Recorded in 2018, BNNT & Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s ‘A Faithful Daughter’ has not so much been gathering dust on the studio shelves as fermenting while time passes. It may be that this intense collaborative album is at last emerging because macro and micro circumstances have aligned but strangely this music is of its time now, in the ravaged world of 2026.
Lebanese Canadian Producer/ musician Moumneh is of course one of the founders of Montreal’s seminal Hotel2Tango studio, epicentre for the Godspeed You Black Emperor collective and Constellation Records . Turn over the sleeve of many a record on that label and you’re likely to see Moumneh listed as a key contributor. Polish experimental duo Konrad Smoleński and Daniel Szwed, aka BNNT, may be less widely known but in the sound art world they’ve been prolific activists since their formation in 2008. Installations, performance, film and sound design can be included in their remit as well as two weighty industrial/noise albums ‘Multiverse‘ (2018) and ‘Middle West‘ (2019). Moumneh also records, both under his own name (check out his recent release with fellow experimentalist Frédéric D. Oberland) and as Jerusalem In My Heart. It’s the visceral energy of that project which ‘A Faithful Daughter’ often echoes. Combining such thrust with the directness of the BNNT approach and any document of the trio’s collaboration was bound to be combustible.
An electronic click brings first track The Sad into view, then a lone bass pulse, then a whirred code. It’s a pattern which builds in its own time, nodding to early DIY electronics and a punk rather than neo-classical footing. You sense Smoleński, Szwed and Moumneh thrive in the immediacy. A circling drone note hovers around, the smack of a lone trap beat shocks and you can grasp the tension growing. The pace alters and the pattern of sounds stutters before distortions envelop the scene. Ending on a throbbing tone you wonder where you’ve been taken.
This rhythm and drone structure appears central to BNNT and Moumneh’s approach on the album. Their sound palette is minimal, Radwan on modular synth, buzuq and voice, Szwed playing drums and Smolenski occupied on electronics and the archly named baritone missile (a self-made stringed audio object in an ironically rocket shaped casing). There’s a starkness about the set up but this in no way restricts the descriptiveness of the music. ‘A Faithful Daughter’ has an intensely visual effect, it leaves an indelible impression.
Actual raises the feeling of despair and breakdown with ratcheting snare patterns, escalating power chords and grinding-engine monotones. As Moumneh’s synth circles there are faint harmonic sighs amongst the purging electronics. The album’s sonic and emotional turning point arrives part way through the forceful beats of Meaning, a tune which should rest easy alongside today’s art rock of the Moin/HolyTongue persuasion. Propelled by Szwed’s urgent, incisive drumming and the toll of single, booming bass notes, the anticipation builds to break point. What’s left is Moumneh’s steely buzuq wriggling through the electronic swirl. There’s a defiance in this dramatic close, an appeal to remember how things were before the devastation.
Closing track Mean Sine spreads like a haunted aftermath. Static creeps around the drone and an occasional drum pounds. When the rhythmic fragments connect, the tones shift and curl while the monotone is perpetual. Piercing feedback is the end point, leaving the scratch of static searching for scraps. It’s a sobering conclusion which leaves the same hovering questions as Charbel Haber’s instinctively probing ‘May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable’ from earlier this year.
Alongside BNNT and Moumneh’s music, Montreal author Olivia Tapiero’s visceral prose poems add further depth to the project’s impact. Written in response to listening to each track, they push you to consider for yourself and poignantly reflect the depth of thoughtful emotions that ‘A Faithful Daughter’ can stir. Conceived and recorded in just four days the album is a mightily impressive piece of work. It has arrived for a purpose.
Get your copy of ‘A Faithful Daughter‘ by BNNT & Radwan Ghazi Moumneh from your local record store or direct from Ruptured Records HERE and Instant Classic (for a CD version) HERE
