Author: z.nawfal

ZIAD NAWFAL is a Beirut-based DJ, radio host, music promoter and producer, and the co-founder of ground-breaking independent label Ruptured with Lebanese studio owner and engineer Fadi Tabbal. From 1992 to 2021, Nawfal relentlessly exposed Lebanon and the world to the special local and regional independent music talent, on his weekly radio shows ‘Ruptures’ and ‘Decalages’ broadcast on Radio Lebanon 96.2FM. Between 2013 and 2021, he was also the managing director of Irtijal Festival, the first and foremost festival for experimental music in Lebanon.

Ruptured Album Release // MAYSSA JALLAD // Marjaa: The Battle Of The Hotels [VINYL EDITION]

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Releasing November 3rd, 2023 – a joint release by Ruptured and Six of Swords

Lebanese singer/songwriter Mayssa Jallad’s first solo album. A poetic reflection on Beirut’s War of the Hotels, one of the bloodiest events of Lebanon’s Civil War.

The vinyl edition of ‘Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels’ is co-released by Beirut-based label Ruptured and UK newcomer Six of Swords. It is pressed in a limited edition of 300 copies, with a limited D2C edition containing download coupon and a full-colour, double-sided 34 x 68cm art print on 150gsm wood-free paper with map, 3D diagrams and timeline depicting the historical events of the battle.  

Mayssa will play a short European tour in November, including performances at Oslo World in Sweden and Le Guess Who? in The Netherlands. 

“In the end, the album, like the city on which it is based, feels like an infinite loop of history, relayed through the brave yet saintly voice of an artist who has taken the task of documenting the past through music.” – Christina Hazboun, Bandcamp
daily.bandcamp.com/features/mayssa-jallad-marjaa-battle-of-the-hotels-interview  

“It’s an album with everything; vital history, experimental melodicism, inventive structures, mountains of emotion, and Jallad’s stunning voice. There is so much to learn, so much to hear.” – Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis

“In an overwhelmingly creative and critical act, Mayssa Jallad turns the destruction of the Lebanese Civil War into a stunning, two-sided album driven by poetic songwriting mixed with historical narration, lush strings and synths, gentle drones, and her incredible vocal prowess.” – Maha El-Nabawy, SceneNoise

releases November 03, 2023

Listen/Order (Ruptured) HERE

Listen/Order (Six of Swords) HERE

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Stegi Radio // 05 September 2023

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Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for STEGI RADIO (formerly Movement Radio) in Athens, featuring music from Lebanon, Kuwait, Algeria, Belgium and the US. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of STEGI RADIO.

1. STÉPHANIE MERCHAK – Skyer [LB]
2. STARS OF THE LID – Hiberner Toujours [US]
3. BANA HAFFAR – Ahl Al Samaa’ [LB]
4. SANAM – Shajar Al-Touti (The Mulberry Trees) [LB]
5. POSTCARDS – Golden Age [LB]
6. SAFA – Supersummer (Radio Premiere) [LB]
7. FATIMA AL QADIRI – Golden [KW]
8. MARC CODSI – The Dance [LB]
9. AHMED MALEK – Tape 19.11 [DZ]
10. FATIMA AL QADIRI – Qasmuna (Dreaming) [KW]
11. SANAM – Aykathani Malakon (An Angel Woke Me) [LB]
12. KID FOURTEEN – I Think of Him Sometimes [LB]
13. ELYSE TABET & JAWAD NAWFAL – Outpost III [LB]
14. TASJIIL MOUJAHED (Cedrik Fermont & Jawad Nawfal) – Blue Mirror [BE/LB]
15. BANA HAFFAR – Elemental [LB]
16. LILIANE CHLELA – Jurk [LB]
17. SANDY CHAMOUN – Soukoun Mouwhesh [LB]
18. NÂR – Mimoune II [LB]
19. MARC CODSI – The Savior [LB]

Ruptured Album Release // SAFA // Hometown [Original Score]

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Releasing 06 October 2023 on Ruptured:

Mhamad Safa is a musician, architect and researcher, based between London and Beirut. Safa’s work focuses on multi-scalar spatial conditions and their sonic make-ups. He conveys these auditory inquiries by assembling sound design, micro-sampling, algorithmic sound technology, synthesis, psychoacoustics, field recordings, and their graphic interpretations. His debut album The Subtleties of Elevated Things was released in 2018 by Amsterdam-based label Modular Mind, and second album Ibtihalat was released in 2022 by UIQ in the UK. Besides composing music for films and sound installations, he was part of multiple publications and music compilations. Safa had shown individual and collaborative artwork and performances at Goethe Institute in Beirut, Arab Center for Architecture, Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, the Centre for Research Architecture in London, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Bergen Assembly in Norway, The Showroom in London, Café Oto in London among others.

