Spy From Cairo

The Spy from Cairo was born Moreno Visini in Italy on 21st June 1969. His mother’s roots could be traced to the Eastern European/Kurdish Gypsies. He started playing his father’s guitar when he was only 8 years old and immediately fell in love with music (he learned then that “MUSIC IS THE ONLY PLACE WHERE MAGIC REALLY HAPPENS”). At 15 he left his family to fulfill his dream of becoming a musician and ran away to London, England where he struggled with horrible jobs and language barriers for a year, until he was eventually accepted in the Arabic/Indian and West Indian community of Ladbroke Grove (west London). In the mid 80’s he played with a few different bands, their styles ranging from funk to reggae and world music and then fell in love with electronic music (the sampler was another “magic making instrument” to him). In 1986 his father passed away and Visini (nicknamed Zeb) returned to Italy to spend some time with his mother, after which he went to Spain where he absolutely fell in love with Gypsy flamenco and started to play the classical guitar in flamenco style. Back in Britain a year later, he started to create his own style of music, mixing the sounds of the peoples who had been close to him, such as Arabs and West Indians. He was then hired by the band The Indians based in the US to record “Indianism”, the band’s first album. Zeb moved to Los Angeles for a few months to play guitar with the Indians and make the record, which was released on Polydor in 1993. He then moved to New York where he still lives more than 20 years later. The Indians fell apart only 2 years after the release of their first album, so Zeb decided to focus on mastering samplers and learning as many instruments as possible to avoid being dependant on other musicians. Today The Spy still makes great music in his one-man-multi-instrumentalist band. He plays Oud, Saz, Ciftelli, Sitar, bass and guitar. Sampling, programming, arrangements and production are also done by The Spy. He also doesn’t like biographies.