From Isolation To Escapism, F.Rider Redefines Himself With ‘ORKIDS’

By Lara Kramer  •  12 Sep 2025 in Features

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Karl Azari never wanted F.Rider to feel like a guy who just makes songs.

He wanted his persona to feel like a living presence, like a space you could walk into. At 26, he has managed exactly that.

Behind his iconic moniker is music that’s not just a collection of beats and verses but entire atmospheres, sculpted out of dreamy electronics, sharp-tongued raps, and production choices that look reckless on paper but hit with unnerving precision.

It makes sense, then, that his career so far has swung between extremes.

Paints & Dyes, his 2024 double album, was practically a diary printed to sound. A heavy, stripped-down excavation of depression and mental collapse, it was the sort of project that made long-time fans nod and new listeners wonder if they had accidentally stumbled into a therapy session. Karl calls it one of his best, but he knew the next step had to look different.

So he made ORKIDS. Released 29 August 2025, the album is a deliberately bright detour, built around the idea of distraction. Not distraction in the lazy sense of checking out, but distraction as a survival tool.

Sometimes you need to step away, look at something beautiful, or even indulge in something destructive, just to remember you are alive. For Karl, ORKIDS is that break. A vivid, chaotic playground to balance the intimacy of his past work.

“I wanted this to be an album you can picture yourself in, not just one about me,” he explains.

That intention is obvious the moment you hit play. ORKIDS throws colour everywhere. Jerky rhythms bounce with the renewed energy of a kid discovering music for the first time. Trap is largely left in the dust.

In its place, Karl leans into the jerk resurgence led by artists like Nettspend, Xaviersobased, and Jim Legxacy. Their influence doesn’t just creep into the record. It slaps across the tracklist, forcing him to rebuild his sense of rhythm and groove.

The result is an album that rarely sits still.

Sequencing is Karl’s obsession, so every high is followed by a valley and every lull sets up another punch. He treats the tracklist less like a narrative and more like a rollercoaster.

The drop comes fast, the climb feels tense, and there is always another turn when you think you know where it is going.

Take ‘CANDY’. It is pure energy, a track Karl describes as the most “F.Rider” song on the album. Fast BPM, sugar-rush hooks, a synth hook in the outro designed to live rent free in your head.

He calls it his perfect gateway track for new listeners. Then just when you think the album is all chaos, he blindsides you with ‘YUR HATI’ featuring Airliftz. Years in the making, it plays like a lullaby, tender yet polished until it gleams.

For Karl, it is the most personal track on the record. Working with Airliftz was not just a bucket list moment but a connection he holds close. “That man is pure, probably the nicest person I’ve ever spoken to,” he says, before laughing at how it still turned into a love song.

Features are never just add-ons in Karl’s world.

They shift the energy of the record itself. He builds beats with an image of the artist in mind, then sits back and waits to be surprised. More often than not, they outstrip his expectations. ‘KLIRAQ MAY KRY’ with Afiq proves this.

Fans wanted another ‘F.REAKS & G.EEKS’ moment, the viral hit that racked up over 200,000 streams and 1,700 TikTok sound uses. Karl refused to chase that lightning twice. Instead, he pulled a different side out of Afiq, a quieter and more unexpected performance that feels like a risk worth taking.

Risk is, after all, what defines F.Rider. Karl set himself rules when he created the project, and the first was to never repeat himself. He knows it would be a waste of his talents to settle into one sound. New trends come and go, and he is intent on staying slippery enough to twist them into his own warped reflection. That restless energy is part of why his peers describe his sound as “sharp like spikes.”

He agrees to a point, but he prefers to think of his music like a solo break in jazz or rock. The moment when thought evaporates, instinct takes over, and the artist pours their entire soul into one unbroken movement. His catalogue is littered with those solo moments, and ORKIDS pushes them to new extremes.

All of this exists within a scene that doesn’t quite know what to do with him.

Too experimental to sit squarely in Malaysian hip hop, too rap-leaning to drift entirely into electronic abstraction, he floats in the middle space. Karl admits it feels like being a middle child. But he also knows that is exactly where his value lies.

He sees his role less as a trend follower and more as a reporter, documenting the times through sound. “Art reflects the collective reality we are all living in,” he says. “If the infrastructure isn’t here, if the support is missing, then we push boundaries ourselves.”

That sense of responsibility runs parallel to the deeply personal role F.Rider has played in his life. Early on, it was armour, a persona to shield Karl from the world while letting him vent. Now he feels the lines blurring. “I’ve caught up with F.Rider,” he admits. “Maybe one day I can stop having F.Rider tell Karl’s story. Instead, I can tell F.Rider’s story as Karl.”

As for what comes after ORKIDS, Karl claims he doesn’t know.

He always works, he admits, but the thought of taking a break lingers. Seven years of relentless creation can wear you thin, and sometimes the artist has to step back to remember the person.

For now, he is riding the wave, letting the iMac in his studio play the role of his most stable relationship.

If you want a neat slogan for ORKIDS, he gives you one anyway. Stop and smell the roses. The album invites you to do just that. Whether you get drunk on the perfume or shred your fingers on the thorns is entirely up to you.

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