Tag: Tony Elieh

Ruptured News // Scrambled Eggs + The Incompetents archival reissues

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After years out of print, two essential chapters of Beirut’s independent music scene return to circulation.

With these two releases, Ruptured continues its archival reissue series dedicated to preserving landmark recordings from Lebanon’s independent music community. The latest entries are Scrambled Eggs – Happy Together, Filthy Forever / Peace Is Overrated & War Misunderstood and The Incompetents – A Temporary Convergence Of Interests [The Disgruntled Best Of].

Though each release tells a different story, both emerged from the same creative ecosystem that flourished in Beirut throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Both projects grew from a close-knit network of musicians, recording studios, independent venues and long-running collaborations, each helping shape the sound and spirit of Lebanon’s underground.

Scrambled Eggs brings together Happy Together, Filthy Forever (2006) and Peace Is Overrated & War Misunderstood (2009) for the first time as a newly remastered LP. Recorded during and in the aftermath of the July 2006 war, the collection captures Charbel Haber, Marc Codsi, Tony Elieh and Malek Rizkallah at a pivotal moment, balancing punk, post-punk, noise and experimental rock with a restless approach that continually pushed beyond genre. It also includes “1984,” recorded live in Beirut on 22 July 2006 while the war was still unfolding.

A Temporary Convergence Of Interests [The Disgruntled Best Of] revisits the complete history of The Incompetents, the long-running collaboration between Serge Yared and Fadi Tabbal. Drawing from the band’s five releases between 2008 and 2020, the anthology follows its evolution through changing lineups and an ever-expanding circle of collaborators, tracing a body of work that moved between post-punk, art rock, folk, improvisation and spoken word while remaining inseparable from the creative community that surrounded it.

Both releases have been carefully prepared for their return to print. The audio has been newly remastered for vinyl, with Scrambled Eggs mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market in Montreal. Each edition features restored artwork, a full-colour double-sided lyrics insert, and is pressed on 140g black vinyl in a strictly limited edition of 200 copies.

Pre-orders open Saturday, July 25. Both albums are released on August 21, 2026.

Also arriving on Bandcamp and streaming platforms on Saturday, July 25 are two newly remastered digital double singles: Scrambled Eggs – “Johnny Anti-Christ” / “See You in Beirut” (2026 Remaster) and The Incompetents – “Grey Midas” / “Cannibal Blues” (2026 Remaster).

Listen/Order: Scrambled Eggs

Listen/Order: The Incompetents

Ziad Nawfal Mix for Stegi Radio // 05 November 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. Originally commissioned by Stegi Radio and produced by Onassis Stegi.

1. Azu Tiwaline – Long Hypnosis
2. Deena Abdelwahed – Complain
3. Use Knife – Coup d’état (Muqata’a مقاطعة Remix)
4. Nour Sokhon – The destruction and the rebuilding
5. Ralph Chbeir – Olive Trees
6. Kid Fourteen – Learning How to Die
7. SANAM – Mouathibatti (Live at Cafe Oto)
8. Nadah El Shazly – Mausoleum
9. Julia Sabra – Minor Detail
10. Fatima Al Qadiri – Medieval Femme
11. Los Panteros (Tony Elieh & Aya Metwalli) – Ya Tayren Tayer يا طيرٍ طاير
12. Yara Asmar – Cold Feet And Hot Air Balloons

Photo by Tanya Traboulsi

Ziad Nawfal Mix for Stegi Radio // 01 October 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. 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

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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

Listen/Order

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

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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 Radio Alhara // 19 October 2022

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Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for Radio Alhara in Bethlehem, Palestine, with music from Lebanon, Egypt, and the USA.

