Ziad Nawfal Mix for Stegi Radio // 01 October 2024

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A monthly selection of alternative, ambient and experimental music from Lebanon and the MENA region, selected by music promoter and label owner Ziad Nawfal. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.

1. Marmalsana [Burkhard Beins, Tony Elieh & Maurice Louca] – Inundo
2. Youmna Saba – Akaleel
3. Yara Asmar – Are These Your Hands? Would You Like Them Back? (With Majd Chidiac)
4. Marmalsana [Burkhard Beins, Tony Elieh & Maurice Louca] – Alveno
5. Elyse Tabet [with Pascal Semerdjian & Yara Asmar] – Bright Bells (Bana Haffar Remix)
6. Liliane Chlela – Bza2
7. Safa – Grounds
8. Nstant [Stephanie Merchak & Nour Sokhon] – Floating Like Particles In The Air
9. Sote – Kangaroo Court
10. Anthony Sahyoun – Khifat Al-Atraf (with Firas al Hallak)
11. Munma – Le garde du coeur
12. Mazen El Sayed & Jawad Nawfal – Pastless
13. Shatr Collective – Kafas

Ruptured Album Release // JULIA SABRA // Natural History Museum

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Releasing November 1st, 2024 on Ruptured Records:

Natural History Museum is the first solo album by Julia Sabra, singer & lyricist with dreampop trio Postcards and electronic duo Snakeskin. Natural History Museum is an intimate collection of songs, fragile and luminous, written between 2020 and 2024.

In Julia’s words, “I wanted to capture these songs the way they were written, by keeping the rawness and fragility intact.
Fadi and I decided to record them live to tape, with no overdubs, barely any effect – with all the imperfections. Most of the tracks were done in one take only. Some were recorded in Tunefork Studios in Beirut, and some in the church I grew up going to every summer in Dhour Shweir. These songs would’ve probably stayed in my ‘songs in limbo’ folder on my laptop had it not been for Pascal and Fadi, who pushed me to release them. And for this I’m eternally grateful.”

WATCH the video for “Skyscape” [Directed by Camille Cabbabé]

First single “Skyscape” 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 Josette Khalil in Beirut and printed & packaged in Canada.

Julia wrote Skyscape as part of an online songwriting workshop by Adrienne Lenker from alt-folk band Big Thief — it was an exercise to write a song based on Genesis Baez’s photo Skyscape. “All I could see was the shroud used to wrap the dead with, as it was the beginning of the war on Gaza. The song reimagines a gentler, more dignified goodbye to the dead.”

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM: Listen/Order here

Photo by Nessim Stevenson

Ruptured Album Release // YARA ASMAR // Stuttering Music

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Releasing November 1st, 2024 on Ruptured Records:

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.

The title of the album is an oblique reference to Japanese filmmaker Shūji Terayama’s magnum opus from 1971, “Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets”. The drawing on the cover is by Imad Kaafarani.

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”.

STUTTERING MUSIC: Listen/Order here

Portrait of Yara by Myriam Boulos

Press Review // Shatr Collective // Poppies in October

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Acclaim for Shatr Collective’s album Poppies in October, released by Ruptured in August 2024 (digital):

“What does poetry tell us in the time of catastrophe? Intertwining words and music with the sounds of colonial violence in Palestine and Lebanon, Poppies in October is the first recorded project from Lebanon’s Shatr collective, one that musically modulates “truth to power” while grounding experimental musical production with sound clips and media sources that sonically encapsulate our times.” – Christina Hazboun, Bandcamp, September 2024
https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/i-found-it-on-bandcamp-friday-september-2024

“A challenging, moving album of poetry and modular synthesis from SHATR Collective. These pieces are visceral responses to the genocide in Gaza, indeed referencing the killing of Palestinian poets – Sahyoun’s “Salim” is about Salim Al Naffar. The emotion in the spoken words is palpable, and along with the stark electronics it can be difficult listening – as it probably should be.” – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog broadcast (FBi Radio), August 2024
https://utilityfog.radio/archives/2024/08/

“Beirut-based poetry group Shatr Collective, taking their name from the Arabic term for a hemistich or half-line in a verse, meditates on the power and limitations of literature as witness on Poppies in October. With English and Arabic poetry by Theresa Sahyoun and Nadine Makarem set to otherworldly, desolate synths by Sarah Huneidi, Poppies in October is a raw reflection on the unlikely thriving of human spirit and resistance in the midst of violent erasure. “No settler was ever able to kill a poem/ Which is where Refaat now lives,” recites Sahyoun on her paean to the eponymous Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer, targeted and killed in an Israeli airstrike in December. Concluding with the hope inspired by Alareer’s life and legacy, Huneidi’s synths turn warm, even optimistic.” – James Gui, Ley Lines column, Bandcamp, September 2024
https://daily.bandcamp.com/ley-lines/ley-lines-august-2024

Featured in The Attic’s Staff Picks of August 2024:
https://theatticmag.com/news/2466/staff-picks-_-august-2024.html

“Go support these Lebanese releases on Bandcamp”, by Peter Kirn (CDM), September 2024:
https://cdm.link/lebanese-releases-on-bandcamp/

Listen/Order

Press Review // Moose Terrific [Tamara Filyavich, Sam Shalabi] // Nude Beginnings

