DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid (born 1970), is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as “illbient” or “trip hop”. He is aturntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author. He borrowed his stage name from the character The Subliminal Kid in the novel Nova Express by William S. Burroughs. He is a Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School.
Spooky began writing science fiction and formed a collective called Soundlab with several other artists.
In the mid-1990s, Spooky began recording a series of singles and EPs. His debut LP, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, is now widely regarded as a formative influence on illbient. Spooky contributed to the AIDS benefit albumsOffbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip (1996) and Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon (1998) produced by the Red Hot Organization. Riddim Warfare (see 1998 in music) was an underground hit that include collaborations with Kool Keith and other cult figures in indie rock like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore who also appears on DJ Spooky’s 2009 album release “The Secret Song.”
He then worked with several other artists on various collaborations and mix CDs, returning in 2002 with Modern Mantra. That same year saw the release of Optometry, a widely acclaimed collaboration with avant-jazzplayers Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Guillermo E. Brown and Joe McPhee. (This album also features portions of a breaks record by Billy Martin of Medeski Martin & Wood.) In a classical vein, he has collaborated with the ST-X Ensemble in performances of the music of Iannis Xenakis. His film compositions have been performed by Kronos Quartet for the soundtrack to his remix of DW. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation. Kronos Quartet also performed DJ Spooky’s remix of Steve Reich’s composition “City Life.”
DJ Spooky has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto on several projects including The Discord Symphony which toured Japan extensively in 1997. The concert and album were released as an enhanced CD containing both a full audio program and multimedia computer files. It features spoken-word performances by Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Patti Smith, David Sylvian, DJ Spooky, David Torn, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Miller also participated on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s anti war project “Chain-Music” along with Towa Tei (formerly of Dee-Lite), Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, Pansonic, and Cornelius, in 2007. It is a concept project based on collage that makes an anti-war statement through music exchange.
Avant-garde music has been an influence on Miller, including artists such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Edgard Varèse, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Terry Riley, Ornette Coleman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and the French composer Erik Satie for his piano works and his ideas for furniture music. He collaborated with Iannis Xenakis on the recording of Kraanerg, with the STX-Ensemble in 1997, and he has since worked with another major influence on his work - Steve Reich.
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop has also been an influence on Miller, and he cites Delia Derbyshire as a major hero for women and people of color in electronic music. He’s called Music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop released on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex Label, one of his favorite compilations.
2005 saw the release of “Drums of Death”, DJ Spooky’s CD based on sessions he recorded with Dave Lombardo of Slayer. Other guest artists include Chuck D. of Public Enemy and Vernon Reid of Living Colour. The record was co-produced by Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto.
In 2006, he produced two extensive compilations of classic Jamaican music from the archives of Trojan Records, the 40 year old Jamaican record label founded by Chris Blackwell and Lee Gopthal. The U.S. release, In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records focused on “selections” from the archive, while the UK and worldwide release, Riddim Come Forward was a continuous mix. The compilation features a roster of Jamaica’s most renowned artists and producers like Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, U-Roy, King Tubby and Prince Jammy.
In 2008 his work Being Black (featuring Ursula Rucker) was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike. He is just one of 9 artists who participated in thetruth.com’s Remix Project, where he remixed the Sunny Side song “Tough Love”.
DJ Spooky joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians’ careers.[3] [4] [5] He was also a judge for the 3rd Independent Music Awards.[6]
DJ Spooky has said that much of his work “deals with the notion of the encoded gesture or the encrypted psychology of how music affects the whole framework of what the essence of ‘humaness’ [sic] is… To me at this point in the 21st century, the notion of the encoded sound is far more of a dynamic thing, especially when you have these kinds of infodispersion systems running, so I’m fascinated with the unconscious at this point.” [7]
DJ Spooky’s CD The Secret Song is slated for release October 6, 2009 on Thirsty Ear Records. It has guest appearances by Thurston Moore, The Coup, Mike G. of the Jungle Brothers, Rob Swift of the X-Ecutioners, Mike Ladd, Vijay Iyer, and many others. String arrangements for the album were done by film soundtrack composers Peter Stopschinski and Graham Reynolds with the Golden Hornet Project, and edited and sampled by DJ Spooky. The Secret Song is a manifesto about our overloaded digital culture.