The music on Hometown was produced for the video installation of the same title by Dutch collective Metahaven, shot between Beirut and Kyiv in 2017. The film conjures notions of land, technology, and fiction through an endlessly morphing reality of living conditions. Seen through the lens of two protagonists, Hometown depicts their uncertain and distorted relationship to geographic affinities, and the intimate memories embedded within the landscape.
The original score emerged out of a continuous exchange of images, scripts, and poetry between Safa and Metahaven, evolving into an overall sonic narrative. The composition highlights the protagonists’ struggle to access memory while situating it within their spatial and networked conditions. Evolving from processed soundscapes, stretched micro-samples and feedbacks, this assemblage weaves together a sense of forgetting with tacit spatial knowledge. Percussive and rhythmic structures drew from patterns inherent to computational systems and technologies of visibility, omnipresent in the film.

Music composed and produced by Mhamad Safa in Beirut in 2017-2018.
Mixed by Mhamad Safa, except for tracks 5 and 8 mixed by Jad Atoui.
Mastered by Cedrik Fermont at Syrphe, Berlin.

Available as a digital album and limited cassette with download code.

Listen/Order on Bandcamp

Ruptured News // Radwan Ghazi Moumneh & Alex Zhang Hungtai at Hotel2Tango // 13 August 2023

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act·art·mgt, Heavy Trip & Ruptured present:
Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Alex Zhang Hungtai | Hotel2Tango

Join us on Sunday, the 13th of August for an intimate showing of a new performance that Alex Zhang Hungtai and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh have been working on.
Opening the evening will be Véro Marengère.

Place: Hotel2Tango recording studio, Tiohtia:ke | Montréal.
Time 20:00.
This is a very limited seating event. No sales at the door.
Advance tickets can be purchased HERE.

Photo by Ziad Nawfal

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Radio Alhara // 19 July 2023

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Ziad Nawfal’s monthly broadcast for Radio Alhara in Bethlehem, Palestine – showcasing two albums released in digital format by Ruptured in 2022/2023:

KAPUT by The Art of Boo
+
LOW TOMS BRIGHT BELLS AND DARKEST SPELLS by Elyse Tabet

Track List

THE ART OF BOO – Kaput
1. Intro
2. Boom Kaboom
3. Entry
4. Exit
5. Dear Anna
6. Promenade
7. Dolor
8. Dawn
9. Exodus

ELYSE TABET with Pascal Semerdjian & Yara Asmar – Low Toms Bright Bells and Darkest Spells
10. Low Toms
11. Bright Bells
12. Bright Bells (Bana Haffar Remix)
13. Low Toms Through the Paper Shredder
14. And Darkest Spells

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Movement Radio // 06 June 2023

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Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Movement Radio in Athens, with a special focus on alternative music from Lebanon. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO.

1. JULIA SABRA AND FADI TABBAL – All The Birds [LB]
2. ETYEN – Ame Triste [LB]
3. DAOU – Beginnings [LB]
4. ELYSE TABET WITH PASCAL SEMERDJIAN & YARA ASMAR – Bright Bells [LB]
5. JAWAD NAWFAL – Climbing Plant [LB]
6. EL RASS & MUNMA – Fee Qala’at Tarablus [LB]
7. ANTHONY SAHYOUN – Irhamna [LB]
8. SCRAMBLED EGGS – It’s All About Lost Expectations [LB]
9. CHARBEL HABER – John Coltrane And John Fahey Crossing The Danube (Excerpt) [LB]
10. CHARBEL HABER AND FADI TABBAL – La certitude de l’aube [LB]
11. YOUMNA SABA – Nafas (live at Radio Liban) [LB]
12. MAYSSA JALLAD – Al Hisar December 8 [LB]

Ruptured Album Release // THE ART OF BOO // Kaput

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Releasing 07 July 2023 on Ruptured:

“Kaput” is the second music album by Lebanese cartoonist and musician Bernard Hage, also known as “The Art of Boo”. The work consists of a series of piano based tunes that chronicle the artist’s distress during the tumultuous crisis in Lebanon, from the early protests in October 2019 until his immigration to Berlin in June 2021.