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Acclaim for Moose Terrific’s album Nude Beginnings, released by Ruptured in July 2024 (cassette/digital):

“Low-key electronic vignettes, emphasising fun and hopefulness over rage and sorrow.” – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog broadcast (FBi Radio), July 2024
https://utilityfog.radio/archives/2024/07/

“The opening title track has cascading melodies which constantly evade predictability. ‘Fort Da’ sounds like it could soundtrack a Sega game from the 1990s. ‘Jefferson Airport’ reminds me of Shalabi’s Eid album, but transposed from oud to electronics. It’s a mood which runs into closer ‘Bloomsday’, a droning synth and shuffling beat leading to a space somewhere between Trans-Europe Express-era Kraftwerk and Sanam. It’s music which revels in crossovers and new connections.” – Daryl Worthington, The Quietus, September 2024
https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/cassettes/spools-out-cassette-reviews-for-september-by-daryl-worthington/

Featured in The Attic’s Staff Picks of July 2024:
https://theatticmag.com/news/2464/staff-picks-_-july-2024.html

Listen/Order

Press Review // Marmalsana [Burkhard Beins, Tony Elieh, Maurice Louca] // Marmalsana

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Acclaim for Marmalsana’s album Marmalsana, released by Ruptured in July 2024 (cassette/digital):

“A singularly idiomatic music worth attending to.” – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog broadcast (FBi Radio), July 2024
https://utilityfog.radio/archives/2024/07/

“The tracks are plucked, rattled and thrummed exercises in nuanced rhythmic and textural exploration. The juxtapositions and tensions between melodic and non-idiomatic are entrancing, peaking on ‘Alveno’, when Louca plays out a jaunty, almost folky melody on the quarter tone guitar which the other two make a throbbing, creaking soundscape around. The whole album arcs like a storm rising and falling, with all the shifting pressure and unpredictable eddies of movement and sound that suggests.” – Daryl Worthington, The Quietus, September 2024
https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/cassettes/spools-out-cassette-reviews-for-september-by-daryl-worthington/

“It’s a wonderful album that suggests how those reduced materials can be shepherded into something truly dynamic and exciting, all of it fueled by an obvious rapport and shared vision. Maurice Louca and Tony Elieh work together in multiple projects, including the great Arabic rock band Karkana, while Burkhard Beins and Elieh also have a duo called Zone Null, so the overlapping interests are nothing new. Still, intersecting ideas don’t ever guarantee something this cohesive and absorbing.” – Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street substack, September 2024
https://petermargasak.substack.com/p/on-the-road-again

Featured in The Attic’s Staff Picks of July 2024:
https://theatticmag.com/news/2464/staff-picks-_-july-2024.html

Listen/Order

Ziad Nawfal Mix for Stegi Radio with guest BANA HAFFAR // 03 September 2024

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A monthly selection of alternative, ambient and experimental music from Lebanon and the MENA region, selected by music promoter and label owner Ziad Nawfal – this broadcast features a broody electronic dance mix from distant shores, with emphasis on sound design, by Lebanese electronic musician & producer BANA HAFFAR. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.

Bana Haffar is an electronic music composer exploring the materiality of sound, and the relation of sonic worlds to the vast terrain of natural and artificial systems. Bana is a DJ at Dublab who’s been active in the LA experimental music community (Modular on the Spot, 2014) and worldwide (Beirut Synthesizer Center in Lebanon, 2021). Currently, Bana is pursuing graduate research at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

1. Robert Ashley – She Was a Visitor (1967) (extract) [Automatic Writing, Lovely Music 1979]
2. Demdike Stare – Hashshanshin Chant [Tryptych, Modern Love 2011]
3. Rainer Veil – Elements [Vanity, Modern Love 2019]
4. Zoë Mc Pherson – I Expect Nothing (Straight) [Abyss Elixir, Pendulum Recordings 2022]
5. Lee Gamble – Shards [Exhaust, Hyperdub 2019]
6. Appleblim – Fear [Soundboy Punishments Shackleton, Appleblim, Gatekeeper, Skull Disco 2007]
7. Appleblim – Gold and Silver [Soundboy Punishments Shackleton, Appleblim, Gatekeeper, Skull Disco 2007]
8. Piezo, Unity Vega – Set Em [Imago EP, Anisa 2024]
9. Fracture – Blaze (feat. Bryan Gee) [0860, Astrophonica 2022]
10. Marco Shuttle – Winds of Cydonia [Cobalt Desert Oasis, Incienso 2021]
11. Rrose, Polygonia – Haima [Dermatology, Eaux 2024]
12. Lee Perry – City Too Hot [Upsetter, 1977]

Ruptured Album Release // SHATR COLLECTIVE // Poppies in October

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Releasing August 23rd, 2024 on Ruptured Records:

“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.

Listen here

Shatr visuals by Farah Fayyad

Ruptured Album Release // MOOSE TERRIFIC [Sam Shalabi, Tamara Filyavich] // Nude Beginnings

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Releasing July 19th, 2024 on Ruptured Records:

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.

Listen/Order here

Ruptured Album Release // MARMALSANA [Maurice Louca, Tony Elieh, Burkhard Beins]

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Releasing July 19th, 2024 on Ruptured Records:

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.

Listen/Order here