Source: Wikipedia.com
Check his live performance at EM Chill on August 17th, at DJ SPOOKY :: That Subliminal Kid Live In Beirut brought to you by the Owls of Acousmatik System.
Igorrr
Brace yourself, it’s a wild ride that the one on which you embark with Igorrr. The solo project of the young but still very experienced frenchman Gautier Serre has quickly shot to the pantheon of all things hard and electronic, and intends on staying there. A sound engineer by trade, Serre is the perfect example of a careful soundsmith working with his ears wide open and his tongue firmly planted in his cheeks. Citing 17th century classical music and death metal as his main influences, he insolently mixed the fastest of breakcore with the most elegant of baroque compositions, grindcore screams and absurd, everyday life samples. The best part? It all fits perfectly together, for a particularly exhilirating result. Crowds after crowds can not be wrong: since the release of “Nostril” on Ad Noiseam in 2010, Igorrr has become a very sought-after act, playing every week all across Europe.
Check out Igorrr’s Myspace Page or follow him on his official Facebook Page.
Broken Note
The project of two young and particularly angry Britons (one of which later went to act as 16 Bit), Broken Note shattered doors, ears and subwoofers in 2008 with a salvo of records on Ad Noiseam, Peace Off and Ruff. Their mixture of high definition sound, punk attitude, sheer energy and (let’s face it), freshness propelled this duo in no time to the forefront of both the dubstep and the hard drum’n’bass scene.
A couple of years later, Broken Note has kept on releasing on Ad Noiseam, but has also collaborated with high names of the current electronic music world, such as Amon Tobin, Cooh or Machine Code. Very prolific in the studio, Broken Note have also been relentlessly touring, playing myriads of shows in the UK, continental Europe and both Americas, and participating to many festivals, such as Glastonbury, Bangface or Maschinenfest.
Judging from the impressive feedback and recognition gathered in only a couple of years by Broken Note, it has become very clear that this act is one to be counted on, and one of the major players of tomorrow (if not today) for anybody into hard, punk-ridden electronic music.
Check out Broken Note’s Myspace Page
Nicolas Chevreux
Ad Noiseam is an experimental electronic music independent record label, based in Berlin, Germany.
After years of running his FM radio-show and online magazine (Recycle Your Ears), Nicolas Chevreux founded the Ad Noiseam label in 2001. With 130 releases ever since, Ad Noiseam has become one of the worldwide frontrunner of the breakcore, dubstep and IDM genres. A wide and diverse roster, constantly touring artists and an acute sense for quality records and challenging sound are the trademark signature of the label.
Nicolas Chevreux has been DJ-ing since the middle of 90′s, and has since the creation of Ad Noiseam often shared the stage with the artists on the label.
Check out Ad Noiseam’s website at http://www.adnoiseam.net/
The Teknoist
Taken from Ad Noisam website: Mike (The Teknoist)’s first release went straight to the hardcore legendary label Deathchant, and things have stayed quite high profile for this British producer, with releases on Planet Mu, Peace Off, Cock Rock Disco and others. A very sought after performer (and catching the eye of Ad Noiseam as the infamous Bong-Ra wedding bash), The Teknoist has impressed with his ability to combine the pummelling rhythms of hardcore with the details of drum’n'bass and breakcore, the whole thing enriched with some metal spice.
Check his website/label at http://www.ninjacolumbo.co.uk, his tracks http://soundcloud.com/the-teknoist, follow him on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/miiketeknoist or his tweets at https://twitter.com/MiikeTeknoist
Marta Moreno Muñoz
Marta Moreno Muñoz (Spain, 1978) is a performance and video artist with a background in experimental theater and other time-based arts. Graduating in 2002 with a Master of Fine Arts, her work has focused predominantly on feminine subjectivity, dissolution of the ego and the notion of pre-oedipal nostalgia in response to a patriarchal and undesirable reality.
