The Brothers Breaking New Grounds With Electronic Music-fusion

It was a cloudy Saturday afternoon in Lagos, and I was on my way to FāëM’s studio in Ikeja. Luckily, it didn’t rain. When I got there, I was welcomed by Demii, one half of the fraternal producer duo FāëM. I met his twin sister Oreoluwa in their living space, which also doubles as the space they use for their live shows, before heading into the studio. Fapelo, their older brother and the other half of FāëM, joined us shortly after.

FāëM (pronounced “fame”) consists of two biological brothers, Fapelo and Demii, who people often assume are twins due to their striking resemblance. Their music odyssey began with Fapelo, who had grown uninterested in studying architecture. He started writing a fictional web series in University, without knowing where the hobby might take him. “I was just writing and sharing on WhatsApp, and it was blowing up. I was just writing the series on impulse, while being fully committed to school. I started sharing them, one person saw it and shared it with another, and then it became something bigger.  It got big enough that a bunch of people who came to meet me one day, I still remember it, were like, ‘ Bro, you need to take this up. Forget architecture, forget any other thing.’
“Oh, at that time, I had already started DJing. But it was more of a side thing. A lot of people knew me for music. They didn't even know me for writing.”

FāëM found their feet treading towards the electronic dance music scene they now dominate back in 2015. One afternoon, they got back from school and started watching the popular music channel, Trace TV. That brief leisure time felt like a moment of escape as they got lost in the thrilling BPM-spiked soundscapes of global EDM heads like David Guetta, Avicii, and so on. Soon, what started as discovering new music eventually became something Fapelo wanted to share with the people around him.

“I started DJing because I wanted to share my music with people, not really because I wanted to start a career out of it. My siblings and friends started listening to electronic music. I won’t say it was as a result of us, but more like because it was good music. Then I started hosting events, and my brother joined because we lived together in the same hostel and shared the same music taste. So that’s how it started,” he said. 

Disc jockeying became a career for Fapelo, in 2017, and, for Demii, the following year. Despite House Music -- and EDM, in general -- being a minority scene in Nigeria, the brothers kept playing their special gigs, finding more people who believed in their community in no time. At the same time, they had a constraint. People attending their shows were fast getting weaned off the EDM sound; it just wasn’t sticking. 

Their rescue? Afro fusion. They spun around Afrobeats songs, remixing them with EDM production. 

Sitting inside their cozy, artsy, home studio, they played one of their special remixes, Agogo. I know EDM is already electronic, but nothing best describes that sound piece than electric. It felt the same way to their audience too. It felt even better to them, when they both realized that they had landed a blueprint for a fusion that actually works the crowd. 

“The first time playing Agogo at Group Therapy felt electric because that was the first time we saw our listeners understand what we were doing. A feeling we couldn’t forget. We obviously felt it from the crowd. We are forever grateful for that.”

Their magnum opus, so far, is their debut album, WAWDH -  What Are We Doing Here, released in February this year.  The 16-tracker album is inspired by everyday human emotions, with a special focus on individualism. 

Demi describes the period that inspired the album as an epiphany. “Late 2024, going into 2025, we had this crazy epiphany that we were kind of lost and doing the wrong things. So we had to cut down a lot of our habits and a lot of the things we were doing. We had to retract, basically. 

“And it came with us, taking some time off. We realized we had to close ourselves off for a bit and try to find some reason in that solitude. And through that solitude, the same question kept recurring: what are we doing here? What are we actually doing here?”

The album packs guest appearances from Tsuni, Lunamic and GhostwriterMel, as the soundpiece places greater emphasis on soulful, uplifting and introspective tonal planes. “I would want you to listen to the project and maybe something would catch you off guard,” Fapelo quips. “It’s not necessarily what you would expect from an Afroelectronic producer. Out of all the music we made for the project, there are maybe four songs that you can properly play in a rave. 

“The songs are more introspective. I would say they’re more for listening in the morning, listening in traffic. It’s just more like you, you know, yourself. It’s like a self-theme, because you’re asking, ‘What are we doing here?’ But really, it’s ‘What am I doing here?’ because it was a personal experience.” 

Interestingly, Fapelo and Oreoluwa who's more of a third member of the group as vocalists on 'WAWDH?!' while their manager appears in the intro.

“My sister and myself are on a lot of the songs. A bunch of our friends actually helped us. We also met some of them in the course of making the project. So a lot of the music, even the album itself, is happening right now. The main music videos, the album itself, the live show. Everything is happening right now.”

For the duo, one thing this record taught them is the importance of letting go and not fixating on things beyond their control, they admit. 

For them, they are vocal about making music that they, or anyone, could listen to at any age. Quality is something they care deeply about, and this was demonstrated in their recent project with K1 De Ultimate. Most of the songs on that project had been completed two years before its release, while a few were finished earlier this year. 

Cover Credit: Stylish Sinner

‍