A monthly selection of alternative, ambient and experimental music from Lebanon and the MENA region, selected by music promoter and label owner Ziad Nawfal – this broadcast features a guest mix by promoter and DJ SHIRINE SAAD. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.
Shirine Saad is a Beirut-born journalist, programmer and DJ focusing on culture and social change. They were Assistant Professor of the Practice in Arts Journalism and Criticism at Brown University, where they were the Founding Editor of a new multimedia arts journal, MOVEMENTS. They are a PhD candidate in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought at the European Graduate School.
TRACK LISTING:
Yara Asmar: may
Jad Atoui & Anthony Sahyoun: St Jacques
Bint Mbareh: Masbaha
The Dwarfs of East Agouza: Broken Apple
Fatima Al Qadiri: Golden
Elyse Tabet: world news on mute from bar in western suburbia
Ruptured is pleased to share two new releases that arrived this season from artists working through very different forms, but shaped by similarly difficult and transformative conditions.
Out now, May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable is the new full-length by Charbel Haber, written and recorded in Paris in early 2025. It is his first solo album since leaving Beirut, emerging from a period marked by distance and ongoing upheaval.
Built through layered guitar, looper pedals, and modular synthesis, the record unfolds gradually, with melodic lines that stretch patiently across long-form compositions. Some pieces accumulate into dense and saturated structures, while others remain sparse and restrained.
The album was composed, performed, recorded, and produced by Charbel Haber, mixed by Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios in Beirut, and mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market in Montreal. Artwork by Ali Cherri. Liner notes by Vanessa Ague. Released by Ruptured on vinyl and digital formats, distributed worldwide by Cargo UK.
Also newly announced is Sawt El Doumouh (The Sound of Tears), the second solo album by Beirut-based artist, singer, and actor Sandy Chamoun, out June 5 on Ruptured.
Many listeners will know Chamoun through SANAM, Ghadr, and The Great Departed, projects through which she has consistently approached voice as something both musical and social, drawing from folk traditions, satire, theater, and collective forms of performance from Lebanon and across the Arab world.
Written between 2023 and 2025 during the recent war in Lebanon, Sawt El Doumouh brings together Tarab, Sardinian Cantu, sparse electronics, and percussion in a collection centered on expression under pressure, and on what remains possible to voice in conditions of exhaustion and collapse.
The album was produced by Sandy Chamoun and Anthony Sahyoun, who also handled synths and electronics. Percussion throughout the record is by Ali Hout, with buzuq by Abed Kobeissy on “Ataba.” It was recorded and mixed by Anthony Sahyoun at Tunefork Studios in Beirut and mastered by Heba Kadry in New York. The accompanying one-sheet was written by Daryl Worthington. Artwork by Elissa Assaf, with photography by Aya Saleh.
Sawt El Doumouh will be available digitally and on vinyl via Ruptured, and distributed worldwide by Cargo UK.
Acclaim for Callings Of The Owed, the second album by Egyptian experimental duo Mi3raj, released by Ruptured in January 2026:
“Miraj’s Callings Of The Owed features contemporary poetry by Cairo based Mohamed Tarek Moussa, accompanied by Abdelrahman Shaat’s frequently uncanny and off-kilter production. Shaat’s skulking and shadowy production renders the pieces universal – ghostly tales of displacement and unease that transcend language. At times, Moussa’s vocals sound stretched to breaking point, even as the accompanying track rattles along below, a persistent and uncaring presence when stacked against a desperate vocal.” – Rosie Esther Solomon, The Wire
“Humming, almost elegiac songs that pool out slowly, Abdelrahman Shaat’s production consisting mostly of sustained tones that stretch single notes out to meditative length. Moussa’s voice—sometimes doubled, sometimes tripled, sometimes harmonizing with himself—tumbles over the notes, evoking both longing and delirium in equal measure.” – J. Edward Keyes, Bandcamp Essential Releaseshttps://daily.bandcamp.com/essential-releases/essential-releases-january-23-2026
“This is a beautiful album that mirrors Toni Geitani‘s “Wahj” in some ways – Moussa’s Arabic lyrics which he speaks, sings, multi-tracks and sometimes growls, are accompanied by electronics, live and processed instruments and beats from Shaat. Wonderful stuff.” – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog broadcast on FBi Radiohttps://www.fbi.radio/programs/utility-fog/episodes/utility-fog-18th-january-2026
“Voice and music have an alchemic connection in these songs which combine to give the Mi3raj soundscape a clear personality. As Moussa purrs, growls, whispers, preaches, speaks and sings within Abdelrahman Shaat’s intuitive sonic foundation, the tension and sense of loss at the heart of Callings Of The Owed reaches out. These stories told from the tangle of their home city Cairo resonate to the struggles between tradition, change, loss, love, power and destruction.” – John Parry, Backseat Mafiahttps://www.backseatmafia.com/album-review-mi3raj-callings-of-the-owed-powerful-and-poetic-electronic-fusion-from-cairos-rising-underground-scene/
A monthly selection of alternative, ambient and experimental music from Lebanon and the MENA region, selected by music promoter and label owner Ziad Nawfal – this broadcast features a guest mix by composer and musician CHARBEL HABER. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.