She is at present in a transitional stage, shifting towards the conceptualization of larger-scale projects exploring the complex interchange between performance art and cinematic language.
She has lived and produced works in Spain, UK, Turkey, India, The Netherlands and Indonesia as well as screened and exhibited as far and wide as China, Thailand, Australia, Portugal, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Cuba, Mexico, Sweden, Finland and Syria.
Currently based in Granada (Spain), she is working on personal projects as well as co-directing with Marc Chia the experimental art space The UnifiedField.
One Man Nation
“Chia’s artistic identity is one that defies the artificial borders and boundaries of the modern nation state. Going beyond the notion of the individual simply as a constituent of a nation and its projected cultural identity, he bypasses the need for mass appeal or approval and instead subscribes to the independent nature that characterizes folk – the resistance to a canon.” June Yap
Marc Chia a.k.a One Man Nation (b.1982, Singapore) is a musician with a background in media and sound art who graduated from the Piet Zwart Institute (Rotterdam, NL). He investigates social and psychological situations related to tradition and its progression, the future through the eyes of history, and spirituality in technology via the medium of sound and performance.
He currently splits his time between Europe and Asia where he is developing The Future Sounds Of Folk in collaboration with Steim as well as co-directing The UnifiedFieldcollective and art space in Granada (Spain) with Marta Moreno Munoz.
Past and current collaborations include but not limited to Pierre Bastien, Shaun Sankaran, C-drik Fermont, Tarek Atoui, Kato Hideki, Damo Suzuki, Hilary Jeffrey, Olaff Kehler,Richard Scott, Katie Duck, Alfredo Genovesi, Soopa Collective, Iman Zimbot, Bambu Wukir and has performed internationally at festivals such as ISEA (Ruhr), Mapping (Geneva), Piksel (Bergen), MEM (Bilbao), STEIM Jamboree (Amsterdam), Makeart (Poitiers), Fete 0.1 (OrlÈans) and SummerLAB (Gijon).
Check out his website www.onemannation.com
Wormholes
Wormholes is an ongoing audio-visual project by Mazen Kerbaj and Sharif Sehnaoui, two Lebanese free improvising musicians who have been working and playing together since the late 1990’s. In 2008, Kerbaj devised an ingenious set-up which allows him to draw in a live setting, using a luminous glass panel coated with acetate, an overhead projector, and a reversed camera.
While he draws miscellaneous shapes and forms, sometimes precise, oftentimes blurred, and augments them with plastic add-ons and random effects (such as blowing on the panel with a pipe), Sehnaoui operates his guitar percussively, with lines that are heavy and forceful in places, and sparse and muted in others. Although the two men start the piece in unison, not much correspondence occurs at later stages of the performance, between the music and the drawing. Points of interference are accidental, and much is left to the audience’s imagination.
Matta
A duo comprised of two British producers who have been active for years under various names in the UK breaks and dubstep scene, Matta is still a young act, but has received considerable praise over a quite short amount of time.
Noticed by such radios as BBC’s Radio One or XFM, remixing Skunk An-ansie for One Little Indian, and collaborating with many new acts of the dubstep scene, they have so far had releases on Terminal Dusk, Heavy Artillery, and Barish records. “The Lost” on Ad Noiseam was their first vinyl solo release, followed by “Release The Freq”, both later released as part of the “Prototype” debut full length CD.
Delivering a mixture of typical London dubstep, heavy and catchy, aerial and emotional melodies and complex, modern breaks, Matta’s music is a careful combination of what makes dubstep exciting while keeping it up to date and unrepetitive. Their energy-filled sets, so far limited to the UK, have brought them considerable praise, most of all for the way they combine intelligence and club-efficiency.
Check out UK duo Myspace page or listen to their tracks on Soundcloud. Watch them live at Chaos Reigns alongside Richard Eigner, and many other, May 28 at the Art Lounge.
