Ruptured

02/07/2025

What does it mean to reclaim a space—not through possession, but through presence?

Once a monument to halted utopias, the unfinished dome in Tripoli, Lebanon stood silent for decades. Since 2010, Firas El Hallak has returned to it again and again, listening for what lingers.
By 2023, that solitary inquiry had become collective: eleven recording sessions captured by Tunefork Studios, bringing together experimental and traditional musicians working across Lebanon’s sound worlds.

Today, three new tracks from The Dome Sessions are streaming on Bandcamp:

Session 1 — Sandy Chamoun, Abed Kobeissy & Pascal Semerdjian reinterpret “Once I Entered a Garden” (originally composed by Medhat Assem for Asmahan)

Session 4 — Ghassan Sahhab on qanun

Session 5 — Wassim Tanios on duduk, acoustic guitar, and e-bow

Also featured on the album: Julia Sabra, Anthony Sahyoun, Farah Kaddour, Marc Ernest, Abdo Sawma, Anthony Tawil, Makram Aboul Hosn, Charbel Haber, Fadi Tabbal, Marwan Tohme, and the Fayha Choir.

With artwork by Cynthia-ël Hasbani , photographs by Gabriel Ferneini , and liner text by Wassila Abboud, The Dome Sessions is as much a political gesture as it is an artistic one.
This is not nostalgia—it’s a living archive.

Releasing July 18 via Ruptured as a gatefold 2LP (200 copies only) and digital album.

Pre-orders open now on Bandcamp. Link in bio.

.kad .sahhab

27/06/2025

Out today on Ruptured: Ghazel, a duo album by Farah Kaddour .kad and Marwan Tohme .

Composed of seven pieces recorded between Tunefork Studios in Beirut and the Lebanese mountains, Ghazel brings together buzuq, guitar, electronics, and voice in a stripped-back setting.

The album reflects both artists’ interest in traditional Arabic forms, as well as texture, repetition, and improvisation.

All instruments on the album were performed by Farah and Marwan, with Farah also contributing vocals.
The album was mixed by Marwan at Tunefork, with additional mixing and production from Fadi Tabbal and Anthony Sahyoun .
Mastering by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering in Montreal.

The release features artwork by Lina Khalid .khalidsr, and design by Maya Chami .chami. We are grateful to them both, and to Karl Mattar as well, for writing the album’s terrific one-sheet.

Now available on all digital platforms.
50-copy limited cassette edition via Bandcamp, of which only a handful is left, so hurry, hurry.

Link in bio.

20/06/2025

Ruptured announces
“Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day”
A new album by Charbel Haber , Nicolás Jaar , and Sary Moussa , out July 11, 2025 on cassette and digital.

The album was recorded on August 2, 2024 at Tunefork Studios in Beirut, during the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

In the midst of media saturation and ongoing bombardment, the three musicians gathered for a live session—one day, no overdubs—to create a sonic document shaped by the conditions of its making.
Moussa processed Haber and Jaar’s signals in real time, creating shifting layers of texture and tension from within the moment.

Charbel Haber (electric guitar, electronics) is a founding figure in Lebanon’s experimental and underground scenes.
Nicolás Jaar (bass clarinet, electronics) is known internationally for his conceptual and genre-defying approach to electronic and ambient music.
Sary Moussa (live processing) has long explored memory, regional sound, and abstraction through electronic composition and real-time sound design.

Mixed by Fadi Tabbal and Sary Moussa at Tunefork Studios.
Photography and text by Charbel Haber.
Design by Carla Aouad .

RPTD066
Limited edition of 150 cassettes + digital.
Track 1 streams today. Full release on July 11.
Preorder at link in bio.

20/06/2025

Ruptured announces Ghazel, a new release by Farah Kaddour .kad and Marwan Tohme — two musicians whose work in projects like SANAM, TILT, and Postcards has shaped Lebanon’s experimental and underground scenes in recent years.

This duo project began with an improvised acoustic set at Dar Onboz’s Ahel el Dar series in Beirut in 2022.

Recorded between Tunefork Studios and Tohme’s home in the Lebanese mountains, Ghazel consists of seven pieces for buzuq, guitar, and electronics — composed and performed by the artists themselves, with vocals by Kaddour.

The album was mixed by Tohme at Tunefork, with additional mixing and production by Fadi Tabbal and Anthony Sahyoun , and mastered by Harris Newman at in Montreal.

