Last June, my musician and writer friend Joseph Ghosn spent a few days in Beirut. We met on a couple of occasions, spoke about the abandoned grand piano in his neighbor’s house in the Lebanese mountains and the CD compilation I was planning to release later in August, with a track of his recorded in [...]
Archive for the ‘WRITINGS’ Category
Between Birthdays – a tape by Joseph Ghosn & Charbel Haber [2011]
Posted in Album Reviews, tagged Charbel Haber, Joseph Ghosn on September 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Alan Bishop & Sam Shalabi at Sharjah’s 10th Biennial (18/3/11)
Posted in Concert Reviews, WRITINGS, tagged Alan Bishop, Plot for a Biennial, Sam Shalabi, Score for a Biennial on March 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
As one third of Sun City Girls, Alan Bishop is one of the towering figures of the American musical underground of the last 30 years, and his musical output knows very few boundaries, whether in his solo guise as Alvarius B., or through the global releases of the Sublime Frequencies label, which he’s operated since [...]
Mazen Kerbaj & Sharif Sehnaoui’s Wormholes at Sharjah’s March Meeting (14/3/11)
Posted in Concert Reviews, WRITINGS, tagged March Meeting, Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui, Sharjah Biennial 11, Wormholes on March 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
One would not expect a performance consisting of live drawing and guitar soloing to be so physical. Sharif Sehnaoui is bent over his acoustic guitar, placed horizontally on his knees, his body contorting at times, erect at others, eyes closed in extreme concentration, while he strikes, pounds and hammers the instrument with mallets and sticks. [...]
Jeff Martin (Tea Party, The Armada) at The Basement, 31/08/10
Posted in Concert Reviews, WRITINGS, tagged Jeff Martin, Salim Hbeiliny, The Armada, The Basement, The Tea Party on September 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I stumbled on an archive of old photographs (well, not that old, as they are all digital) while going through my PC desktop at home. Local bands and musicians, foreign musicians playing in Lebanon, etc. Some interesting, most of them serving archival purposes, more than anything else. I will be posting a selection of those [...]
PRAED & Takumi Seino: Faded Diary
Posted in Album Reviews, tagged Faded Diary, Paed Conca, PRAED, Raed Yassin, Takumi Seino on August 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
When he came over to the radio for a chat and live performance, my friend Paed Conca brought this CD with him. Double CD, actually. The first side contains two tracks: one by Japanese guitarist Takumi Seino, and another by Paed and Raed Yassin (as PRAED), playing a bass (and other things as well, I’m [...]
TRASH INC: ULTRAMIND
Posted in Album Reviews, WRITINGS, tagged electronic music, grapheme, gui boratto, munma, Nabil Saliba, radioactive man, Trash Inc, ultramind, vintage on March 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »
TRASH INC: ULTRAMIND (Incognito, 2009) Ultramind is the first full-length release from former rock drummer-turned electronic composer Nabil Saliba, aka Trash Inc. The album is a highly entertaining collection of modern dance-floor electronic sounds, spiced with vintage, funky keyboard riffs. The inspiration for the album’s sound came to Saliba during the summer of 2008, as [...]
Scrambled Eggs: Dedicated to Foes Celebrating Friends
Posted in Album Reviews, WRITINGS, tagged abrasive, Charbel Haber, frantic, Malek Rizkallah, Marc Codsi, punk, scrambled eggs, Tony Elieh, Tunefork on January 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
SCRAMBLED EGGS: Dedicated To Foes Celebrating Friends (Incognito, 2009) Hot on the heels of the haunted soundtrack they’ve created for the Joreige/Hadjithomas film ‘Je Veux Voir’, Lebanese punk icons Scrambled Eggs end their busy year with this “modest” 2-song release, which does however hold a host of surprises. The year 2008 saw the Eggs part [...]
MUNMA: UNHOLY REPUBLIC (2008)
Posted in Album Reviews, WRITINGS, tagged ambient landscapes, dancefloor, Jawad Nawfal, munma, Murcof, Nabil Saliba, radio noise, samples, static, Trash Inc, trilogy on January 3, 2009 | 2 Comments »
INFO MUNMA: UNHOLY REPUBLIC (Incognito, 2009) The third official release by Lebanese electronic artist Jawad Nawfal sees him revisiting familiar themes and musical landscapes, while displaying the possibility for some radical departures in the near future. ‘Unholy Republic’ is the third installment of what is commonly referred to as the “Fate trilogy”, one that saw [...]
Scrambled Eggs & Friends, Tunefork Studio, Nov 08
Posted in WRITINGS, tagged Codsi, Elieh, Ghosn, Haber, improvisation, Kerbaj, Ko, Rives, Rizkallah, Sehnaoui, sessions, studio, Tabbal on November 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
[From left to right, clockwise: Haber, Elieh, Rizkallah; Tabbal; Sehnaoui; Ko; Kerbaj; Haber; Elieh; Rizkallah] Charbel Haber, singer, guitarist and composer with Lebanese rock band Scrambled Eggs, told me a few days ago that he had been planning for these sessions for three years, and the end result was ‘a dream come true’, for him. [...]