Richard Eigner
Richard Eigner is a composer, sound artist, producer and drummer residing in Vienna and Linz, Austria. In his music he is crossing the borders of experimental acoustic music, minimalism and electronica with a focus on the symbiotic use of acoustic elements and electronically produced and processed sounds. Strenuous with numerous sonorous projects he is kept busy with his playful musical project Ritornell, the setup of Denoising installations or drumming for the likes of Patrick Wolf, Flying Lotus, Dimlite and Patrick Pulsinger. His compositions were used by Robert Seidel for his projection and paper sculpture “Chiral” at MOCA Taipei or by canadian director Bruce LaBruce for his melancholy zombie movie “Otto; Or, Up With Dead People”.
Check out Richard Eigner website at richard.ritornell.at and ritornell.at. Check him live at Chaos Reigns along UK Duo Matta, and many other, May 28 at the Art Lounge.
Niveau Zero
Having taken his first steps in music as the bass layer for various hardcore outfits Frédéric Garcia AKA Niveau Zero has now become one of the frontrunners of France’s heavy electronic scene. With tastes and influences ranging from dubstep to breakcore or hip-hop to metal, he’s a relentless actor of this country’s underground scene.
Following his winning of the “best electronic newcomer” award at the Printemps De Bourges festival in 2008, Niveau Zero had his first releases on the Paris-based label Destpub (also the first label to discover the now widely acclaimed 16bit). In 2010 he release is first full length album , “In_sect” is a boundary-free wild ride through the many forms of modern bass music.Featuring collaborations with such artists as BenSharpa, Broken Note, Hecq and The Unik.
Beside having his own FM radio show, Niveau Zero is also the founder of Paris’s famous hard bass music parties, “F*** You I’m Furious”& “Still furious”, and is know for being one of the most sought-out French dubstep live act.
Check out his page on Myspace, follow him on Facebook or listen to his tracks on Soundcloud
XnTrick
Belgian X&trick started out as a dj and party promoter in 1998. He was one of the first dj’s to introduce new music styles like breakcore, industrial, braindance, hardcore and drill n bass into the Belgian underground scene. Meanwhile his main party called ‘Dionysus’ was known as the first party in Belgium where many of these new music styles clashed in one lineup..Things went fast and X&trick soon became known as one of Belgians most wanted dj’s. During this period he travelled all over Belgium, playing at some of the most legendary underground clubs and raves. It didn’t take long his first international gigs became a fact.. Around that time he was also getting more into his own productions and his first tunes were made.
By 2003 Dionysus had grown legendary, attracting more then a thousand ravers, so after 10 marvelous episodes it was time for something new… X&trick moved to the city of Gent where he created ‘Bug Klinik’, still organising parties but this time with a new division called ‘Bug Klinik Records’. This label created a place where he could bring together many of the artists and friends which he met during the past few years..A first ep by Yee-king was released, and in june 2004 X&trick’s first solo ep ‘Forever’ saw the daylight.. This debut ep got well received by international press and scene, so he started to tour more often and further outside Belgium.
Between 2005 and 2010 X&trick has been extensively touring with his live act, playing on most of Europe’s respected nights and festivals, (f.e. Dour Festival (B) Glade (UK) and being the first Belgian act on the London’s legendary Neo-rave: Bang Face) and memorable tours in the United States and Japan…
These days X&trick is still the man behind ‘Bug Klinik’..He is responsible for organising and programming countless succesfull events in- and outside Belgium..which are uniting thousands of ravers and music lovers from all over the world… Some of the most known are ‘Clash of the Cultures’, ‘Overkill Belgium’, ’9 to 5′, ‘Invasion of the 50ft Soundsystem’ (European Tour), Dionysus (on Tour)….Bug Klinik is currently expanding and new divisions are a weblabel called ‘Bug Web’ and an artist / music consultancy agency called BK Agency..
Basicly, X&trick has become one of the leading figures in the Belgian underground electronic scene, and he’s not planning to stop his sonic mission anytime soon.
Meanwhile he’s still producing music and by now he has full releases and / or contributions, remixes on well respected international labels like Rebelscum (UK), Suburban Trash Industries (D), Blind (B), Pandemonium (PL) and of course Bug Klinik…
Recently he’s also been working on his new projects Knex, and became a member of the dubstep format ‘Red Eyes’. After the first performances and releases of both projects, a promising future seems to await both new musical outputs.