Today, we’re sharing the opening track, “Kayfa Taltaqi el-Qulub” (“How Hearts Meet”), alongside a video by Romy Matar — excerpt in carousel, full version on Ruptured’s YouTube.

Visual identity for the release comes courtesy of Lina Khalid (artwork) and Maya Chami .chami (design).

Ghazel releases in full on June 27.
Limited edition of 50 cassettes available now via Bandcamp.
music_

12/06/2025

Ruptured & In-Resonance present The Dome Sessions, a double LP and digital album recorded live inside Oscar Niemeyer’s iconic dome in Tripoli, Lebanon.

Designed in 1962, the unfinished structure remains one of the region’s most striking monuments to modernist ambition—and interrupted histories.

In 2010, artist and curator Firas El Hallak began a series of sonic experiments within the dome, listening for what history left behind.

By April 2023, the project had grown into a collective recording process, engineered on-site by Tunefork Studios and shaped by the dome’s radical acoustics. The resulting work dissolves boundaries between sound, space, and cultural memory.

Featuring: Sandy Chamoun , Anthony Sahyoun , Farah Kaddour .kad, Abed Kobeissy , Julia Sabra , Pascal Semerdjian , Marwan Tohme , Makram Aboul Hosn , Marc Ernest, Abdo Sawma, Anthony Tawil , Ghassan Sahhab .sahhab, Wassim Tanios , Charbel Haber , and Fadi Tabbal .

Created and produced by Firas El Hallak, co-produced by Anthony Tawil. Mixed at Tunefork by Anthony Sahyoun and Fadi Tabbal (except for Marc Ernest’s session, mixed by Hadi Deaibess ). Mastered by Cedrik Fermont at Syrphe (Berlin).

Out July 18 on Ruptured in a limited gatefold 2LP edition (200 copies) and digitally. Pre-orders open now via Bandcamp.

05/06/2025

For two nights, members of Lebanese sextet SANAM and a lineup of collaborators will take the stage at Montreal's Hotel2Tango for a series of solo and duo performances. While the band itself won’t be performing, these sets will highlight the individual artistry of its members alongside special guests, exploring free-rock, post-folk, and experimental sounds in an intimate setting. Hotel2Tango – 110 Van Horne, Montreal QC…...

For two nights, members of Lebanese sextet SANAM and a lineup of collaborators will take the stage at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango for a series of solo and duo performances. While the band itself w…

23/05/2025

Today marks the global release of the vinyl version of Natural History Museum, the first solo album by Julia Sabra.

To accompany it, we’re sharing a new live video of Julia performing “Skyscape” in Byblos, Lebanon — a spare, atmospheric rendition that captures the album’s quiet intensity.
Watch it on Ruptured’s YouTube channel.

Originally released as a limited cassette in November 2024, the album is now available worldwide on 10” vinyl via Cargo UK & Bandcamp. Designed by the ubiquitous Josette Khalil. Retail links and other goodies can be found at the linktree in bio.

Recorded live to tape in Beirut and Dhour Shweir, these are unadorned, deeply personal songs — presented exactly as they were first written.

Releasing independent music from Lebanon is an act of persistence. At a time when the region is being torn apart by military violence and geopolitical cruelty, every record pressed, every song shared, is a refusal to be silenced.

Thanks for listening — and for standing with artists working under impossible conditions.

21/05/2025

It’s time, innit.
Ziad Nawfal’s monthly broadcast for the almighty Radio AlHara in Bethlehem, Palestine—this Wednesday, May 21 at 3 PM Montreal / 10 PM Bethlehem & Beirut.

Tune in at radioalhara.net.

TRACK LISTING
1. Azu Tiwaline: Long Hypnosis .tiwaline
2. Deena Abdelwahed: Complain
3. Use Knife: Coupe d’état (Muqata’a مقاطعة Remix)
4. Nour Sokhon: The destruction and the rebuilding
5. Ralph Chbeir: Olive Trees
6. Kid Fourteen: Learning How to Die
7. SANAM: Mouathibatti (Live at Cafe Oto) .music_
8. Nadah El Shazly: Mausoleum
9. Julia Sabra: Minor Detail
10. Fatima Al Qadiri: Medieval Femme
11. Los Panteros: Ya Tayren Tayer يا طيرٍ طاير
12. Yara Asmar: cold feet and hot air balloons .blues

06/05/2025

NOUR SOKHON is the guest of Ziad Nawfal’s May broadcast for Stegi Radio this TUESDAY 06 MAY.

