Ziad Nawfal Mix for Stegi Radio // 01 October 2024

November 1, 2024January 8, 2025Music ShowsLeave a Comment

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

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

October 9, 2024November 18, 2024Press ArchiveLeave a Comment

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

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

July 26, 2024November 18, 2024NewsLeave a Comment

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

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Movement Radio // 06 December 2022

January 6, 2023February 28, 2023Music ShowsLeave a Comment

Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Movement Radio in Athens, featuring music from Lebanon, Egypt, Belgium and Canada. This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO.

Jerusalem In My Heart – Ana Lisan Wahad (feat. Farida Amadou & Pierre-Guy Blanchard) [LB/CA/BE]
Abadir – Bass Belly [EG]
TEDTEDTED – Calculators [LB]
Liliane Chlela – Charr [LB]
Rise 1969 – Floating Memory [LB]
Etyen – Goodbye [LB]
Sary Moussa – In Praise of Shadows [LB]
Yara Asmar – it’s always october on sunday [LB]
Elyse Tabet with Pascal Semerdjian & Yara Asmar – Low Toms [LB]
Sandy Chamoun – Nas el Wahel [LB]
Pie Are Squared – Oscillate Thrice [EG]
Maurice Louca – Saet el Hazz (feat. “A” Trio) [EG/LB]
Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal – Snakeskin [LB]

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Movement Radio // 23 May 2022

June 23, 2022October 16, 2022Music ShowsLeave a Comment

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]

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Radio Ma3azef // 13 April 2022

April 20, 2022October 16, 2022Music ShowsLeave a Comment

Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Radio Ma3azef in Tunis, featuring artists from Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq:

Alko B [LB]
Wake Island [LB]
Loopstache [LB]
Interbellum [LB]
Ramly [LB]
Filter Happier [LB]
Sandmoon [LB]
Alif [IQ/UK/EG/PS/LB]
Kinematik [LB]
Gurumiran [LB]
Kid Fourteen [LB]
Maurice Louca [EG]
PanSTARRS [EG]
Maryam Saleh + Zeid Hamdan [EG/LB]
Rust [LB]
Muqata’a [PS]

(2021 end-of-year lists) – JAD ATOUI

December 31, 2021January 2, 2022ChartsLeave a Comment

It’s been a while (five good years actually) since we’ve done this, and so we’ve gone ahead and asked the musicians whom we worked with this year in some respect or other, to tell us about their favorite albums of 2021.

JAD ATOUI

– Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra: Promises
– Thomas Ankersmit: Perceptual Geography
– Anthony Sahyoun: Proof by Infinite Descent
– Two or the Dragon: Dance Grooves for The Weary
– Jerusalem In My Heart: Qalaq
– Chuck Bettis: Blood Activation
– Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe: Candyman (Original Soundtrack)
– Jan Jelinek: The Raw and the Cooked
– Maurice Louca: Sa’et el Hazz
– Pavel Milyakov & Bendik Giske: Untitled

(2021 end-of-year lists) – ANTHONY SAHYOUN

December 28, 2021January 2, 2022ChartsLeave a Comment

ANTHONY SAHYOUN

– Maurice Louca: Sa’et el Hazz
– Space Afrika: Honest Labour
– Postcards: After the Fire, Before the End
– Two or the Dragon: Dance Grooves for The Weary
– Jonny Greenwood: Spencer (Original Soundtrack)
– Squid: Bright Green Field
– aya: im hole
– Jessica Moss: Phosphenes
– Aldo Clementi: Canoni Circolari
– William Fields: Fluidity

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Radio Ma3azef // 08 September 2021

September 18, 2021October 16, 2022Music ShowsLeave a Comment

Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Radio Ma3azef in Tunis, featuring artists from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Canada:

1. Kinematik – Al Jadi (Capricorn)
2. Senyawa – Alkisah I [Anthony Sahyoun Remix]
3. NP [Anthony Sahyoun & Jad Atoui] – Anteater
4. Bergsonist – Aquatic Empathy
5. Khaled Omran – Arak
6. Calamita – Sidi Mansour
7. KOZO – Take On Kikutake
8. Omarchestra [Osman Arabi, Umut Çağlar, Tony Elieh, Charbel Haber, Maurice Louca, Sharif Sehnaoui, Sam Shalabi & Fadi Tabbal] – King Hassan
9. Johnny Kafta Anti-Vegetarian Orchestra [Tony Elieh, Charbel Haber, Mazen Kerbaj, Malek Rizkallah, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin] – Bedo’s Lullaby
10. Ilvy – Gargantua
11. Spoils & Servants – The Sea Inside