like an arts piece in The Complex. And I remember there was a moment someone was like “oh, this is a good place to rent.” And it clicked in my head. I asked and they had a wrestling event on the next week – saw that and I knew I could use it.

Fringe came along. They're very helpful, really supportive, Pan Pan Theatre Company is very supportive. Fringe commissioned it, and now I've a strong bond to Fringe. So from then, like once I got told I could do it, it was just like figuring out what exactly I wanted to do because I was like 'this hasn’t really been done'.

On God, I hoped it worked out - it was more a proof of concept. The next Clash is going to be like a lot more cleaner than what the last Clash was, and the last Clash was still pretty good."

When I asked if Clash's return might come with some more music, the answer I got shows there may be many more nights like it in the future.

"I would love to just do Clash in general! But I keep having this crazy dream of doing a big concept album where I do like the life and death of a pro wrestler, and I’d love for it to like climax at a release party that's just Clash. So then it all ties in the music and Clash all together eventually. That's like the aim and the goal. So one day that'll happen, I hope."

A week earlier, I caught Ahmed, With Love. putting on a rare full-band show with live drums and sax at Ireland Music Week. I did the whole Ireland Music Week run a few years ago with an artist I was working with and found it completely overwhelming to try to make headway, the difficult jump from local to export-ready (as I briefly touched on here before). Not the case for team Ahmed, With Love.

"I'll be honest with you, man. I feel like they ate me up. I was just, like, adorable. All I did was [chatting noises]. And they ate it up. I hope... I like to think. No, it was a really good like experience. I'm glad I was able to get it. Shout out like Sean and Brook Records for like, helping me and being there. I'm actually like super proud of that."

The Ireland Music Week show didn't feel like business. It had a glimpse of that theatricality - luchador masks and wrestling belts, custom GAA kits, crowd work, the inevitable back-and-forth with Curtisy.

Like I said, commitment to the bit. John Darnielle never got in the ring for Beat The Champ. I mean John Cena rapped but he hasn't turned to Bossa Nova yet.

I asked Karim about the mixtape's closing track "Até Logo..." - its most delicate moment, a bilingual acoustic bossa nova track sang by both Karim and his friend Eduardo. Karim credits him with introducing him to that whole world:

"Eduardo who's singing and playing the guitar on that song – he's from Brazil and he has such an encyclopaedic knowledge of Brazilian music. And, I remember ages ago – a few years ago – we'd started a bossa nova playlist because he'd send me a song on WhatsApp and I'd send one back – now it's like ten hours long.

Any Brazilian music as far as I've seen, be it bossa nova, be it like Tropicalia or be like just Baile funk, everyone is making music like they can't do anything else. Everything they put out is just like, 'I feel all this emotion. I just need to put it out.' It's unapologetically themselves. Most bossa nova songs just keep playing off. It's like I'm leaving the club and they're just going to keep playing regardless - they'll keep having fun. One thing that's really important to me is just like authenticity in your craft or just the ability to just like, just have fun with it, you know what I mean?

You don't have to take yourself seriously to put out a serious piece of art. A lot of times it's just like, really beautiful pieces of music just saying the most mundane thing – it doesn't matter because the music sounds good. And you feel good listening to it and performing it."

At Primavera Sound this year - soon enough after seeing Karim and Curtisy share a stage at the Music From Ireland showcase - I went past a performance by DJ Ramon Successo and caught a glimpse of him fighting for his life behind the decks. Karim was just happy I brought it up.

"I WAS AT THAT. I was like front and centre at that Primavera for DJ Ramon Successo. I had my Brazilian bandana on. It was fu- Ohhh ho ho it was so fun. It's magical, man. It's magical.

And it's just like there's so much like 'I don't care how - but I'm going to make music'. They're just using random sound effects, even if they have to make a noise and turn a turn into a perc. Some old Brazilian songs - they use a whistle – like a football whistle which can only make like two notes and they're like, we'll use those two notes as much as we can, because this is what I have."

And sure enough, looking back at the Boiler Room footage I noticed a familiar face in the crowd with a Brazillian bandana on.

In the first interview for the site, Dylan Murphy and I had a lot of kind words to say about Carlos Danger presents Irish Hash Mafia – a project that also got a lot of coverage on here. I've been describing it as kind of a document of the Irish scene, in keeping with Rory Sweeney's intentions. I asked Karim what it was like being a part of that world.

