The Breakdown
Disseminating experimental/alternative music from the myriad of vibrant scenes across the SWANA region to the wider world has been Ruptured Music’s generous undertaking for over fifteen years. Its creative source keeps giving and its curational insight keeps providing. Enter amongst the label’s significant June releases, the poignantly titled ‘Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day’, an expansive collaboration between Charbel Haber, Nicolás Jaar and Sary Moussa.
Jaar’s name maybe the most familiar, the Chilean-American electronic musician and polymath behind seminal IDM albums under his own name and the Against All Logic aka, as well as one half of the illusive downtempo duo Darkside. Starting his Other People imprint for leftfield artistry in 2013, Jaar released Sary Moussa’s second album ‘Imbalance’ in 2020 so possibly some of the connections which sparked ‘Crashing waves..’ were generated then. Certainly Moussa, who emerged into the Lebanese underground circuit as radiokvm, makes work which, like Jaar, gleefully blurs the lines. The Other People link also brings in Charbel Haber, the third trio member, as the label issued his audio-visual poetry project ‘A Common Misunderstanding of the Speed of Light’ in 2022. Haber’s influence as a multidisciplinary creator in Lebanon has been central to the growth of that country’s underground arts since the mid 90’s conflict with Israel. He was co- founder of the prolific, avant rock band Scrambled Eggs in ’98, a group whose significance was celebrated by Ruptured Records in the label’s early releases.
So in a way, everything comes around and finds its way to the recording of ‘Crashing waves…’. The album captures a single live session from last year when the three musicians gathered in Tunefork Studios, Beirut at a time when Israeli army aggression was ramping up. Its full title ‘Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day’ is also found in a Charbel Haber poem and the imagery voices this visceral electro-acoustic music’s very real circumstance.
The piece is notionally in four parts but whether listened to with pauses or as a continuum, the spontaneous narrative flow and coherency beams through. Part 1 opens with Haber’s calming, mesmeric harp-toned guitar droplets which soon get blown by the breath-drenched notes of the bass clarinet, Jaar’s main instrument for the recording. The two patterns seem to gradually enter a tentative, gliding dance, both trapped in an altered, airy space, but as their movement tires the undulating chords of organ sound fills in around them. It’s a beginning which travels some distance like the tidal pull of Fennesz at his most expansive but distinguished by those incisive details that this particular trio conjure between them. As the chordal drone recedes, soothing ocarina-like calls add colour before ‘Crashing waves…’ moves on.
Extraordinarily this recording was made in real time, no revisions or additions, Haber’s guitar and Jaar’s bass clarinet plus their electronic treatments, the foundation of the improvisation. Moussa sculpted the soundscape in situ, shaping the audio feeds of his partners’ playing into an ongoing dramatic rendition. As the piece enters its second phase he allows the drone to swell and creates the sense of emergence into a damaged vista.
There’s an eeriness here, rustling and chinks of sound, Jaar’s clarinet humming tensely then squeezing out a fluttering song with an Ethio-Jazz/ Getatchew Mekurya yearning. A sombre bass pattern adds weight while Haber’s guitar fuzzes with distortion, desperate or disorientated maybe. Some sonic resolution slowly rises although alien sounds still linger, a contrast which Haber’s poetic commentary, reproduced on the Bandcamp page and cassette sleeve, echoes tellingly. “I must have lied when I said it was my last breath” he reasons “It must be August”.
In this poem the scenario soon shifts to an awareness that “The air is heavy/ It’s loaded with lead and drama”. That sense of vulnerability parallels the album’s third part which crackles with bursts of noisy, fractured glitch. The soundscape gets warped, at times like fractious concrete music, jutting and tangled. Even Jaar’s clarinet takes to skronking urgently as the detuned chords shiver and thin guitar figures tremble. The actuality of the trio’s situation is at its most graphic here, encamped in the studio while chaos is so close. It is a pivotal moment in this exceptional event.
‘Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day’ closes with an episode of transient calm. Haber strums thoughtfully then picks out some jangling melodic lines as shuddering white noise locomotion crackles. A ‘Womblife’ era Fahey seems close by but Haber, Jaar and Moussa are in their own elevated zone. Jaar’s clarinet moans some fragile blues as a softly symphonic loop seeps forwards for an ending which has intense power. A searing electric guitar calls out, hopeful or helpless until, in the final stillness, the lonely whisper of the clarinet dreams.
Like Lawrence English’s recent long-form wonder ‘Even Heaven Knows Its Bounds’, Haber, Jaar and Moussa’s electro-acoustic journey demands your concentration. It may have been made in a particular moment but ‘Crashing waves…’ emphatically delivers the music of now and will continue to do that for a long time to come.
Get your copy of ‘‘Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day’ by Charbel Haber, Nicolás Jaar and Sary Moussa from your local record store or direct from Ruptured Records HERE
No Comment