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Ruptured
Kinematik 'Ensemble 1: Al Jadi' Vinyl LP
£28.49
Ruptured
Kinematik 'Ensemble 1: Al Jadi' Vinyl LP
£28.49
Kinematik is a Lebanese post-rock ensemble hailing from the village of Reyfoun in the Lebanese mountains. Formed in the summer of 2014, Kinematik recorded its debut album Ala'in the spring of 2017, and released it later that same year with Lebanese indie label Ruptured.
This was followed later that year by a string of performances in Lebanon, as well as a number of European dates as part of a tour organized by Beirut & Beyond International Music Festival. Both Ala' and its follow-up Murur al Kiram were recorded and co-produced by Fadi Tabbal from renowned Lebanese recording studio Tunefork.
Murur Al-Kiram was released by Ruptured in the winter of 2020, in the early days of the bloody Lebanese uprising and the Covid-19 pandemic. Kinematik spent the best part of 2020 under lockdown, trying to come to grips with Lebanon's and the world's new realities, battling societal, economical and sanitary hurdles and obstacles.
In November 2020, upon receiving an invitation from Irtijal Festival in Beirut to perform in its 20th edition, the former trio evolved into a full-blown ensemble, comprising a total of 6 musicians - the core line-up of Anthony Sahyoun, Rudy Ghafari and Akram Hajj was joined by modular synth players Jad Atoui and Ziad Moukarzel, as well as drummer Teddy Tawil.
The Irtijal performance laid the roots for a series of recording sessions, that coalesced a few months later into the long-form, elaborate compositions that make up "Al Jadi", the band's third album - 4 slabs of brooding, elegiac post-rock, recorded and mixed by Fadi Tabbal, mastered by Harris Newman of Greymarket fame, and packaged in a superb sleeve courtesy of Studio Safar's head of design Hatem Imam.
Tracklisting:
1. Dinosorat Tahtafil Bel Kuwaikeb (Asteroid!)
2. Afkar Aariya (Naked Ideals)
3. Al Jadi (Capricorn)
4. Wahdi Ana (Alone, I Am)
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vRuptured / Six of Swords
Mayssa Jallad 'Marjaa: The Battle Of The Hotels' Vinyl LP PRE-ORDER
£23.99
“Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels” is a concept album born of the idea of merging singer & songwriter Mayssa Jallad’s two vocations: music and urban research/architectural history.Visit product page →
Written in collaboration with producer Fadi Tabbal, the music builds upon Tabbal’s spatial approach to sound and Jallad’s research on Beirut’s Hotel District.
The album is a reference to Jallad’s Historic Preservation master's thesis, in which she detailed the history of the “Battle of the Hotels”, a 5-months battle that took place in Beirut at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, from October 22nd, 1975 to March 29th, 1976.
Jallad saw architecture as a main protagonist of the battle, as she discovered it was the first high rise urban battle in the world. The close of the battle resulted in the 15-year Green Line, an urban rift which split Beirut into “East and West”, restricting movement and communication and creating a violent divide that still resonates today.
The album comprises two parts. Part A: Dahaliz, is a stroll in the city, where Jallad tries (and fails) to follow an old map. Musician Youmna Saba is a companion in this journey of remembering the once winding corridors (“Dahaliz”) of the city, destroyed by new developments since the 1960s. Empty skyscrapers propel her onto a past filled with the violence of snipers, and a present filled with the glamorous injustice of empty luxury real estate endorsed by powerful warlords-turned-politicians.
In Part B: Maaraka, Jallad inhabits the building of the Battle of the Hotels, as its events unfold. She calls the fighting militias the Blues and Reds, respectively the Lebanese Front (Christian Nationalists) and the Lebanese National Movement (Pro-Palestinian leftists), leveling the playing field, and drawing a map of the battle through songwriting.
Sary Moussa produces the conclusion of the battle in “Holiday Inn (March 21 to 29)”, which ends with the ultimate severance of the city of Beirut. The music caters to post-war youth who have never been taught this difficult history.
Once we consider the “Battle of the Hotels” as our common heritage, it provides an opportunity to teach the value of civil peace. It is also a call to protest for the renewal, rather than the recycling of the political class that has once destroyed the country and holds us, to this day, hostage of its violence.
Limited edition of 300 copies. 140gsm vinyl pressed at Microforum (Canada).
Jacket printed on 20pt board with aqueous gloss coating, with a 3.5mm spine and a black paper inner dust sleeve.
Tracklisting:
1. Etel
2. Kharita
3. Baynana
4. Mudun
5. Haigazian (October 22)
6. Burj Al Murr (October 25 to 27)
7. Markaz Azraq (December 6)
8. Markaz Ahmar (December 6 suite)
9. Al Hisar (December 8)
10. Holiday Inn (January to March)
11. Holiday Inn (March 21 to 29)
12. Al Irth -
Visit product page →Snakeskin is an album of visionary electronic dream pop, shapeshifting above ambient and industrial undercurrents. It is moody, unsettling, luminous – the culmination of a decade of collaboration and friendship between Lebanese producer/musician/ engineer Fadi Tabbal and singer-songwriter Julia Sabra from Beirut-based indie trio Postcards.
The duo began working on Snakeskin in the aftermath of the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, which killed at least 218 people, injured 7,000, and left over 300,000 people homeless. Indeed, Julia's home was destroyed by the explosion and her partner and bandmate Pascal badly injured. The first song that they wrote together afterwards was 'Roots', which closes out the album and was composed for the Ruptured-curated series The Drone Sessions in the fall of 2020.Snakeskin utilizes 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 album seamlessly incorporates the melancholy electro-pop of 'All The Birds', the quiet menace of 'In Our Garden' (long-lost treasures, ancient lies / another buried paradise), and the beat-driven 'Signs'.