"The best part about it, and the funny thing about it, is the fact that all of those songs on I made those years ago. There's no song on that project that I made this year. It's almost like Rory Sweeney being an archivist - he picked up a load of demos and tracks that he had been working on with a load of people and just put it out. And I really appreciate it. It's so beautiful for me because then I listen to and I'm like, oh yeah, we did that. And it's like even crazy and super retrospective for me to be listening to that. I appreciate just how real it is.

It's just like every time I hear that, I just hear us having fun and I hear Rory Sweeney, because even like the skits, it's just all like every single skit on that tape is, I can vividly remember Rory going like, “have you ever seen this video?” and show me that video and it's all in that project. So it means a lot to me to listen to something like that, because it's just, like unapologetically the inside of Rory’s head, and I'm just blessed to be a part of it."

When he asked What's your favourite song off it? I swear it wasn't that Smokey was across the room working the event that made me say Roma Chipper Loughlinstown. Karim was beaming to hear that though, and tried to get Smokey's attention as soon as I said it. "BIG UP SMOOOKE!". I mentioned friend of the site Alex Gough had reinvented that tune as a jerk banger, which brought back memories of a gig many years ago.

"Shout out Alex, man. I remember Gav [Curtisy] opened for him once and we were chilling. He's crazy on the drums man. He's absurdly talented."

Alex's set ended with a barrage of improv jazz, which Curtisy and him freestyled over - "It was amazing. It's so fun. We need more of that." It's one of those moments that inspired this website in the first place - enormous moments of cutting-edge Irish culture in small rooms, DIY energy. The same DIY spirit that seems to be all over COMMA, FULLSTOP. - with friends helping put together CD-R copies of the album at the very last minute.

"I can't do things to their fullest unless I really want to do them. Everything I do is just because I want to do it, and and then it's only the only thing I think of is how do I make something I really enjoy, something someone else really enjoys? I can’t do anything else other than doing things that are for me, by me. This is a mix tape. I might as well have fun with a mixtape – what else is a mixtape? Just like a bootleg CD and stuff. So I was like, every single CD like that people would be getting is all unique because it's between me and all my friends just drawing on it, and they can't get more real than that, man.

I'm like nothing without anyone else. And I'm just a guy. All I do is just, like, sing songs. I mean, it's inherently silly, but there's a beauty in the absurd - you know what I mean? That's why I keep calling myself a “sillywave advocate”. I'm just pushing “silly wave”, like, we all just have to be a little bit silly, and I’m just doing that. The father of sillywave."

But he quickly corrects himself.

"Rory Sweeney’s the father of sillywave. I'm just a disciple. I'm just taking his teachings on board."

I remember one of the first times I heard Ahmed, with Love.'s music was on a Christmas-themed, deeply unserious mixtape with a truly disrespectful Jamiroquai flip on it. Uploaded to Soundcloud by E THE ARTIST, it comes with a very simple description: @jamiroquai fuck you

"That was fun. I really want to make another Christmas tape. That's so perfect. None of the three of us celebrate Christmas. I mean, me and Daranijoh [E THE ARTIST] are Muslims and Rory’s an atheist. Is that not Christmas? This is the most Christmas. Shout out Santry Claus... Watch a track come out called “shout out Santry Claus”. Because it will."

Despite commitment to sillywave at all costs – the tape's lead single opens with a "CHECK HIS 'ARD DRIVE" tag – there's an awful lot of serious work on it. Another banger for the Curtisy show, killer production from some of the best in the country, numbers being run up for an insane flip of a Georgian track. It makes the most out of the mixtape format and has a lot of fun with it, and although there's no mention yet of any kind of album mode, you have to wonder what's next when you hear it.

Two Four Lokos and a listen to the tape later, Karim opens the floor to open decks. E THE ARTIST runs up Otis by Kanye West & Jay-Z and immediately wheels it up. Microphones are grabbed, and it genuinely feels like the lads are going to reenact the whole Funkmaster Flex premiere.

Sillywave lives.

When I joke about trying to get Four Loko money for this site (I'll even call something Fourth Loko), Karim tells me in all seriousness:

"Just talk to them and tell them Karim sent you."

COMMA, FULLSTOP., by Ahmed, With Love.

10 track album

Ahmed, With Love.CodeVeronica

COMMA, FULLSTOP. is out now on all platforms - CDs available on Bandcamp. The GAA kits are sold out.

bonus beats: Mabfield also just interviewed Ahmed, With Love. Go watch that! it's stunning. However, there's a moment in there which reminded me to post missionfailed.wav to the public.