X&trick’s style is described by himself as ’Neorave’: countless kinds of (contemporary) music like DrumNBass, Electronica, Hardcore, Rave, Jungle iget blended into a fresh cocktail of mad beats, sharp bass and catchy melodies. His liveset is not the usual ‘laptop’ live, combining laptop, midicontrollers, fx and microphone.. and a portion of humor of course.
‘I don’t like to take myself to seriously’ he says, ‘but when i’m on a stage there’s only one mission: connect with the audience and take them onto a musical journey, and i’m pretty damn serious about that!’
His strong dj reputation was earned by years of experience combined with his unique, versatile and powerfull sound. With his fresh ear for music, he always seems to adapt to the mood of the night and the dancefloor.
Info:
http://www.bugklinik.com/xntrick.php
Discography:
www.discogs.com/artist/X%26trick
X&trick podcast for Bug Klinik:
http://www.mediafire.com/?j18l12w8dot29t1
X&trick live @ Firlej, Wroclaw, Poland, May 2010:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rdXOuJn5LE
X&trick making the place scream for more @ Dour Festival 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIvBGuBQc0Q
Enduser
Lynn Standafer, better known as Enduser, undoubtedly counts as the better known, most active and highest praised breakcore producers.
Shooting his way through the 2000’s with salvoes of EPs and albums as well as constantly touring all over the world, Enduser has grown from being a driving force of this sound to one of its best embodiment and most recognized figure. Synonymous for a music which marries carefully laid melodies with unrestrained aggression, Enduser has received praises from all sorts of horizons for the way he manages to entice a sense of beauty in the midst of broken and pummelling beats. If hard electronic music can ever be recognized as having a soul, it is throughout Enduser’s output that this gets best demonstrated.
Enduser has played too many high-profile shows and festivals to list, and has amassed an impressive discography, which features several highly successful records and tracks. His music has been recognized as heavily influential in many genres, ranging from drum’n’bass to metal. Enduser has also collaborated with artists ranging from drum’n’bass heavyweights Dylan or DJ Hidden as with rock and metal legends Jarboe (of the Swans), Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu) or Bill Laswell.
Check out his pages online at http://www.sonicterror.net/ and http://www.myspace.com/enduser
Discography found at http://www.discogs.com/artist/Enduser
Jad Atoui
No wonder it runs in the family, Jad Atoui, little genius brother of Tarek Atoui, is making his way through the electronic music scene at quite an early age in such an impressive way. Jad’s talent can easily be read between his notes; his passion for music is translated in experimental electronics, ambient, glitch and dubstep.
You can listen to his tracks here
Photos courtesy of Tania Traboulsi
Mocques
Ziad Moukarzel, aka Mocques (spelled Mox) is a Lebanese versatile DJ and electronic music producer. With a diverse musical taste acquired through years of curiosity and research, he ventured through the realm of music production alone around 2004 and with Jawad Nawfal, aka Munma, in 2009 to form the electronic live music act known as Index/Left, producing mainly dubstep. The adventure didn’t end there, recently Mocques was the opening live act for One Man Nation, Kirdek, Niveau Zero, X&Trick, Munma and Jad Atoui. His music is a crucible of electronica, hip-hop, and dubstep with jazz, rock and sometimes pop influences.
Photos courtesy of Tania Trabousli
Hoonboy
Hoonboy is a unique live breakcore performer at the cutting edge of this ever evolving scene. His renowned ability for immaculate live production, induces praise & envy across the UK & Europe by twisting, mixing and mashing up his showcase of exclusive tracks & live remixes using his own distorted drums, insane scratches, rawkuss samples & stomach churning bass lines, guaranteed to rock any crowd he graces. Inspired by a mis-spent youth dabbling in the UK rave scene, Hoonboy first picked up a set of decks at the relatively old age of 19.