Charbel Haber is a Lebanese musician, composer, and artist working across music, film, and performance. A central figure in Lebanon’s experimental scene since the late 1990s, he co-founded Scrambled Eggs, a key group in Beirut’s independent music landscape. His work spans electroacoustic composition and guitar-based forms, alongside long-running collaborations with Fadi Tabbal. Based between Beirut and Paris, Haber’s practice engages memory and history through sound.
Acclaim for May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable, the latest album by Lebanese experimental musician Charbel Haber, released by Ruptured in April 2026.
“So, it’s a journey. In music and stories, those usually go from darkness to light, or from and then back to home. As the album proceeds through tracks like “One last stroll in the garden of light,” it becomes a journey without a map—a quest for a place that may be safe and, if not that, then still; and if not that, then maybe a place where one can take a breath and think clearly.” – George Grella, Bandcamp ALBUM OF THE DAYhttps://charbelhaber.bandcamp.com/album/may-a-soft-sun-bless-your-sky-while-you-wait-for-the-inevitable
“An utterly gorgeous minimalist ambient/classical/record from this Lebanese producer is as gentle and moving as a sunrise.” – Bandcamp New & Notable, 24 Apr. 2026
“At times, Haber’s music evokes the cinematic post-rock of bands like Sigur Rós and Explosions in the Sky, but his latest full-length is neither as chilly as the former nor as grandiose as the latter. May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable may cast its gaze toward the heavens, but with its inherent warmth, not to mention the softly crackling static that is present pretty much throughout the record, it’s an effort that crucially still feels very human.” – Shawn Reynaldo, First Floor Substackhttps://firstfloor.substack.com/p/charbel-haber-may-a-soft-sun-bless
“In tone and mood, May a Soft Sun slots into the tradition of Kranky albums tracing the seam between ambient and post-rock; in tracks like “I stutter when I speak of love and death,” the music’s jittery instability reminds me of Fennesz. But again, there’s one of those titles to remind you that Haber’s motivations don’t end with mere beauty; in their soft distortion and subtle dissonance, there’s something ungraspable about this music; it feels like Haber’s attempt to capture a place and time that is already gone.” – Philip Sherburne, Futurism Restated Substackhttps://futurismrestated.substack.com/p/fr-173-eleven-albums-in-search-of
“Charbel Haber weaves time. He suspends it, kneads it, stretches it like chewing gum. He steals it, turns it into a flying carpet, and hovers above Beirut, still in ruins. He invents a space and quietly fills it, enveloping it in an atmosphere that is but a breath away from silence. Time no longer exists. Only music.” – François Gorin
“The album reveals itself as a series of inner reflections, with the listener entering mid-thought. The tracks arrive without defined beginnings or endings, like suspended sonic scenes already in motion before we encounter them. Loops stretch and erode over time—beautiful, luminous, yet almost always clouded by uncertainty. “One last stroll in the garden of light” offers a strong example: bright and inviting, with sharp ornamentations rising from within the drones to catch the light, before the drones and fragmented passages pull it back toward darkness.” – Mohammed Ashraf, Ma3azefhttps://bit.ly/4eqjpHj
“Between futuristic promise, morbid surrealism, and tender melancholy, an atmosphere arises that feels both otherworldly and fragile. Tracks like “This show starts in the future,” “One last stroll in the garden of light,” “I stutter when I speak of love and death,” and “The unfortunate meeting of an accident and the goddess of time on a dissecting table”—the latter a reference to Louis Aragon and simultaneously to the legendary debut of Nurse With Wound—evoke a floating theater of images in which time, form, and memory merge into one another.” – Uwe Schneider, African Paperhttps://africanpaper.com/2026/05/02/charbel-haber-may-a-soft-sun-bless-your-sky-while-you-wait-for-the-inevitable/
“The gentleness of Charbel Haber’s new album conceals emotions and places, offering a renewed way of inhabiting the world in times of war and exile. The cover artwork, by Ali Cherri, resonates deeply—its correspondences are striking, unsettling, and never forgetful.” – Joseph Ghosn via Substack https://substack.com/@josephghosn/
“The album’s sonic architecture is deeply tied to its conceptual concerns. Loops evolve like consciousness itself—constantly updating, feeding back into their own transformations. Death is not treated as an event but as a horizon: something that shapes the trajectory of the sound without ever fully arriving. This gives the music its peculiar tension—slow, restrained, yet always moving toward an unseen endpoint.” – A Closer Listen https://acloserlisten.com/2026/04/22/charbel-haber-may-a-soft-sun-bless-your-sky-while-you-wait-for-the-inevitable/
“Here warbling, tinny guitar samples float between cavernous drone and what sounds like a chorus of angels, recalling some of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s early drone work.” – Graham Latham, anything / everything newsletter https://anything-everything.ghost.io/mad-enough-to-stay/
Acclaim for Al Wahem, the latest album by Lebanese/Swiss electronic duo PRAED, released by Ruptured & Annihaya in March 2026:
“Opening title “Al Wahem” track sets the tone, 19 minutes of intense but groovy shaabi rhythms strafed by Conca’s snaking clarinet and guest vocals from Mayssa Jallad. With its insistent rhythms and glimmering sea sprays of synth, ‘Al Maraya’ is reminiscent of the ecstatic peaks of late period drum circle Boredoms, while the closing ‘Assarab’ seems designed to prove a live band can summon up the sort of intense energy of electro-shaabi musicians like Islam Chipsy. A wild, ecstatic listen from start to close.” – Louis Pattison, The Wire
“There’s a solid equation at play, weaving together electronic, jazz, and Egyptian shaabi threads into a shifting, imaginative sound—one that delights the ear with its hallucinatory nature and layered ornamentation. The blend of jazz and shaabi brings to mind the work of Salah Ragab, though Al Wahem feels richer and more expansive in its instrumental distribution, rhythmic structures, and modal transitions, culminating in the closing track “Al Sarab”, notable for its rhythmic framework, keyboard solo, and dense sonic textures.” – Rami Abadir, Ma3azefhttps://bit.ly/48G79Pd
“The strings are strong, but sit just below the synths on the equality meter, with underlaid drones frequently occupying the frequencies desired. ‘Al Maraya’ offers circular-breathing clarinet spirals for full ascendance, with other reed-layers stoking up a repeated theme over a massively rattling percussion wall. Sounding just as much Egyptian as Lebanese, this is cross-currented fusion at its most uncompromising.” – Martin Longley, Songlines 4/5https://www.songlines.co.uk/review/al-wahem
“One of the album’s greatest strengths is its relationship with repetition. Many musicians use repetition as reassurance. PRAED uses it as a form of controlled disorientation. Familiar figures return altered, relocated, or viewed from unfamiliar angles. The effect resembles walking through a neighborhood where every street appears recognizable, yet somehow none of them lead where memory insists they should.” – Vito Camarretta, Chain D.L.K.https://chaindlk.com/reviews/13572
“Al Wahem is not only a masterful confirmation for Praed, but the perfect culmination of a twenty-year career spent sabotaging the boundaries between Western avant-garde and Middle Eastern pop culture. A physical and political album, capable of blending the dust of Cairo’s streets with the industrial coldness of Berlin. A total, disorienting listen, and absolutely unmissable for lovers of borderless contamination.” – Matteo Fiorelli, Kathodik Webzinehttps://www.kathodik.org/2026/06/11/praed-al-wahem/
“Performing in a style comparable to Egyptian shaabi music, which in itself borrows heavily from underground street culture, the pairing of Paed Conca and Raed Yassin leads to some entrancing dance music, relentless in its groove and constantly mutating over the course of the album.” – Reuben Cross, FarOut Magazinehttps://faroutmagazine.co.uk/six-great-albums-you-may-have-missed-from-march-2026/
“Al Wahem feels like a direct development of their orchestra music, where the duo have expanded not only their musical palette but also increased their personnel.” – Cyclic Defrost
“There is always movement, even when it resists clear direction. The pull is immediate, sometimes disorienting, often physical. Al Wahem channels a popular form with care, while pushing it somewhere more volatile, more open-ended.” – Kristoffer Cornils, Musikexpress
“Sounds from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean meet colder, urban textures, while traces of belly dance motion fold into motorik repetition. This is music where distances collapse. Different vocabularies coexist without hierarchy, sharing space, altering each other as they move.” – Massimiliano Busti, Blow Up
“PRAED isn’t interested in showiness, nor in complexity as a badge of intelligence. The duo knows exactly what to do with its materials and, just as importantly, what not to do with them. No grandstanding. No decorative folklore. No avant-garde posturing. Just music that moves forward with intent, that uses repetition as a tool for shifting ground, and that manages to make what once felt stable seem strange. That may be its greatest strength: to make a language that feels immediately physical, yet can’t be exhausted in a single listen.” – Solenopolehttps://solenopole.com/chronique/praed-al-wahem/
“The more compact format imbues the music with an unexpected sense of propulsion and dynamism as a swaying motorik starts pushing along melodic loops and synth stabs into delirious cuts. The whole work is so coherent and functions so well that it feels a sin to pick it apart.” – Research Music
“PRAED confirm their ambition and vision with a hypnotic album that blurs the line between acoustic and electronic sounds through a relentless juxtaposition of elements: “Al Wahem” deludes, fascinates, and demands you lose yourself within it.” – Piergiuseppe Lippolis, Music Maphttps://www.musicmap.it/recdischi/ordinaperr.asp?id=12495
“It’s psychedelic, swirling, extremely rhythmic, a free jazz of Lebanese & Egyptian music… As always this music is full of joy and yearning, and never-ending forward motion.” – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog broadcast
A monthly selection of alternative, ambient and experimental music from Lebanon and the MENA region, selected by music promoter and label owner Ziad Nawfal – this broadcast features a guest mix by DJ and sound artist MARYLOU. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.
