Tag: Peter Hollo

Press Review // Chamoun, Sahyoun, Atoui // Ghadr

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Acclaim for Sandy Chamoun, Anthony Sahyoun and Jad Atoui’s Ghadr, released by Ruptured in November 2024:

“On this record, scene stalwarts Anthony Sahyoun and Sandy Chamoun (SANAM) join forces with electroacoustic artist Jad Atoui in a reckoning with tradition that’s fueled by stuttering sub bass, searing guitar textures, and layers of melancholy vocals. Chamoun’s ghostly rendition of “Tahal Layl”—a Bedouin folk song—floats atop drones that expand into a blistering modular onslaught; “Al Moulatham,” on the other hand, interpolates reflections by Yousef al-Domouky on the genocide in Gaza over glitchy, Tim Hecker-esque ambient swells. Ghadr exhorts us to listen to both violence and repair, mobilizing tradition to face an uncertain future.” – James Gui, Ley Lines column, Bandcamp
https://daily.bandcamp.com/ley-lines/ley-lines-november-2024

“When SANAM meets Jad Atoui, you know something excellent is going to happen. Amidst an escalating war and unprecedented bombardment, somehow Lebanon’s music scene still managed to churn out releases – all while many were organizing shelter and food for those in need. This one embodies that spirit as much as any of them. The album’s fiercely crackling and driving electronics fuse a sound so powerful, that it seems to channel lost and unwritten musics together with newly invented music, and Sandy’s vocals ring out as both song and scream. This music may be the best answer to 2024, transcending words alone.” – Peter Kirn, CDM Best Listening of 2024

“The all-encompassing noise, from guitars and electronics, is easily understandable here, but the beauty of Chamoun’s Arabic vocals exquisitely offsets these sounds even if we don’t understand the lyrics. There are deep and wide references here, including a quote from an Instagram post by Yousef al-Domouky about the genocide in Gaza, poetry from Paul Chaoul, and on the opening track, a traditional Bedouin folk song. It’s stunning work from start to finish.” – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog broadcast, FBi Radio

Artist Spotlight with CairoScene: https://cairoscene.com/Noise/Artist-Spotlight-Ghadr

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Press Review // Julia Sabra // Natural History Museum

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Acclaim for Julia Sabra’s Natural History Museum, released by Ruptured in November 2024:

“I loved Julia Sabra’s Natural History Museum—it was released at the end of the year and is quietly devastating. Her lyricism and sensitivity in timbre and harmony is akin for me to the great Linda Perhacs. The songs are intimate and infinite feeling at the same time—I love the raw and soft poetic settings of love and death. [Her] ruminations on the horrors of the war on Gaza, from the perspective of a Lebanese musician based in Beirut, are haunting. In particular, the ghostly organ and synth on the last track on the record, “Minor Detail”, evoke to me the frightening solemnity of death, and a feeling that the ground from underneath has been lifted and displaced.” – Julia Holter, The Fader Artist Picks 2024
https://www.thefader.com/2024/12/20/best-album-songs-2024-artist-picks

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Press Review // Yara Asmar // Stuttering Music

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Acclaim for Yara Asmar’s Stuttering Music, released by Ruptured in November 2024:

“Stuttering Music is one of unfolding doubles, of sounds two times incomplete, of daydreaming dissociation without an anchoring center. It is the wonder of memory, the humorous poetry of being both somewhere and elsewhere, the context collapse of broken sequences – musical, historical, vital. Is a remembrance a duplicitous invention? As Asmar extends the sounds of the accordion like wings, she draws our attention to the falling feathers, each a unity, and yet also a fragment. The levity of their form betrays profound connections with everything around them, a swirl of the kaleidoscope, every singular strand of self inherently an other. It is sad, and yet also funny, how memory fools us into thinking like one. Which is why a Stuttering Music is also always beautiful, first as presence, then as absence.” – David M. Flores, A Closer Listen Top 10 Drone Albums of 2024
https://acloserlisten.com/2024/12/14/acl-2024-top-ten-drone/

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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/

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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

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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

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