The title track sums up their frame of mind, beginning as a lullaby and evolving into a glittering tapestry of distortion and feedback. As the artists write, Snakeskin is a product of "the disappearance of life as we know it, and with it the decay of nature and living creatures. There is no rebirth, no renewal. It’s about what it means to feel at home in such a place."
Some tracks were also inspired by events happening in the surrounding region, such as the invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan and the Palestinian uprising of May 2021 (Sheikh Jarrah) - both events shedding light on relationships to home and land across the wider region.
That such compelling art can emerge from unceasing tragedy may be the ultimate testament to human resilience and the pursuit of freedom and justice.
Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Still Life
2. All The Birds
3. Snakeskin
4. Past Tense
5. In Our Garden
Side B:
6. One By One
7. Signs
8. Roots -
![El Rass & Munma - Kachf el Mahjoub / Unveiling the Hidden [10th Anniversary Reissue] Vinyl LP](//cargorecordsdirect.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/elrassandmunma_grande.jpg?v=1647859958)
Ruptured
El Rass & Munma - Kachf el Mahjoub / Unveiling the Hidden [10th Anniversary Reissue] Vinyl LP
£21.99
vRuptured
El Rass & Munma - Kachf el Mahjoub / Unveiling the Hidden [10th Anniversary Reissue] Vinyl LP
£21.99
Jawad Nawfal and Mazen El Sayed, better known by their stage names of MUNMA and EL RASS, met for the first time in Beirut, during the summer of 2011. A common friend told Jawad wonders about an MC who rapped and slammed in the classical Arabic language, as opposed to the vernacular Lebanese dialect.Visit product page →
The two musicians met in a small café in Beirut’s Hamra neighborhood, spoke of music, argued about politics, and decided to collaborate at once. They began working on tracks the following day. A month later, they had already produced a dozen sketches, instrumental beds and accapella vocal tracks. These demos eventually landed in the hands of Ziad Nawfal and Fadi Tabbal, who set out to bring to life the duo's first recorded album. "Kachf el Mahjoub" (the title is from a Sufi master-work penned some 900 years ago) was eventually released as a limited edition of 500 CD's, during a launch event at then-budding alternative venue Metro al Madina in Hamra, on the 22nd of February 2012.
These CDs went out of print in record time, as can be expected, and the album's mythical status became reinforced over time – El Rass & Munma collaborated sporadically during the next ten years, but never fully grasped the level of musical intensity and explosive tension attained on this first outing. It has been a longstanding dream of ours, here at Ruptured, to produce a vinyl version of this album, and we are thrilled to say this moment has finally come.
Artist ALI RAFEI's original artworks have been painstakingly reproduced, the music has been dutifully remastered for vinyl by CEDRIK FERMONT, and the records were pressed by our friends at Mother Tongue in Verona. We added bonus track "Fi Kala'at Tarablus" to this 10th anniversary reissue for good measure – recorded during the same sessions that yielded "Kachf el Mahjoub", it appears on the digital version of the album.
"Kachf el Mahjoub" is a landmark album in Lebanon’s alternative music scene, and the MENA region’s hiphop and indie scenes writ large. At the time of their collaboration, El Sayed was a prolific writer and musician, at ease with a variety of instruments, notorious for his masterful flow in the classical Arabic language, with lyrics tackling both social and political sensitive subjects; Nawfal has previously released an impressive number of albums and EPs, exploring downtempo electronica and ambient dubstep, for a number of Lebanese and international labels.
The collision of the former's brazen, slammed vocals and the latter's harsh beats works wonders on "Kachf el Mahjoub", Munma's sound-world perfectly fitting El Rass's agitated discourse, alternating between broken beats, elaborate percussion, and ambient layers of synths. At times reminiscent of mutant hiphop outfit Shabazz Palaces, at others of the collaboration between dubstep producer Kode9 and the late vocalist The SpaceApe, this album is an uncanny meeting of Arabic hip-hop and electronica, an exceptional event in the realm of contemporary Lebanese alternative music.
Tracklisting:
1. Fout 3a rassi / Enter the head
2. Tkhayal / Conceive
3. Borkan Beirut
4. Rissala / Sub-litteral
5. 3echq / Islamology
6. Sanadet / Treasury Bonds
7. Nou7 / The Noah
8. Yoga
9. 7issar / Trojan
10. Min Tha2er / Les Justes
11. Majnoun Leila / Mad is Laila
12. Tkhayal [Sary Moussa Remix]
13. Fee Qala'at Tarablus / In the Fort of Tripoli [Bonus Track] -
Sold outAfter making a name for himself over the last decade in Beirut's vibrant contemporary music scene, Anthony Sahyoun unveils his solo debut, the evocative and atmospheric Proof By Infinite Descent.Visit product page →
Using guitar, synthesizer and voice, Sahyoun tackles themes of mourning, accidental prophecy, and the new holy trinity of God, Capitalism, and Technology - all while mining the seams of experimental electronica and gravity-defying ambient music.
Restless, haunting, at times breathtakingly beautiful, this is an album that seeks to rattle cages rather than soothe the comfortable.
Proof By Infinite Descent is the first installment in the Corrosion Series, a new project by longtime collaborators Ruptured and Beacon Sound that aims to showcase Beirut's blast-resistant music scene, while building cultural connective tissue in a time of institutional corrosion.
Tracklisting:
1. Introspection
2. Khifat Al-Atraf (with Firas al-Hallak)
3. The New World
4. Heritage
5. Irhamna
6. Wasted Efforts (with Julia Sabra)
7. The Tenderness of Limbs
8. Requiem
9. Jesuit Literature Drowning in The Mediterranean
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