Tag: Rashad Becker

Ziad Nawfal Mix for Stegi Radio with guest RAMI ABI RAFI // 06 February 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 guest mix by Berlin-based Lebanese DJ, sound artist and photographer RAMI ABI RAFI. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.

In Rami’s own words: “In this broadcast entitled INSIJAM, meaning ‘harmony’ in Arabic, the essence of chances and encounters takes center stage. Combining musique concrète with traditional Arabic sounds, the performance shifts between experimental, avant-garde, spoken word, field recordings, and improvised jazz. INSIJAM represents my perspective on the beauty of diverse musical encounters.”

  1. ÉLIANE RADIGUE – Adnos I
  2. PHILL NIBLOCK – Didjeridoos and Don’ts
  3. PAULINE OLIVEROS – Time Perspectives
  4. BANA HAFFAR – Ahl Al Samaa’
  5. RAED YASSIN – Black Risotto With Razor Clams
  6. TWO OR THE DRAGON – Dance Grooves For The Weary -Part I-
  7. FRANZ HAUTZINGER & MAZEN KERBAJ – Kalash 1
  8. RASHAD BECKER – matraquage
  9. RELÂCHE ENSEMBLE – Paul Epstein, “Three Songs from Home
  10. NADAH EL SHAZLY – Breakup By The Sea
  11. MARGARET LENG TAN – Dream
  12. ‘A’ TRIO – Kazdoura
  13. JANA WINDEREN – Live in Den Haag
  14. LAURIE SPIEGEL – Music for Dance II
  15. YOUMNA SABA – Al khayal الخيال
  16. SNAKESKIN (JULIA SABRA & FADI TABBAL) – Past Tense
  17. FAIRUZ – Nassam Alayna El-Hawa

Ruptured + Beacon Sound Album Release // JULIA SABRA & FADI TABBAL // Snakeskin

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Releasing 14 October 2022 on Ruptured + Beacon Sound:
SNAKESKIN is the first full-length by mainstays of the Lebanese music scene JULIA SABRA and FADI TABBAL. Snakeskin marks the sixth collaboration between Ruptured and Portland-based indie label Beacon Sound, and is the second release in our Corrosion Series, following Anthony Sahyoun’s solo album Proof By Infinite Descent in 2021.

Snakeskin was born in the aftermath of the August 4 2020 port explosion in Beirut, which decimated several of the city’s neighborhoods – it is a reflection on what it means to feel at home in a place where “there is no rebirth, no renewal,” as the artists put it. Shapeshifting above ambient and industrial undercurrents, the album is visionary electronic dream pop, utilizing tape loops, synthesizers, vocals, and drum machines, combining Julia’s pop-inspired melodies and choral roots (an echo from her religious upbringing) with Fadi’s affinity for minimalism and musique concrète.

“The moon speaks in tongues we can’t discern / A plastic dove hangs from a cypress branch / Haven’t you heard? / Nothing grows here anymore / The air is burnt / Nothing grows…”

Recorded by Fadi Tabbal, mixed by Sary Moussa and Fadi at Tunefork Studios in Beirut.
Drum samples by Pascal Semerdjian.
Cover photo by Lujain Jo. Graphic design by Josette ‘ZOoz’ Khalil.
Mastered by Rashad Becker.

Available as a digital album and limited edition vinyl LP with download code.

Listen/Order (Ruptured) HERE

Listen/Order (Beacon Sound) HERE

LISTEN

Photo by Manu Ferneini

Ruptured Album Release // STELLAR BANGER // Data Is EP

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RELEASING MAY 21ST ON RUPTURED:

STELLAR BANGER
Stellar Banger is an electro-acoustic quartet composed of Lebanese musicians Ali Hout and Abed Kobeissy and German musicians Pablo Giw and Joss Turnbull.
The roots of this unique collaboration were laid down during the 2019 iteration of Irtijal Festival in Beirut, when the four men played together for the first time following their respective festival sets. The next year, right before the eruption of the Coronavirus pandemic, they set about working on a set of concrete recordings, from their homes in Beirut, Berlin, Köln and Turin. The resulting, freeform pieces were reworked, stretched and recomposed under varying states of lockdown, over the course of six months and 28 highly kinetic Zoom meetings.

The approach behind Stellar Banger is one of complete musical freedom, away from pre-assigned functions of instrumental / cultural roles, oblivious to the borders separating acoustic and digital media. At the heart of the quartet’s creative process is the notion of instant composing; improvisation with an experimental mindset, drum machines and electronic beats used in an open and intuitive manner, creating an identifiable sonic identity and structure.
Influenced by the absurd realities of a world overridden by COVID-19, far-right politics and bloody popular uprisings, the music might seem chaotic at first; but hidden within a multi-matrix of patterns, rhythms and colors, an elusive yet imposing structure begins to emerge, a pulsating musical bed composed of grainy, poly-layered pink-noise eruptions.
A case in point would be lead track “Data Is,” a bewildering example of musical defragmentation, overlaying sample shreds, stutters and tremolo patterns, unraveling as a sonic reminder of pre-existing musical idioms. The track inexorably builds up and climaxes into a giant cluster of pixels and dots; an audiophiliac prophecy of digitization, set to ghostlike incantations of astronomical objects and cosmic junk data.

Stellar Banger survived COVID-19’s reign of terror and the tyranny of border controls thanks to instant voice messages. In this EP release, messages act as both musical tools and narrative elements. They document the difficulties undergone by band members traveling and attempting to meet under lockdown. Aural, often nonsensical snapshots of arguments at airports, border controls, in quarantine; a binary, intercontinental ballistic messenger of friendship, a conveyor of hope through music. An apt representation of today’s digital world.

Mixed by Pablo Giw.
Mastered by Rashad Becker at Clunk, Berlin.
Artwork by Murtey.

Listen/Order HERE 

Photo by Niclas Weber