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.
Mayssa Jallad will perform a series of April dates across Scandinavia and the Netherlands, accompanied by Julia Sabra (Snakeskin, Postcards) and Pascal Semerdjian (Postcards, SANAM).
These concerts include solo presentations of Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels, as well as two appearances at Rewire — including a special collaboration set with Swedish producer Civilistjävel!, expanding on their work together on Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels – Versions.
Mayssa Jallad will appear at Rewire Festival (The Hague) in April 2026 for two separate performances.
On 10 April, she presents Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels as a trio with Julia Sabra and Pascal Semerdjian, performing the work in its full live arrangement.
On 12 April, she returns for a second appearance with Swedish producer Civilistjävel!, following his contribution to Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels – Versions. This set extends the dialogue they began on the remix album, opening another window into the project’s sonic world.
Ruptured co-founders Ziad Nawfal and Fadi Tabbal have crafted “The Noise We Carry,” a sprawling 50mn audio mixtape for Radio Elsewheres and the Elsewhere on Record exhibition at Art Windsor Essex.
The piece moves through Beirut itself: its traffic, collapsing infrastructure, seaside stillness, and the din of everyday life. Drones and layered textures meet archival radio fragments and selections from Lebanon’s underground post–civil war scene (including Scrambled Eggs and Munma), creating a patchwork of music, memory, and city noise. Interwoven are intimate voices and recordings from the 2019–2021 protests, tracing themes of displacement, forced departure, and creative survival.
Released on cassette, the recording loops continuously; with each pass, the magnetic tape degrades, turning medium into message and memory into material. Nothing lasts unchanged. Nothing returns exactly. And yet, the transmission persists.
Ruptured has long nurtured Lebanon’s experimental music, hosting concerts, producing albums, and preserving cultural memory amid collapse. “The Noise We Carry” carries that mission further: a transmission from Beirut, from the noise of daily survival, sent out to anyone listening.
LISTEN TO AN EXCERPT
The mixtape will be broadcast during the exhibition at Art Windsor Essex and on Radio Elsewheres’ website. Check broadcast times here.
Discover the exhibition here and explore Radio Elsewheres, the experimental sound platform founded by Velibor Božović, Steve Bates, and Claudia Zini, here.
We live in sand is the 3rd album from SNAKESKIN, the Beirut-based duo of Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal.
Written in October 2024, just as Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza fully spread to Lebanon and finally reached Beirut, the album is their darkest and rawest yet, exploring what it feels like to wait, to love, to grieve, and to keep living while the world falls apart. Pairing Tabbal’s masterful production with Sabra’s vivid imagery and evocative singing, the duo, as Resident Advisor put it, mines “deep emotional depths by tempering dream pop’s sweet-natured reverie with experimental snarl.” Bearing witness to impossible events, We live in sand is a complex and nuanced work, balancing forward-thinking pop sensibilities with relentless realism and a poetic spirit of empathy.
Composed, performed and produced by Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal between Beirut and Bern. Lyrics by Julia Sabra. Drum samples by Pascal Semerdjian.
Mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh at Hotel2Tango, Montreal. Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering, Montreal.
Album art, band portrait, and “October sun” video by Mohamad Abdouni. Design by Josette Khalil.
This album is the third volume in the Corrosion Series, a collaborative effort by Beacon Sound in Portland and Ruptured in Beirut.
PREFACES RETURN WITH ‘ACQUA MARINA’ – A SUN-DRUNK, HAUNTED GUITAR ALBUM FOR OFF-SEASON BEACHES
Out 15 August 2025 via Ruptured and Hisstology
Beirut-based trio Prefaces return with Acqua Marina, a luminous and melancholic new album that conjures the empty beach clubs and concrete shorelines of Lebanon’s coastline. Out 15 August 2025 via Ruptured and Hisstology Records (vinyl + digital), the album marks the band’s second full-length release—following their 2021 debut Hippodrome.
Prefaces is composed of Charif Megarbane (Cosmic Analog Ensemble, Habibi Funk), Salim Naffah (Alko B), and Pascal Semerdjian (Postcards, SANAM)—three key players in Lebanon’s independent and experimental music scenes. On Acqua Marina, the trio distills elements of surf rock, Mediterranean psych, and vintage library music, while weaving in the modal turns and rhythms of the Levant.
Where Hippodrome emerged from a spirit of improvisation and spontaneity, Acqua Marina is more deliberate in tone and form. The album was recorded at Tunefork Studios in Beirut and shaped around recurring imagery: abandoned pools, tiled corridors, rusting gates, and the strange beauty of deserted resort towns. Lead single “Marmoura” captures that sensibility with reverb-laced guitar melodies and a gently hypnotic rhythm, drawing the listener into Prefaces’ submerged world.
Acqua Marina speaks in coastal dialects both real and imagined. Fans of Khruangbin, Allah-Las, Omar Khorshid, Ennio Morricone, or Megarbane’s own Cosmic Analog Ensemble will find plenty to explore in its currents.
The album is released on limited edition vinyl and digital formats, with artwork that mirrors the album’s themes of faded glamour and seasonal drift.
Ruptured Music 