Stuttering Music is the third album by Lebanese musician and video artist Yara Asmar. The album consists of 7 pieces recorded on accordion, metallophone & electronics. The music was initially recorded for a broadcast by Radio AlHara in Bethlehem, Palestine entitled ‘half-baked waltzes 2 fold your laundry to’ – a bi-monthly hour of improvisations.
First excerpt ‘i am a terrible mathematician (and an even worse clown)’ is currently streaming on Bandcamp and digital platforms. The album will be released in full on November 1st. It will be available as a digital album and a limited edition of 50 cassettes, designed by Yara in the summer of 2024, and printed & packaged in Canada.
WATCH the video for “i am a terrible mathematician (and an even worse clown)”
Yara Asmar’s previous two albums, ‘Home Recordings 2018-2021’ (2022) and ‘synth waltzes & accordion laments’ (2023), were released by UK label @hive_mind_records. Hive Mind recently reissued both albums on vinyl in a gorgeous gatefold package. Get it here.
Last but not least, Yara is set to perform at Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in November 2024, both as a solo artist and as part of fellow Lebanese artist Liliane Chlela’s project “I, the hybrid and the antidote”.
“Poppies in October” is a collection of poetry and music that questions and explores matters of language, violence, and the intertwined fates of Palestine and Lebanon, with particular focus on the now almost-year-long Genocide in Gaza.
SHATR COLLECTIVE is donating all proceeds from the sales of this album to ULYP Gaza Student Emergency Fund, supporting Gazan medical students. Please consider giving what you can (more info at the link below).
The brainchild of Sarah Huneidi, Nadine Makarem, and Theresa Sahyoun, Shatr Collective aims to excite, maintain, and nurture the culture of poetry in Beirut, and showcase modes of expression where poetics are allowed to flourish.
Poppies in October (borrowed from Sylvia Plath’s eponymous poem) joins traditional and popular Palestinian literature with texts written by Sahyoun and Makarem, set to an original soundtrack by Huneidi.
The written works are a tribute to the survivors and martyrs of the genocide in Gaza. Most of the texts were conceived and written in times of heightened emotion and barely underwent any editing process.
The music is a merger of original production and sound clips from historical, literary & media sources, with the intent to encapsulate the chaos of the passing days amid a context of defiance and tragedy.
Currently available on digital platforms and Ruptured’s Bandcamp page as a pay-as-you-will album. Donate as generously as you can.
Recorded by Anthony Sahyoun at Tunefork Studios, Beirut, Lebanon. Produced by Anthony Sahyoun & Shatr Collective. SHATR artwork and album design by Farah Fayyad.
MOOSE TERRIFIC (rptd051) is a Montreal-based experimental electronic duo formed in 2016 and consisting of Sam Shalabi and Tamara Filyavich.
Nude Beginnings is this duo’s second album, and consists of playful modular improvisations peppered with post-punk, jazz, psychedelic and early electronic influences. A blend in which one can recognize subtle influences of Ukrainian, Jewish, Arabic and Canadian musical elements, as per the artists’ cultural backgrounds, life and musical experiences.
Nude Beginnings invites the listener to participate in a rather hopeful game of hide and seek with its auditory universe, combining cheerful rhythms and beats with unexpectedly optimistic harmonies. Far from being a throwback to a different, more carefree time, which Sam and Tamara do not believe ever truly existed, this album is a punk response to the current moment, an invitation to heal in whatever way one chooses to.
TAMARA FILYAVICH is a sound art producer and experimental electronic musician who has lived in Montreal since 1993. Her music draws inspiration from early synthesizer music, Eastern European folklore, and post-punk, among many more influences. She is a member of B.U.M, Prelubbed Sisters, and the duo Tamayugé with Maya Kuroki.
SAM SHALABI is an Egyptian-Canadian composer and improviser living in Montreal. Since his beginnings as a punk musician in the late 70’s, his work has evolved into a fusion of experimental, modern Arabic Music that incorporates traditional Arabic, chaabi, noise, classical, text, free improvisation and jazz. He is a member of Shalabi Effect, Dwarfs of East Agouza, Land of Kush (an experimental 30-member orchestra of which he is the main composer), Karkhana and Nutsack, among many others.
Nude Beginnings was composed, performed and produced in Montreal. Artwork and design by Hatem Imam (Studio Safar).
Available as a limited edition of 60 cassettes, shipping exclusively from our Bandcamp page.
MARMALSANA is a Berlin-based trio that brings together Burkhard Beins on percussion, Tony Elieh on acoustic bass guitar, and Maurice Louca on (acoustic quarter-tone guitar. An outstanding melding of free improv and experimental jazz, if you will.
