Lebanese Indie Music Label // Promoter & Distributor // Radio Show
On Monday 26 January, Lebanese rock band The Incompetents (Serge Yared, Fadi Tabbal and Abed Kobeissy) performed live in the studios of Radio Liban 96.2FM.
Listen:
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Track listing:
The Incompetents – Bullets
The Incompetents – Disposable Valentine
The Incompetents – Stripped
The Incompetents – Monster Song #2
The Incompetents – Urinal Blues
The Incompetents – Bloody Rainbow (Daniel Johnston cover)
On February 6, 2009, Lebanese experimental rock band XEFM will take to the stage at The Basement, in Beirut, and create a new soundtrack to famed Russian art-house film Man with a Movie Camera. XEFM are no strangers to the Cinemix tradition, as they have already contributed a short piece of music to a Lebanese silent film shown recently at the ‘Né à Beirut’ festival. On this occasion, however, they will tackle an altogether grander task; that of providing a live musical accompaniment to a full-length, celebrated feature.
Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera was created in 1929. This controversial film is an extraordinary piece of film-making, a montage of urban Russian life, showing the people of the city at work and at play, and the machines that keep the city (Odessa and others) going. Shooting shops, traffic, children, coal miners, workers, human bodies, and nature, Vertov creates visual rhymes and graphic portraits of the structure of life and the explosion of perception. It was Vertov’s first full-length film, and he used all the cinematic techniques at his disposal – dissolves, double exposure, fast and slow motion, freeze-frames, jump cuts, split screens, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, and animations – to produce a work that is exhilarating and intellectually brilliant, a sublimely fluid vision of man, machine, and society.
The XEFM quartet of Charbel Haber (electric guitar), Tony Elieh (bass), Fadi Tabbal (electric guitar), and Abdallah Ko (guitar and electronics), created on their 1st release from 2008, a superb tapestry of sounds, hovering between ambient electronica and outlandish noise. It should be fascinating to hear them transpose their sound, one that is suffused with Beirut’s urban maze, into 1930’s Russian art-house cinema.
I asked the main actors of this here blog (mostly musicians, of course, but also friends, family, support-givers…) to provide me with a list (5 to 20 albums) of their favorite records of the year.
The results are slowly coming in. There are surprises, resemblances, similarities, incongruous choices… I’ve left the responses intact, exactly as I received them, along with my friends’ comments. So here goes:
Zeid Hamdan: musician (Soapkills, New Government, Control Z, 3Arab), producer, promoter
“for sure !!!!
they were not released in 2008 but that’s what i’ve been mostly listening to this year not in order of preference:”
CD 1 Bassekou Kouyate segu blue
CD 2 Radio head in rainbows
CD 3 Lumi two tears in water
CD 4 Portishead (the latest)
CD 5 Cedric Im Brooks And The Light Of Saba
CD 6 jon kennedy ( mostly to his myspace , he has no cd s here..)
On Monday 12 January, musician and producer ZEID HAMDAN was the guest on the RUPTURES ‘Zoom Sur’ program on 96.2FM. He gave Radio Liban listeners an insight into his recent productions.
Listen:
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Track listing:
Hiba *2
Doushka
Hiba
Shift Z
Maki
Kandhia Kouyate *2
Doushka
Kandhia Kouyate
Shift Z
[By Ziad Nawfal, January 2009]
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 ways with their guitarist, Marc Codsi, an active contributor to the band’s sound since 2001. Codsi’s tumultuous departure, in addition to the wealth of experience gathered from working with various musicians throughout the year, infiltrate the tracks featured here, and lend them a primal, DIY quality. The sophistication of the ‘Je Veux Voir’ soundtrack is eschewed in favor of a raw, abrasive sound, harking back to the punk aesthetic of the ‘Happy Together Filthy Forever’ EP, released in 2006.
The single was recorded with little budget, in lo-fi conditions that seep through the music and lyrics. The band, reduced to the core trio of Haber on guitar and vocals, Elieh on bass, and Rizkallah on drums, displays a frantic desire to land back on its feet after a period of artistic self-doubt, and succeeds in doing so admirably. Of the six or seven songs that the Eggs wrote and tested on the road in September 2008, 2 were selected for this single release, and a third, a furious cover of Abba’s ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’, is hidden at the far end of the CD. Also hidden away at the far reaches of this release are a selection of musical snippets and oddities, selected by band-leader Charbel Haber with able help from Tunefork Studio’s maestro Fadi Tabbal.