Recorded and produced amid the chaos of political unrest, pandemic lockdowns, financial collapse, and the devastating Beirut port explosion, the sounds of the city and the artist’s personal struggles were channeled into the creation of this album.

Composed and performed by Bernard Hage and Anthony Sahyoun in Beirut, between November 2020 and April 2021.
With Akram Hajj on drums.
Sound design by Cedric Kayem. Mastered by Ziad Moukarzel.

Available as a digital album and art print with download code.

Listen/Order HERE

Al Maslakh Album Release // SAWT OUT // Black Current

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Releasing 28 June 2023 on Al Maslakh:

Since its foundation in 2015, Berlin-based trio SAWT OUT has shaped and refined its profile as a prominent improvisational unit. With their unusual acoustic instrumentation of trumpet and two sets of percussion, the three artists create bewildering sound-worlds rich in detail and musical interaction.

“Black Current” is their second studio album, and features a different approach than its predecessor from 2019. While the latter was more representative of the sudden changes and machine-like precision heard in the group’s live performances, individual ideas emerge at a slower pace on this new album, and musical material rather flows in currents through the group, often blurring its instrumental origins, while shifting and transforming from one player to another. Nevertheless there’s an extraordinary tightness to the group’s interplay throughout the four tracks, sometimes giving the impression of one collective brain being distributed among three musicians, where each slight change of a musical element directly affects all the others.

Sawt Out:
Burkhard Beins – percussion
Mazen Kerbaj – trumpet
Michael Vorfeld – percussion

All music by Beins / Kerbaj / Vorfeld
Recorded by Sawt Out at ausland, Berlin on 2, 3 and 4 July 2020.
Mixed by Burkhard Beins. Mastered by Werner Dafeldecker.
Artwork & design by Mazen Kerbaj.

Available as a digital album and limited edition vinyl LP with download code.

Listen/Order HERE

Photo by Cristina Marx

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Movement Radio // 02 May 2023

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Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Movement Radio in Athens, featuring music from Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait, Iran, Greece, Spain, Italy, Canada, the UK and the US. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO.

  1. MΜΜΔ & ALEM – Adagio From Oboe Concerto in D minor (keyboard version) [GR]
  2. 700 BLISS – Anthology [UK/US]
  3. SARA PERSICO – Boundary [IT]
  4. AZU TIWALINE – Deep Theko [TN]
  5. DEENA ABDELWAHED – Dîner [TN]
  6. INTERBELLUM – Dreams Of Rubble [LB]
  7. BANA HAFFAR – Elemental [LB]
  8. NANCY MOUNIR – Gannentini (feat. Zaki Murad) [EG]
  9. THE DWARFS OF EAST AGOUZA – Hungry Bears Don’t Dance [EG/CA/US]
  10. FATIMA AL QADIRI – Malaak [KW]
  11. NAR – Mimoune Ii [LB]
  12. MARINA HERLOP – Miu (Choir version) [SP]
  13. TEGH & ADEL POURSAMADI – Mornāl مرنال [IR]
  14. REVERSE SERVER [Jawad Nawfal & Omar Itani) – Puncture [LB]

Ruptured Album Release // HALIM EL-DABH // The Wondrous Reverberations of Halim El​-​Dabh

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Releasing 10 June 2023 on Annihaya:

Considered to be one of the earliest composers of electronic music, Halim El-Dabh (1921-2017) was an Egyptian-American musician, ethnomusicologist, and educator. The works in this compilation span his astounding six decade career, moving across Halim El-Dabh’s eclectic, undefinable, and groundbreaking oeuvre – including field recordings, concertos, electronic music compositions, and improvised instrumentals.
Made available here for the first time in the vinyl record format, this compilation was lovingly curated by El-Dabh researcher Joe Namy and Benjamin Gaydos, under the guidance of Halim El-Dabh’s estate.

“It was a drive really, to hear something beyond what I was hearing. So I had to use all the electronic means to reach that sound that I was hearing and it’s not there. And the means to do it was right there around me.”
–Halim El-Dabh speaking about his process in creating Taabir El Zaar (aka The Wire Recorder Piece) in 1944.

All tracks courtesy of Halim El-Dabh LLC and Deborah El-Dabh (p) 2022. Used by permission.

Mastered by Warren Defever.
Liner notes by Joe Namy.
Artwork by Hatem Imam. Design by Studio Safar for Flint Magazine.

This project is a collaborative release by Flint Magazine, Studio Safar, and Annihaya Records
Available as a limited edition vinyl LP, pressed in Detroit at Third Man Records.

Listen/Order HERE