“Chaos and resiliance” – the words become cruel cliché when applied on repeat to Beirut’s music scene. But the three latest releases from the Ruptured label tell a sonic story that’s not from some periphery, but the center of our world. They do so in collage — like film fragments (one from a filmmaker). That include’s today’s debut of Ripe from Postcards and in the recent sound narratives of Nour Sokhon, Stefan Christoff, and Camille Cabbabe.
I don’t want to be too lazy in returning to this scene, but at the same time this story requires following the thread a while. And the news demands it. In Beirut, flight trackers have watched the return of flights as they descend into the country’s lone airport – here’s EuroWings; when is flyDubai back? Then today, on a day when still more people were killed in the south by Israel, amidst some 1500-odd violations of the so-called ceasefire, Israel bombed Beirut for the first time since November. When I talk about this scene, I can pretty easily follow the billowing clouds following the airstrike from their windows.
But this isn’t just a story about that. We’re all involved in this story – through our families and friends, but also governments, the swirl of ever-more-consolidated capital around us, and the evils those powers inflict on people. So when parents rushed to schools in the Beirut suburb that got a sudden evacuation order, we’re all involved. Music has to respond to that somehow, whether it’s looking into those areas of darkness or finding some refuge or, more likely, a strange alchemy of the two.
Nour Sokhon’s work is in that alchemy of grief and healing. I already saw her live performance, rattling objects in rituals of remembrance. Here, piano by Stefan Christoff follows along those organic swells of feeling as easily as if the notes were gently blowing in the breeze. Atop that is Nour’s fearless inquiry into the world around us. Beyond all Borderlines was quietly released at the end of last month. The live recording in Berlin’s recent space Morphine Raum, a studio with living room-style intimacy run by Byblos-born Rabih Beaini, gives your ears the feeling of being invited to a private salon.
The surprise is how varied the album is, its range, with waves of sampled sound interwoven in crests like the Mediterranean. Why are you here?
Just before the full-scale attacks on Lebanon, I saw a performance by Nour to live film in fragments at Arsenal. The film itself, by Youssef Fahdeh, was in pieces, sometimes even with burn marks – injured in the Lebanese civil war. Talking to Ayman Nahle afterwards, I never would have imagined that the archives themselves would be in a neighborhood targeted by Israeli airstrikes mere days later.
But then I think about filmmaking and memory and fragments in another way in the work of Camille Cabbabe, who has earned her name both in music and film. These are different kinds of fragments, but they also relate to memory and grief and being human, retelling the story of her late brother Karim, the program notes instruct us. There are pieces her mother shot in Hong Kong where Karmin lived, amidst other pieces.
Actually, in a funny way, this is a perfect antidote to the AI slop we’re seeing on social media this week. Instead of bathing everything in a false veneer of sameness, this feels like getting back to the original image – the home movie, the person you knew. It’s all the details of memory large data can’t understand, every particular aroma and pattern.
Since it’s a soundtrack to a nonexistent film, it’s hard not to find your own memories slipping in again. K2 is so personal that you can’t help but have it start to tug at your own inner cinema.
But this film will help, too:
And that brings us to today’s album. (I accidentally wrote “film,” but that is the sense.)
Postcards is Julia Sabra, Pascal Semerdjian, and Marwan Tohme. Like some of the other music I’ve written about here (including Julia’s specifically), it’s a generational lament – a “laundry list of frustrations.” But it was recorded in a retreat to the Semerdjian family home in the mountains, away from the oppressive air and stress of Beirut. That brings the music to a more grounded place, as if the trees and dirt reoxygenated every rage. And it comes with this beautiful fil by Areej Mahmoud:
Fadi Tabbal, the engineer and studio owner who co-created Ruptured with Ziad Nawfal, perfectly balances that rawness and focus in the mixing and recording. It’s a statement that’s meant to last.
It’s a darker, more punk-infused take on shoegaze. “Dust Bunnies” is an anthem, a cry, but there are so many heartfelt moments – “Construction Site” aches above grimy, fuzzy harmonies, to pull you away from the Internet. “I’m at my best” pleads, like projection. “Ruins” can break you. It goes on. You can listen in almost any order, from any point, and wander up the mountain into the woods, and the sun is even more intense.
It’s been encouraging to watch Ruptured and other Beirut projects start to get attention – so richly deserved, without any country after their names, but on the basis of the albums. Now if we can also extend our attention across the country, across all the disturbed skies in the world.
“Another time is now.”
Cover photo by Mohamad Abdouni.