Using Ableton and a selection of hardware he has been able to create a breakcore-rave instrument that can be played live with devastating results. Fusing dubstep, ambient, ragga jungle, breakcore, hard dnb and old skool, with an arsenal of breaks, samples, fills, acapellas and effects, hoonboy brings the noize – and the neoravefunk – to anywhere he plays. Hoonboy now lives in Manchester, England and spends most of his time in a little box. His musical toys relieve him of boredom and occasionally he takes them out to play.
Hoonboy’s quote after Breakolage Act I: “My trip to Beirut was a real eye opener. It was a privilege to be involved with the lebanese breakcore scene at such an early stage.”
RadioKVM
Born in 1987 Sary Moussa a.k.a RadioKVM is a producer/live electronic musician,
Prior to fully engage into “the only thing in which I truly give myself entirely”, Sary Moussa has always surrounded himself with sonorities. His constant interest in trying to reproduce the sounds that influenced him by nearby means inevitably lead to the production of his own melodies; often revisiting others’ creations.
Being by his early musical figures such as Jazz, Metal or Punk; Dub and electronic genres like Electronica and Breaks, but also with the great source of inspiration of the Lebanese underground scene, what most accurately defines RadioKVM’s profile is “evolution”.
As true as feeling music is a vital process for him, the way that RadioKVM experience and deliver his music is a complex-yet natural and true- reaction: “It is as if I am staring at a mirror that reflects me as I am listening to music; what I hear and feel, I throw it back my way”, by his owns words.
RadioKVM came as a result of a meeting with Okydody a.k.a Faysal Bibi. An immediate alchemy between their music styles and conception lead them to perform together. The duo they formed, renown for the importance and professionalism of their live acts, stands high in the alternative music scene.
Listen to his tracks on Soundcloud
Liliane Chlela
Liliane Chlela a.k.a Queen Lil is best known for co-founding hezbel taleta, a collective project united every tuesday for an improvised session, with collaboration with several local and international artists such as Vladimir Kurumilian, Viken Bajac, Gerard Rechdan and Julien Younes.
Taken from her own biography, she’s a Musician / Composer / DJ perceiving music from an avant-garde approach; Liliane’s singularity is eminent through her unusual sound treatment, complemented with distinct experimental hardware techniques and composition tools used in her live improvised performances and productions. Her latest news: The DnB project is a live and improvised Drum’n bass trio including Fouad Afra on drums and Bashar Farran on bass; this newly born concept triad consists of a rare combination of electro-acoustic drum’n bass improvisation. Her music is an experiment of sounds, speeches, beats and melodies produced through a rare amalgam of instruments, hardware and gears.
To find out more about Liliane Chlela, visit her website www.lilianechlela.com and listen to her tracks on Soundcloud. You can also follow on twitter, Facebook or Myspace.
Picture courtesy of Lara Samaha
C-drík
C-drík Fermont is a multifaceted artist and academically trained musician from Belgium. He is a former student of electro-acoustic composer Annette Vande Gorne [conservatory of Mons]. C-drík is also a sound designer and composer, mostly into various electronic and experimental genres such as electro-acoustic, noise, breakcore, industrial, electro, digital punk and free jazz. With regards to visual arts, C-drík also composes soundtracks for theatre, exhibitions, sound installations, fashion shows and short movies. His movie works include musical scores for Sergei Sisenstein’s Strike [2006] and The Battleship Potemkin [2009]. He composed the soundtrack for Atalodz, an experimental short film directed by Gisèle Pape, and won the prize for the best soundtrack at the ‘Côté Court’ festival in Montreuil, France [2008]. C-drík also runs the mastering studio and record label Syrphe, dedicated to electronic and experimental music from Africa and Asia, as well as its sub-label Textolux. He has performed and given lectures in 40 countries and on nearly every continent. His research focuses on experimental and electronic music in Africa and Asia, and he is currently writing a book tracing artists from those continents from 1944 until now.
For more information check out the following websites:
http://www.syrphe.com/
http://www.myspace.com/cdrk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-drik_Fermont
Munma
Born in Beirut in 1978, Munma aka Jawad Nawfal undertook audiovisual and film studies at IESAV (Institute for Scenic, Audiovisual and Film Studies) in Beirut and chose to specialize in sound design. Nawfal produced a first album named “Aequo:Mitclan” published in 2006 by the American record label Isolate Records.