Based in Berlin and active in the free improv and experimental scenes of the city, Beins, Elieh, and Louca have spent the last decade or so developing various projects with local and international musicians.
Marmalsana is their first collaboration, one for which they decided to forego amplification and rely on acoustic instruments only, employing extended techniques and objects to produce soundscapes of drones, textures, melodies, and polyrhythms.
The album fuses the three musicians’ backgrounds, styles, and influences: they succeed in merging their individual contributions into a unified whole, moving between distinct placements of sound and moments beyond instrumental recognizability. Their journey traverses between Beirut, Berlin, and Cairo, creating in the process a nomadic musical language.
The music on Marmalsana was composed, performed and produced in Berlin in December 2023. Mixed by Burkhard Beins, mastered by Werner Dafeldecker.
Cover photography by Tony Elieh, design by Maya Chami.
The album is currently streaming on all digital platforms. It is also available as a limited edition of 60 cassettes, shipping exclusively from Ruptured’s Bandcamp page.
Following the release of her critically-acclaimed debut LP Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels in March 2023, Lebanese artist Mayssa Jallad returns with a set of EU/UK tour dates (including shows in London, Berlin and Brussels), as well as a stunning new video directed by Lebanese filmmaker Ely Dagher.
You can watch the video below and read Mayssa’s notes on the historical/geopolitical context.
Apr 21 – Donau Festival, Krems, AT – tickets Apr 24 – Hotel Olympik, Prague, CZ Apr 26 – Sharpe Festival, Bratislava, SK – tickets Apr 27 – Silent Green, Berlin, DE – tickets May 1 – UCL, London, UK (workshop) May 2 – Folklore Hoxton, London, UK – tickets May 3 – Les Aralunaires, Arlon, BE – tickets May 4 – Les Nuits Botanique, Brussels, BE – tickets
WATCH the video for “Holiday Inn (January to March)”
Directed by Ely Dagher, the video for Mayssa’s album track “Holiday Inn (January to March)” is a visually stunning work exploring the album’s theme of memory and decay. Archival images of a war-torn Beirut early in Lebanon’s Civil War are digitally processed into a series of fractured 3D models, through which we are slowly navigated. The results are eerily haunting, and resonate powerfully with current events.
According to Dagher, “I was looking for a visual language that could express the fragility and complexity of an elusive and broken memory – something fragmented and incomplete. Archive footage from the battles were given a new life and perspective to craft a collage that blends details from the vivid realism of the battles with the fluid capacity of memory. Bodies, buildings, feelings and violence fragmented.”
Mayssa writes that “Holiday Inn is an immense modernist high rise hotel with a revolving rooftop restaurant, overlooking the Mediterranean… It was inaugurated in 1974, a few months before the beginning of the battle of the hotels, in which it was a main protagonist, first invaded by the blues (right wing nationalists) and then the reds (left wing pro Palestinians). For 5 months, with 5 star hotel amenities, blue gunmen terrorized and controlled the city. During this period, two massacres occurred: on January 18, in Karantina, the blues killed 1,500 Muslims and Palestinians. On January 20th, in Damour, the reds killed 1,500 Christians. Spiraling into endless violence and retaliation.
The phenomenon of high rises in Beirut, these weapons of war that created the perfect conditions for urban warfare, is an often overlooked effect of the 1948 Nakba, when Israeli Occupying Forces expelled Palestinians and destabilized the Arab region. Wealthy Palestinians, Syrians and Iraqis invested their money in Lebanon to avoid the brunt of political and economic crises in their home countries. In parallel, Gulf countries that had struck oil around that period, also started investing in Beirut . A “Golden Era” of grandiose projects for the 1% was born, luxury hotels, nightclubs, towers, ignoring the ‘belt of misery’ being formed around the capital. A luxury so vulnerable, so easily destabilized that it was invaded 6 months after the civil war broke out, again, as an effect of the Nakba and the political division since the Palestinian Liberation Organization took post in Lebanon.
Today, these buildings exist as relics of the past, among new skyscrapers that threaten to repeat the same history over and over again. Are we remembering, or are we just reliving the past? We long to forget, and end up falling into the same traps of violence and false prosperity, over and over again.”
In February 2024, we released two new albums by Lebanese electronic producer Jawad Nawfal aka Munma.
TRANSIENT ORGANis the first physical solo release by Jawad Nawfal since 2016’s landmark full-length Three Voices.
The music on the album was composed by Nawfal between November 2021 and September 2023, in bouts of fractured creativity punctuated by frequent power cuts in his native city of Beirut. Transient Organ features the voice of regular Munma collaborator Caroline Tabet, whose evocative spoken word poetry appears on two tracks. Tabet also provided the drawing that graces the cover of the album.
Mastered by Cedrik Fermont in Berlin, designed by Maya Chami in Beirut.