3pm Montréal / 10pm Athens + Beirut on Stegi Radio.

Nour Sokhon is a Lebanese artist based in Berlin, whose work explores diverse methods of artistic research, including interviews, field recordings, and site-specific interventions.

About her mix:
“Qulubuna is named after a track I composed for the Zilzal: Sonic Ceremony compilation. Qulubuna means “our hearts” in Arabic, and it reflects the whirlwind of emotions I’ve been experiencing over the past year and a half, watching the violence escalate—and continue to escalate—from afar. Through sound, I try to process the grief, helplessness, and longing that come with bearing witness from a distance.”

TRACK LISTING:

1. Q كيو - Scattered Memory of Syria
2. Nour Sokhon - Your Silence is Loud
3. Flugen - Piramatozo .music
4. Nour Sokhon with Ensemble Modern (Jaan Bossier, Rumi Ogawa, Jagdish Mistry, Megumi Kasakawa, Nathan Watts, Alexander Kolb) - VoyagingThroughSilentRumbles (live performance excerpt)
5. Asifeh - Asafeer /عصافير
6. Sara Persico - Voices Organ
7. Viki Steiri - I Want You Too in My Private Dream
8. Makoto Sakamoto - Trust
9. Field recording - Beirut drone
10. Field recording - Underwater hydrophone recording
11. Sara Persico - Domescape
12. Saba Alizadeh - Temple of Hope
13. Elyse Tabet - 4 A.M.
14. Nour Sokhon & Stefan Christoff - Cascading effects
15. Flugen - Twenty Nine .music
16. Nour Sokhon - Qulubuna
17. Saba Alizadeh - Plain of the free

Portrait of Nour by Jerzy Goliszewski .goliszewski

Following the broadcast, the mix will be archived on Stegi Radio: https://stegi.radio/

05/05/2025

Acclaim for Ripe, the latest album by Lebanese shoegaze trio Postcards, released by Ruptured in April 2025: "On a foundation of what many would consider shoegaze and dream-pop, while the band has moved sonically with each release, the Postcards remit has been held together by the emotive storytelling of Sabra, and on Ripe it reaches a crescendo. Fraught with tension and the chaos that overshadows everyday life in Lebanon, Postcards frame it through song; and while you can certainly draw a line to this in previous works, on Ripe the band are at their all-encompassing best, reaching new levels." – …...

Acclaim for Ripe, the latest album by Lebanese shoegaze trio Postcards, released by Ruptured in April 2025: “On a foundation of what many would consider shoegaze and dream-pop, while the band…

30/04/2025

In March 2023, Mayssa Jallad released Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels, a deeply personal album rooted in Beirut’s wartime history. Today, that record is reborn in an entirely new light: Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels (Versions), reimagined by enigmatic Swedish producer Civilistjävel!.

Through a stripped-down, dub-informed lens, Civilistjävel! reconstructs Mayssa’s vocals and Fadi Tabbal’s original compositions into something liminal and spectral—less a remix, more a haunting parallel. The voice becomes a compass in a fog of echo and tone, reframing songs of war and memory in a shifting Northern European soundscape.

What began with a single remote collaboration between Boston and Uppsala soon grew into a full suite of versions—recorded live to two-track tape, improvised and intuitive. The result is a ghostly echo of the original album, steeped in emotion yet radically altered.

Marjaa (Versions) is out June 6 on vinyl and digital via Six of Swords and Ruptured. 450 copies on black vinyl, 150 on milky clear (Boomkat exclusive).

Minimal setup, maximum atmosphere. A fractured reflection of war, history, and voice.

30/04/2025

Back in November, Natural History Museum—Julia Sabra’s first solo album—was released quietly into the world as a limited-edition cassette via Ruptured. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that it’s now available as a 10” vinyl.

This small record holds a very intimate body of work: songs written between 2020 and 2024 in Beirut, recorded live to tape with no overdubs and minimal effects, in both a studio and a summer church in Dhour Shweir, Lebanon. Fragile, raw, and luminous—these tracks are perhaps Julia’s most personal yet.

To mark this new chapter, we’re also releasing a live performance video of Julia performing White Walls in Byblos, Lebanon. The video captures the atmosphere of the album in an entirely new way—stripped back and hauntingly immediate.

Natural History Museum is now available on vinyl, cassette, and digital via Bandcamp. The video is up now—find it through our linktree.

Thank you for listening and for holding space for these songs.