Munma is Nawfal’s latest musical project. It explores so-called oriental harmonies and rythmics. Munma has released three six track albums until today. The album called “34 days” was published in 2007 by the Lebanese label Incognito, followed by “black Tuesday” in 2008, and “Unholy Republic” in 2009, also published by Incognito. In May 2010, Jawad Nawfal released Munma’s 4th record, entitled Previews & Premises. The self-produced, self-released album consists of 8 tracks recorded between 2006 and 2010.
Discography:1.Yaqiin
2.Mind over matter
3.3cc
4.Qana
5.Munma
6.Judas
Black Tuesday [2007]
1.Pluie d’été
2.Finem respice
3.Ambidextre
4.Dark water
5.IRM
6.Open source
Unholy Republic [2008]
1.Aegri somnia
2.Time collapse
3.Engram
4.Broken chime
5.Deep down
6.Exodus
Premises & Previews [2010]
1.Soft Integration
2.The Alchemist
3.Notion Sickness
4.Ear Damage
5.Explorer
6.Attention Disorder
7.It Came from under the sea
8.Bits and Dust
Munma’s album are sold on our website. To grab a copy, check the Owl’s Merchandise section
Tanya Traboulsi
Tanya Traboulsi is an independent photographer who spent her childhood and youth between Lebanon and Austria. Tanya’s work includes reportage, documentary and music photography and has been widely published across the region. She is currently based in Beirut.
For more information visit her website at www.tanyatraboulsi.com
Here is a series of pictures by Tanya Traboulsi inspired by Court-Circuit’s music
OkyDoky
Faysal Bibi aka OkyDoky is a producer and performer of live electronic music. Known for catchy beats, eccentric sampling, and energetic performances, OkyDoky‘s music consists of live instrumentation, sampling, effects modulation, and vocoding using laptops, synthesizers, midi-controllers, and other audiogenetic toys. Mainly breaks-based, his style includes influences from 80s electro to drum ‘n bass and metal.
Hailing from a background in classical violin and rock and metal guitar, OkyDoky has been producing and performing electronic music since 2008. In 2009 he joined forces with fellow electronaut RadioKVM (Sary Moussa) to bring a new level of sonic mayhem upon the Lebanese music scene. OkyDoky & RadioKVM’s live shows have become known for their intensity, including VJ projections and appearances by local MCs. In 2010 the duo released Tasjeelat Mutafarriqa, an EP of individual and collaborative compositions recorded from their live shows.
OkyDoky has also composed and performed live music scores for theater productions that played in Liverpool (2009 Brouhaha Festival, Liverpool) and Brooklyn (2010 Arts in Bushwick BETA Spaces). He is also continually involved in collaborative and remix projects with groups and musicians from the US, France, and the Arab World.
You can check OkyDoky’s music on Soundcloud or follow him on Facebook
ella
Mirella Salameh a.k.a ella is a Lebanese daydreamer (b.1985).Her cognitive work includes painting and film, focusing on nature and time.
She is best known for putting together existential and environmental art in her paintings, and for her debut film “Novembre”, which she directed and art directed, winning the award of the best first short film in the Lebanese film festival-2010, and which toured in many international festivals.
With sound and music being an important factor in her inspiration, she often collaborates with musicians in her visuals, that being in motion or in illustrated still art.
Beirut Scum Society
You’ve probably noticed them laying back on some pavement in Hamra streets with a beer can in hand, those guys’ music was born from Beirut’s underground suburbs. Beirut Scum Society is a band that brought back Rock and Roll to life and promises to make you jump on punk like you never thought you would.
Genre: Rock n roll/ Punk
Members:
Khodor Ellaik (Vocals)
Karam Saad (Drums)
Ghassan Al Salman (Bass)
Karim Chams Eddine (Guitar)
Hometown:
Beirut – Lebanon
Current Location:
Beirut
You can listen to their track here!