For the better half of the past decade, Yousef Hatlani has been one of those everywhere-at-once scene notables; he worked at the now-shuttered Backspace and Someday Lounge, was a co-host on the music podcast Faces on the Radio, and remains a tireless photographer and documentarian of live music in Portland.
After a few false starts at playing music in Portland himself, Hatlani—who moved from Bahrain in 2006—is finally readying the release of his first solo album, Bit by Bit. It’s an ambitious debut to say the least.
“I knew that, since I had so many friends ask me if I had a band or an album out, my first album was something I had to get serious about,” Hatlani says. “It took a while to come together.”
Bit by Bit is a lovingly crafted, painstakingly faithful covers album of classic video game music. Its title—which Hatlani concedes is “not super original”—serves as both an allusion to retro video games and the meticulous nature in which the album was recorded. “I recorded bits and pieces of it every day for four to five months,” he says.