  1. Heroes and Villains – Snake and feather [LB]
  2. Cosmic Analog Ensemble – S’aventurer [LB]
  3. Interbellum – Another day [LB]
  4. Préfaces [Charif Megarbane, Salim Naffah & Pascal Semerdjian] – Embarator [LB]
  5. The New Year – Snow [US]
  6. Kid Fourteen – Blood thick silence [LB]
  7. Toni Geitani – Raboukom [LB]
  8. Nadah el-Shazly – Afqid ad dakhira [EG]
  9. El Rass & Munma – Return of the penguin [LB]
  10. The Bunny Tylers – Hello your grace [LB]
  11. Oiseaux-Tempete & The Bunny Tylers – Little known ending fading away [LB/FR]
  12. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh – Ya dam’at al ‘ain [LB/CA]
  13. Tony Elieh & Sharif Sehnaoui – Woe to him [LB]

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Radio Alhara – Marc Codsi Edition // 20 July 2022

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Coinciding with the release of Lebanese musician and producer MARC CODSI’s new album THE SILENCE BETWEEN THE NEW WORLD AND THE AFTERMATH by Ruptured, Ziad Nawfal’s monthly mix for RADIO ALHARA consisted exclusively of tracks by Marc Codsi, taken from both his solo and various group projects.

  1. Marc Codsi – 1979 [Faded Postcards]
  2. Scrambled Eggs – We Should Share More Than Circumstance [No Special Date nor A Deity to Venerate]
  3. Lumi – Raised in Fire [The Night Was a Liar]
  4. Marc Codsi – Piano Part 2 [Faded Postcards]
  5. Marc Codsi – A Light [V/A Nisf Madeena]
  6. Zalfa – Law Ma [Fi Dam]
  7. Scrambled Eggs – Just [Nevermind Where, Just Drive]
  8. Marc Codsi – Invocation I [A New World]
  9. Marc Codsi – Hangar #12 [The Silence Between the New World and The Aftermath]
  10. Marc Codsi – Empty Resonant Shells [V/A Anthology of Electroacoustic Lebanese Music]
  11. Marc Codsi – Faded Postcard 1 [Faded Postcards]
  12. Marc Codsi – Finding Home [The Silence Between the New World and The Aftermath]
  13. Marc Codsi – Encounters II [A New World]

Photo by Tanya Traboulsi

Ziad Nawfal for Movement Radio’s “Exploring Mediterranean Futures” // 15 February 2022

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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.

  1. Fadi Tabbal – After the Fire, Before the End [Unreleased]
  2. Charbel Haber & Sary Moussa – And Yet Another Romance on A Sinking Ship [V/A The Drone Sessions Vol. 1]
  3. Scrambled Eggs & A Trio – Beach Party at Mirna el Chalouhi (Diamond Setter’s Rework) [Unreleased]
  4. The Art of Boo – BoomKaboom [Unreleased]
  5. Safa – Dominant Gene [V/A Lost Archives]
  6. Jad Atoui – FDBCK [Unreleased]
  7. Tres Milliones Dolares – Jon Black [V/A Anthology of Electroacoustic Lebanese Music]
  8. Ziad Moukarzel – Questions of Worry [V/A Anthology of Electroacoustic Lebanese Music]
  9. Court Circuit (Osman Arabi & Heathen) – Ruptured Session February 2010 [Unreleased]
  10. Jawad Nawfal – Nawa Athar 0 (feat. Aya Metwalli) [V/A Istimrar Phase 1]
  11. Abed Kobeissy & Sary Moussa – A Simple Song About Weather & Murder [V/A Istimrar Phase 1]
  12. Aya Metwalli – Red Curtains Forever [Unreleased]
  13. Sharif Sehnaoui & Mazen Kerbaj – Ruptured Session April 2012 [Unreleased]
  14. Jana Saleh – Soupire [V/A Istimrar Phase 1]
  15. Julia Sabra – Three Days [V/A Istimrar Phase 1]
  16. Fadi Tabbal & Julia Sabra – Roots [V/A The Drone Sessions Vol. 1]
  17. Marc Codsi – Untitled #3 [Unreleased]
  18. Youmna Saba – Nafas [V/A Ruptured Sessions Vol. 6: For Beirut]
  19. Anthony Sahyoun – Two Foxes Trotting on A Lane in Qartaba [Unreleased]
  20. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh – Ya Dam’at Al ‘Ain [V/A Ruptured Sessions Vol. 4]

[This mix was commissioned and produced by Onassis Cultural Center, and presented for the first time in the frame of MOVEMENT RADIO]

Ziad Nawfal Guest Mix for Movement Radio // 04 January 2022

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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]

Photo by Andrew Neerman

 

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

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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