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 guest mix by musician and producer JOY MOUGHANNI. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.
Joy Moughanni is a Beirut-based producer, engineer, and songwriter, and a partner at Tunefork Studios. He emerged from Beirut’s alternative scene through the electronic and pop projects Pomme Rouge and Gizzmo, producing four EPs before moving into a solo practice and becoming a collaborator with artists across the region.
TRACK LISTING:
Joy Moughanni – The Voice I’ve Yet To Understand
Autechre – M4 Lema
Ben Frost – Killshot
SANAM – Sametou Sawtan
Sary Moussa – A Storm, a Gift
aya – hexed!
Jerusalem In My Heart – Tanto
NP [Jad Atoui & Anthony Sahyoun] – Coins With Memory
On Ghadr, Sandy Chamoun, Anthony Sahyoun and Jad Atoui play with chaos. Built on group improvisation, surges of coruscating electronics and distortion meld with vocals that, while stemming from a background in classical Arabic singing, seek to reroute tradition. “We explore rhythmic structures that don’t have specific time signatures,” says Atoui about his and Sahyoun’s use of synthesis to embrace the tension between order and chaos. “Sandy’s approach to singing isn’t necessarily very rigid either. We felt a common inspiration.”
The album, whose title imperfectly translates to ‘Treachery’, began on a residency in Switzerland while the trio were touring Europe (Chamoun solo, Atoui and Sahyoun as their duo NP). It was later finished in their home city of Beirut. The five tracks are built on vibrant circuits of guitar and modular synthesis, the former often acting as a trigger for the latter’s volatile output.
Chamoun’s vocals blend her background in classical Arabic music with free-singing, using tradition as a foundation for exploration rather than standards to follow. Apart from “Hayawanon Ghader (treacherous animal)”, all the songs’ lyrics pull from the archive. Opener “Tahal Layl” interprets a Bedouin folk song. “Bihali” is based on a tenth century poem by Abou Firas Al-Hamdani. “Al Moulatham” quotes an Instagram post by Yousef Al-Domouky about the war in Gaza. “Al Samaa” uses a text from contemporary Lebanese poet Paul Chaoul. “I’m working with my references, and with the music,” explains Chamoun. “It’s a playful place with my history and now.”
WATCH a video excerpt by Nour Ouayda
About the album’s title, Chamoun explains: “On this planet, the only thing that’s happening now is treachery. It’s the headline of our days.” Terror in Gaza, its shockwaves through the Middle-East and its place in longer histories loom over the record. However, while Ghadr reflects the present moment, it isn’t consumed by it. The trio agree the album reflects tenderness as much as anger. It’s audible in the effortless swings between abstract and soaring. The way Chamoun’s lyrics put ninth century odes to a bird and ancient Bedouin love songs next to personal reflections by Al-Domouky or Chaoul on real world tragedies.
Sonically and lyrically Ghadr is music of possibility and potential. The five tracks travel through unbounded terrain rather than along fixed paths. “I don’t like to pull the listener in one direction,” Chamoun continues. “You need to play with your imagination and not stick to one story and one meaning.” While the record reflects their state of mind as residents of Lebanon, and the uncertainty that entails, Sahyoun suggests they’re striving to reach beyond it. “We try to access parts of our subconscious and see what dimensions it has outside of what we’re witnessing day to day. When we play, there’s a rhythm between the three of us. We feel each other sway,”
Ghadr is the first release under the name Chamoun/Sahyoun/Atoui, but the trio’s connection is deeply rooted. Sahyoun and Chamoun are members of ecstatic rock collective Sanam. Atoui and Sahyoun’s explorations of synthesis, solo and as NP, are long-running. On Ghadr these histories form something new. A charged record which faces the world as it is while offering glimpses of something else.
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
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.
It is the most wonderful time of the year. We asked some of Ruptured’s recent contributors and collaborators, to tell us about the records they listened to the most in 2022. Jad Atoui’s album Lattices (a collaboration with Anthony Sahyoun under the name NP) was released by Ruptured in July 2021.
Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Movement Radio in Athens, featuring music from Lebanon and the UK. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO.
1. Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal – Roots [LB]
2. Yara Asmar – Numbers Don’t Make Good Friends [LB]
3. Jad Atoui & Jawad Nawfal – Reading 1 [LB]
4. Marc Codsi – Finding Home [LB]
5. Postcards – Keep the Elephant in The Room (with Serge Yared) [LB]
6. Elyse Tabet – We Slept Through the Day [LB]
7. Xlmxkhfi – Movement Song [LB]
8. Fadi Tabbal – Are Aquariums Moral [LB]
9. Marc Codsi – Hangar #12 [LB]
10. Xlmxkhfi – Black Beach [LB]
11. Postcards – Kozo [LB]
12. Mayssa Jallad & Khaled Allaf – Madina Min Baeed [LB]
13. Stress Distress – Different Currencies [LB]
14. Muslimgauze & The Rootsman – Fuck Yitzhak Rabin / Fuck Ehud Olmert [UK]
Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Movement Radio in Athens, featuring music from Lebanon, Egypt, and Belgium. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO.
Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Movement Radio in Athens, featuring music from Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO.
Préfaces – El Jaguar [LB]
Kinematik – Al Kafila [LB]
Fadi Tabbal – And Then… [LB]
Postcards – Angel [LB]
Serge Yared – Deliberate Depression [LB]
Maurice Louca – El-Gullashah (Foul Tongue) [EG]
Raed Yassin – A Fistful Of Stardust [LB]
Muqata’a – Ikmal إِكمَال [PS]
Jawad Nawfal – Nawa Athar 0 [LB/EG]
Stéphanie Merchak – my eyes are bleeding green rivers [LB]
Jad Atoui – The Last Bloom [LB]
Thoom – Re-Trace [LB]
Tarkamt – Outer Gateways [EG]
Daou – Sauldre [LB]
FRKTL – Sidereal II [EG]
Saint Abdullah – Sound, Sound, And Only Sound [IR]
Mayssa Jallad & Khaled Allaf – Madina Min Baeed [LB]
This mix was commissioned by Movement Athens for its radio festival “Exploring Mediterranean Futures” [Feb. 15-19, 2022], a 5-day radio festival focused on the sounds of the Mediterranean, searching for geographical and chronological connections through its culture, ideas and people.
Ziad Nawfal’s mix presents music recorded by various artists and bands from Beirut’s indie and experimental music scenes, between 2010 and 2021. A few of the tracks were officially released in some form or another, some of them are early drafts and demos, and a couple consist of live sessions recorded during Nawfal’s 35-year tenure at Beirut’s crumbling government station Radio Liban.
Fadi Tabbal – After the Fire, Before the End [Unreleased]
Charbel Haber & Sary Moussa – And Yet Another Romance on A Sinking Ship [V/A The Drone Sessions Vol. 1]
Scrambled Eggs & A Trio – Beach Party at Mirna el Chalouhi (Diamond Setter’s Rework) [Unreleased]
The Art of Boo – BoomKaboom [Unreleased]
Safa – Dominant Gene [V/A Lost Archives]
Jad Atoui – FDBCK [Unreleased]
Tres Milliones Dolares – Jon Black [V/A Anthology of Electroacoustic Lebanese Music]
Ziad Moukarzel – Questions of Worry [V/A Anthology of Electroacoustic Lebanese Music]
Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Movement Radio in Athens, featuring music from Lebanon, Indonesia and Germany. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO.
1. Kinematik – Al Jadi (Capricorn) [LB] 2. Senyawa – Alkisah I [ID] 3. TEDTEDTED – Cama [LB] 4. NP [Anthony Sahyoun & Jad Atoui] – Coins with Memory [LB] 5. Liliane Chlela & Ziad Moukarzel – Dahr el Baydar [LB] 6. Two or The Dragon – Dance Grooves for The Weary (Part 1) [LB] 7. Calamita – The Industry [LB/IT] 8. Sharif Sehnaoui & Tony Elieh – Woe to Him [LB] 9. Stellar Banger [Giw/Hout/Kobeissy/Turnbull] – Put Your Medicine In Your Banana Bag [LB/DE]
Ruptured Music 