Lebanese, electronic dream pop duo Snakeskin don’t so much shed layers from release to release, they harden their resolve, reinforcing their messaging into songs which are even more powerful and defining. Formed by singer-songwriter Julia Sabra, of alt-rock/experimental scene stalwarts Postcards, and Fadi Tabbal, founder/producer at Beirut’s irreplaceable Tunefork studios, Snakeskin’s soundscape first emerged in 2022. Their self-titled debut album reflected on life in their home city after 2020’s catastrophic port explosion with an unwavering focus. It was a sombre, tense but gently resilient statement piece. Last year’s sophomore Snakeskin release, the illuminating ‘They Kept Our Photographs’ quivered with similar emotions as the Gazan conflict swirled around them and war crept closer. Seams of vibrant electronica and hyperpop fused intriguingly with Snakeskin’s kaleidoscopic ambience while reinforcing the poetic thrust of their work.
Now, without much breathing space, comes the duo’s latest statement, the equally vital ‘We Live In Sand’ released via Ruptured Records/Beacon Sound. Again Sabra and Tabbal’s music is inevitably welded to their daily context, songs shaped in 2024 as Israeli military aggression spread from Gaza into Lebanon. This is an album that’s both haunted by serious conflict and urgent in its response. Opener Ready exposes the raw contrast of hope and loss, two opposites which Snakeskin connect through their visceral, probing music. It’s a song of stark construction, a distorted, short circuiting riff sequence anchoring Sabra’s hymn-like vocal melody. Her voice rings with a stoic clarity, bringing chinks of light as she imagines “the morning glow” and asserts “there’s life inside my bones”. As the unstable bass fragments crumble, a celestial glimmer breaks through as the swell of synths and trumpeting organ fanfare rise carefully.
Nothing gets overstated on ‘We Live In Sand,’ the music is forged in lived experience and its impact is challenging. The pieces are often shrouded in melancholy and have the mysterious intensity of still-life paintings. Olive Groves takes sonar drone and chapel organ then pivots around an eerie Sabra spell-song which seems ghosted by whispers. There’s a Sarah Davachi gothic-minimalism seeping through here although the chilling simplicity of the imagery (“Olive groves/eternal wars”) and the otherworldly autotuned calls distinguishes the soundscape as Snakeskin’s own. Black Water is similarly descriptive, shaping an icy sonic expanse with a cavernous drum beat, the chilled tingle of plucked strings and some distant chorale. However perhaps the album’s most graphic moment comes with its hovering title track . On We Live In Sand, Snakeskin merge beauty and desolation with the tidal flow of a lullaby drone, building with orchestral deliberation like Fennesz at his most expansive. The song’s verses are essential:
There was a boy
Hair white as chalk
Who went to bed
Beneath the rocks.
When talking about the foundation of Snakeskin music, Sabra and Tabbal have previously noted that “There is no rebirth, no renewal. It’s about what it means to feel at home in such a place.” What the duo manage to do so effectively is to loosen the oppressiveness of this situation by keeping the human voice central. Their songs say that within the darkness people live and endure. The breezy dream-pop of October Sun tip-toes wearily with a quizzical Laurie Anderson feel, detached and minimal. The slow organ-led procession and spiralling autotuned voice maybe unsettling but there’s a sense of clinging on to togetherness throughout the track. The eighties pop electronica of The Fear innocently swells with glimmers of hope, warmed by a flickering beat, swooning keys and Sabra’s pillow-soft, Julie Cruise vocal. It’s a love song which glides with the aching, emotive brilliance of a Blue Nile reflection and a lyric which captures the heartbeat of this exceptionally moving album – “And if you run, I’ll run with you/and if you stay, I would stay to/ And if you go/I’ll go with you/And If I die/I’ll die with you” is the closing thought.
Crucially, the long- standing connection between Julia Sabra, Fadi Tabbal and the album’s beat provider Pascal Semerdjian, who’s also a Postcards band-mate, underpins the fluency of ‘We Live In Sand’. To make music so sensitive and intense requires trust and understanding. There’s also a sense that the shared will of the artistic collective at Tunefork in Beirut helped nurture this album along its path. It’s fitting then that the final track, the stripped back, meditative In The Pines, was recorded at their home city base. As the sombre tread of the piano and Sabra’s twirling vocal sink in splintered atmospherics, this coda carries a sadness on its shoulders that’s difficult to walk away from.
For their third release Snakeskin have created an extraordinary sound document which is so poignant in these troubled times and which will remain enlightening for much longer. ‘We Live In Sand’ is an album that will always encourage you to take a moment.
Get your copy of ‘We Live In Sand‘ by Snakeskin from your local record store or direct from Ruptured Records/Beacon Sounds HERE