This basic, back-to-the-roots package is a masterful way to end a difficult year, and an able return to form from one of the most revered band on Beirut’s alternative music scene.
Ziad Nawfal
[By Ziad Nawfal, April 2009]
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 the day in the aftermath of the war waged by Israel on Lebanon in summer 2006. The first two releases, ‘34 Days’ and ‘Black Tuesday’, were marked by ominous moods and atmospheres, sets of menacing clicks and glitches, and a random selection of radio samples and speeches that conveyed brilliantly the mind-set and feelings of the artist, regarding the crisis at hand.
‘Unholy Republic’ picks up where ‘Black Tuesday’ left, with a rambling, brooding track haunted by static, radio noise, and some politician’s vehement preaching. This is followed by two tracks of subdued electronica, reminiscent of Munma’s previous releases. ‘Engram’, in particular, nods prominently towards South American musician Murcof’s output for the Leaf label. The rest of the album is more surprising, as Munma’s recent partner-in-crime, Nabil Saliba aka Trash Inc, enters the fray, and contributes his supple synth-enhanced melodies to ‘Broken Chime’ and ‘Deep Down Inside’. These show a different facet of Munma’s talent, and serve as a timely reminder that Jawad Nawfal is equally at ease devising ambient landscapes and dancefloor “stompers”. ‘Unholy Republic’ concludes on a short, ambient postcard entitled ‘Exodus’, signalling in the process the end of the “Fate trilogy”, and prefiguring realms of possibilities for Munma’s subsequent works.
LISTEN:
Audio 1: Engram
Audio 2: Deep Down
Lebanese-Canadian musician CHARIF MEGARBANÉ, leader of the group HEROES & VILLAINS, was a guest on the DÉCALAGES program on Sunday 28 December on 96.2FM. He presented his first solo album, Concrete Abstracts Vol.1, due for release in early 2009, as well as a previously unreleased track by HEROES & VILLAINS, a fair deal of orchestral jazz, 70s pop, 60s soul and a bit of contemporary underground hip-hop.
Listen:
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Track listing:
Charif Megarbané
Heroes & Villains
Charif Megarbané *2
Fifth Dimension
Heroes & Villains
Charif Megarbané *3
Candi Statton
Heroes & Villains
J-Dilla
The Fortune Tellers
Charif Megarbané *3
Heroes & Villains
On Monday, December 22, Lebanese singer/songwriter CHRISTOPHE KATRIB aka CRISTOBAL performed some of his original compositions live in the studios of Radio Lebanon. This exclusive session for Radio Lebanon’s RUPTURES program was an occasion to discover a truly outstanding young talent, who performs all too rarely.
Listen:
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On Sunday 14 December, Lebanese singer YOUMNA SABA was the guest on Radio Liban’s ‘Décalages’ programme. She presented her first album, ‘MIN AAFESH EL BEIT’, and announced the launch concert that accompanied the release of the album, on Tuesday 16 December at the Crypt of St-Joseph Church in Beirut.
Listen:
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Track listing:
Ani Di Franco
Barbara
Youmna Saba
Bon Iver
Emilie Simon
Youmna Saba
Sidsel Endresen
Tarwater
Youmna Saba
Fleet Foxes
Bjork (feat. Antony)
Youmna Saba
I asked the main actors of this here blog (mostly musicians, of course, but also friends, family, support-givers…) to provide me with a list (5 to 20 albums) of their favorite records of the year.
The results are slowly coming in. There are surprises, resemblances, similarities, incongruous choices… I’ve left the responses intact, exactly as I received them, along with my friends’ comments. So here goes:
Christophe Katrib: DJ, musician (Cristobal), photographer
“Although I haven’t purchased all the music I would have wanted to this year, I will write a list based on what I’ve been able to listen to, in and out, up and down, a couple might be from 2007 though… here it goes:”
– Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever ago
– Ratatat: LP3
– Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
– Passion Pit: Chunk of Change (EP)
– Elbow: The seldom seen kid
– Yeasayer: All hour cymbals
– Band of Horses: Cease to begin
– The Helio Sequence: Keep your eyes ahead
– TV on the Radio: dear science
– Okkervil River: The Stand Ins
– Destroyer: Trouble in Dreams
Ruptured Music 