Marylou is a Berlin-based French DJ and sound artist known for eclectic, genre-defying sets that blend dub, noise, traditional music, improv jazz, footwork, and breakcore. Associated with Morphine Records and the SHAPE+ platform, she has played at major venues like Berghain, Café OTO, and festivals including Terraforma, CTM, and Meakusma.
TRACK LISTING:
Gonçalo F Cardoso: Danum Valley & Canopy Walks
Jessica Ackerley: Introduction
Sunn O))) meets Nurse with Wound: Ash On The Trees {The sudden ebb of a diatribe}
Unknown Artist: Naluwahañadibu Inina {I’m looking for you}
Typhonian Highlife: Chitahoori Training Tape
lusor: We’re Relatings
Ale Hop: Why Is It They Say A City Like Any City
Marshall Allen, Roscoe Mitchell, Milford Graves & Scott Robinson: Flow State
Benji Da Freak: Jeben U Mozak
Mark Fell & Will Guthrie: Infoldings 1
Meredith Monk: Turtle Dreams
Dj Haram: Badass (feat. Carmen Nebula)
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi: Swamp (Ricardo Villalobos Variation)
Meitei / 冥丁: Touba / 塔婆
Driftmachine: Dogov Godov
Tyler Friedman: Jlaljar
Bruce: Wesley’s Sniped All Our Bleedin’ K (Re-Vamped)
We released A Separation From Habit by Joy Moughanni on cassette in April 2025. It now returns on vinyl.
Limited to 200 copies. 50 are available via our Bandcamp page. The rest will travel with Joy on his upcoming tour.
Built from archival tape recordings (1975–1985) by Georges Tarazi, alongside radio fragments and electronic processing, the album moves through conflict and memory, without offering resolution.
Named one of The Quietus Albums of the Year 2025 (#48).
Two new compilations have just been released by our friends at Tunefork Studios and Beirut Synth Center, bringing together a vast cross-section of musicians and artists from Beirut and beyond.
At a moment when Israeli bombing and military escalation have once again forced mass displacement across southern Lebanon, this project gathers work from artists across generations and scenes, to raise funds for grassroots aid supporting those who have been pushed from their homes.
The list of contributors speaks for itself: Bachar Mar-Khalife, Julia Sabra, Mayssa Jallad, Postcards, Charif Megarbane, Yasmine Hamdan, Zeid Hamdan, Mazen Kerbaj, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, Sary Moussa, Faten Kanaan, Mary Lattimore with Pascal Semerdjian & Fadi Tabbal, and many more. It genuinely feels like everyone who matters in Beirut’s musical landscape is present here, alongside close friends and collaborators from further afield.
Sales from the compilation go to Beit Aam and other local initiatives working directly with displaced families in Beirut and the South.
A monthly selection of alternative, ambient and experimental music from Lebanon and the MENA region, selected by music promoter and label owner Ziad Nawfal – this broadcast features a guest mix by musician and producer JOY MOUGHANNI. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.
Joy Moughanni is a Beirut-based producer, engineer, and songwriter, and a partner at Tunefork Studios. He emerged from Beirut’s alternative scene through the electronic and pop projects Pomme Rouge and Gizzmo, producing four EPs before moving into a solo practice and becoming a collaborator with artists across the region.
TRACK LISTING:
Joy Moughanni – The Voice I’ve Yet To Understand
Autechre – M4 Lema
Ben Frost – Killshot
SANAM – Sametou Sawtan
Sary Moussa – A Storm, a Gift
aya – hexed!
Jerusalem In My Heart – Tanto
NP [Jad Atoui & Anthony Sahyoun] – Coins With Memory
Ruptured Music 