SUDAN TURNED A GUT FEELING INTO A SOUND YOU CAN'T IGNORE

He walked away from cricket and into a DAW-fueled destiny

- PEONY HIRWANI

Over a decade ago, Sudan’s mom refused to let him join a cricket club and bought him a guitar instead. He bailed on formal lessons almost immediately (“I don’t like learning under a curriculum”), but the instrument stuck. Soon, he was crashing his friends’ home studios, layering guitars for hours, experimenting with gear he didn’t own. “It’s been ten years since I first got into production,” he says now, “and I don’t think I've gone more than three days without opening a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) since.”

That kind of tunnel vision would eventually shape the foundations of a quiet creative empire. Before Sudan ever called himself an artist, he was producing for others, building sounds for a growing list of independent names. And then came a moment—random, afternoon, solo kind of moment—when he asked himself: why not me? “I had this epiphany,” he says. “What is stopping me from making an album for myself? I have all the resources, I should just take the plunge.” And so he did. Sort of. “I announced ‘this is the year for a Sudan album’ to my 250 followers in 2022. The album did not come out that year. Neither did it come out the next year,” he laughs. “But it gave me purpose.”