Transient Organ is available as a digital album and limited release cassette of 40 copies, printed and duplicated in Montreal, Canada.
Listen/Order: rupturedthelabel.bandcamp.com/album/transient-organMODERN INDIVIDUAL is the first recorded collaboration between Jawad Nawfal and Lebanese experimental musicians Jad Atoui (NP, Kinematik Ensemble) and Sharif Sehnaoui (‘A’ Trio, Calamita).
The music on this album was composed and performed by Atoui, Nawfal and Sehnaoui in Beirut, between January and August 2023.
Mastered by Cedrik Fermont in Berlin, designed by Maya Chami in Beirut.
Modern Individual is available as a digital album and limited release cassette of 40 copies, printed and duplicated in Montreal, Canada.
Listen/Order: rupturedthelabel.bandcamp.com/album/modern-individual
act·art·mgt, Heavy Trip & Ruptured present: Nadah El Shazly & Radwan Ghazi Moumneh | Live at Hotel2Tango
Nadah El Shazly and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh present their duo collaboration after a week-long composition residency, in the intimate setting of Hotel2Tango recording studio in Montreal.
Sunday 25 February 2024, 8pm (doors)
Hotel2Tango recording studio, Tiohtia:ke | Montréal.
This is a very limited seating event. No sales at the door. BYOB
This is happening in your city on Friday 12 January.
The exquisite Youmna Saba will present her new album “Wishah”, co-released in late 2023 by Touch [UK] and Ruptured [Lebanon], in a live showcase taking place at Souffle Continu music store. Starting 6.30pm.
There will be copies of the album available to purchase in both vinyl and CD format.
Facebook event HERE.
Releasing December 15th, 2023 on Ruptured Records: Although these are terrible times we are living in, it pleases us to finally announce the vinyl release of “WISHAH”, by Lebanese musician, composer and musicologist Youmna Saba.
“Wishah” (meaning veil in Arabic) is a composition for voice, oud and electronics, composed and performed between 2021 and 2022.
Following her previous solo works “Njoum” (2014) and “Arb’een” (2017), this album marks a significant turning point in Saba’s journey. Created after leaving Beirut and settling in Paris, “Wishah” reveals a profound shift in her musical expression, informed by rigorous research in the sonic properties of sung Arabic phonemes and their role in shaping synthesized electronic sounds.
The composition is organized into five distinct stages, each contributing to a process of gradual revelation. As the tracks unfold, they strip away layers of constructed emotions and perceptions that have been intricately woven over time, to expose a space that no longer exists. “Wishah” is in many ways a farewell to home.
Youmna Saba is a musician, composer and musicologist. Her current research focuses on instrument and space resonances in different sonic and musical contexts. With four albums to date, she has collaborated with artists from different countries and backgrounds, further enriching her repertoire and expanding her reach. These include Kamilya Jubran, Floy Krouchi, Mike Cooper and the Neue Vocalsolisten ensemble, among others. She is the laureate of the first sound residency at Quai Branly Museum, Paris (2022-2023) with her research project and installation “La Réserve des Non-Dits”, now on view at the museum; and a laureate of the music residency program at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2020-2021).
“Wishah” was first released by UK label Touch back in October 2023, as a CD and digital album. Ruptured will release the vinyl version in December 2023.
“Nestled in the interval between the urgency of speaking, and that of remaining silent or speaking out of turn, Youmna Saba engages in a relentless yet passionate and loving heart-to-heart with her instrument.” – Nasri Sayegh, L’Orient le Jour
“A remarkable new work from Beirut’s Youmna Saba, now based in Paris. Saba is an accomplished oud player, found on many other artists’ releases (such as Oiseaux-Tempête). On Wishah وِشاح her oud’s sound is technologically extended, to amplify every string squeak and body tap, and further integrated with sympathetic electronics. The works range from abstract processed sound to delicate oud fingerpicking, and most tracks patiently reach a place where Saba brings in her emotive vocals. It’s an immersive, moving listening experience.” – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog (FBi Radio)
Wishah Written and performed by Youmna Saba. Recorded and mixed by Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut. Produced by Youmna Saba and Fadi Tabbal. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
Vinyl version produced by Ruptured in Montréal, Canada in Fall 2023. Limited edition of 200 copies pressed at Microforum, Toronto. Design and photography by Jon Wozencroft (courtesy of Touch UK).
Starts shipping on December 15, 2023. Listen/Preorder here
Mayssa Jallad will play a short European tour in November 2023, in support of her latest album Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels.
Confirmed performances include Oslo World Festival in Oslo, Norway and Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She will be accompanied by Julia Sabra (Snakeskin, Postcards) and Pascal Semerdjian (Postcards, Sanam).
Ruptured Music 