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Scroll down for news about Ruptured’s events, activities and forthcoming music releases

Ruptured Album Release // Munma + Jad Atoui, Jawad Nawfal, Sharif Sehnaoui

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In February 2024, we released two new albums by Lebanese electronic producer Jawad Nawfal aka Munma. TRANSIENT ORGAN is 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-organ
MODERN 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

Ruptured News // Nadah El Shazly & Radwan Ghazi Moumneh at Hotel2Tango // 25 February 2024

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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

Advance tickets can be purchased HERE.

Ruptured News // Youmna Saba at Souffle Continu, Paris // 12 January 2024

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Friends in Paris,

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.

Ruptured Album Release // YOUMNA SABA // Wishah [VINYL EDITION]

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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 و​ِ​ش​ا​ح 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

Photo by Nasri N. Sayegh

Ruptured News // Mayssa Jallad Live in Europe // November 2023

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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).

Head over to Mayssa’s website for more info.

MARJAA: Listen/Order (Ruptured) 

MARJAA: Listen/Order (Six of Swords) 

Portrait of Mayssa taken in Beirut by Mohamad Al-Rifai

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

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

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