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

Lebanese Indie Music Label // Promoter & Distributor // Radio Show
A monthly selection of alternative, ambient and experimental music from Lebanon and the MENA region, selected by music promoter and label owner Ziad Nawfal.ย Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.

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.
Acclaim for Marmalsana’s album Marmalsana, released by Ruptured in July 2024 (cassette/digital):
“A singularly idiomatic music worth attending to.” โ 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 โAlvenoโ, 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.โ โ Daryl Worthington, The Quietus, September 2024
https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/cassettes/spools-out-cassette-reviews-for-september-by-daryl-worthington/
“Itโs 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 donโt ever guarantee something this cohesive and absorbing.” โ Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street substack, September 2024
https://petermargasak.substack.com/p/on-the-road-again
Featured in The Atticโs Staff Picks of July 2024:
https://theatticmag.com/news/2464/staff-picks-_-july-2024.html
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 Rupturedโs Bandcamp page.
Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Radio Alhara in Bethlehem, Palestine, with music from Lebanon, Egypt, and the USA.
Coinciding with the release of Lebanese musician and producer MARC CODSIโs new album THE SILENCE BETWEEN THE NEW WORLD AND THE AFTERMATH by Ruptured, Ziad Nawfalโs monthly mix for RADIO ALHARA consisted exclusively of tracks by Marc Codsi, taken from both his solo and various group projects.
This mix was commissioned by Movement Athens for its radio festival โExploring Mediterranean Futuresโ [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 Beirutโs 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 Nawfalโs 35-year tenure at Beirutโs crumbling government station Radio Liban.
[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 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]

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 รaฤlar, 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
Releasing 18 AUGUST 2023 on Ruptured + Annihaya:
Following their collaboration on the Lebanese vinyl edition of Senyawa’s “Alkisah” in February 2021, indie labels Annihaya and Ruptured are collaborating on two vinyl releases, to be released simultaneously in August 2021.
These are the 3rd album from Lebanese post-rock collective KINEMATIK, entitled “Al Jadi”, and the 2nd album from CALAMITA (the trio of guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui, bassist Tony Elieh and drummer Davide Zolli), entitled “Nemesis”.