Charbel Haber, Nicolás Jaar and Sary Moussa - Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day (Ruptured)

The Slow Music Movement
2 days ago
2 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's July 27th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

The album cover for Charbel Haber, Nicolás Jaar and Sary Moussa's 2025 album. It shows a sunset over the ocean with a cruise ship in the background, layered with a red background. Text reads "Haber," "Jaar," "Moussa" in red. Calm and serene scene.

This is a heavy album, but what would you expect from a recording utilising Tunefork Studios in Beirut as a conduit to remotely unite these artists during the Israeli aggression/response (delete as applicable), as the country was under attack?

Charbel Haber is a Lebanese musician, performer, visual artist and composer from Beirut. Nicolás Jaar will be familiar to many, but for those that don’t know he’s a top drawer American-Chilean artist and label boss, who unusually has become more popular as his music has become more uncompromising. Last but not least, Sary Moussa is a versatile electronic musician who has been active in the Beirut underground scene since 2008 and who has released on Jaar’s Other People label.

On August 2nd, 2024 the artists connected remotely and started playing: Haber on guitar, Jaar on bass clarinet with Moussa handling live signal processing. These core sounds were the building blocks with which Moussa built this often uneasy recording by manipulating the live audio feeds, the aim being to create a sonic document of “attention under pressure”, and surely pressure doesn’t get any more intense than being in a city under attack, and not knowing if a bomb is about to turn the studio, and possibly your lights out at any moment.

Consisting of four long-form tracks, the LP gets off to a surprisingly sedate start with the minimal, delicate electroacoustic sounds of “Part 1”, which are mellow enough to have made it on to my admittedly esoteric Slow Ambient Playlist, but unsurprisingly the calm doesn’t last long. “Part 2” is a vaguely orchestral piece that suddenly erupts half way through, burying its initial grace under guitar and electronic distortion and electronic cries for help, before dissolving into an ambient vat.

“Part 3” eases into existence but it’s not long before the light fades and electronic creatures emerge from the shadows to accentuate the unease before Jaar pierces the gloom with some angular free jazz clarinet that distracts from the situation, but does nothing to lift the mood. The final part starts off optimistically enough with minimal guitar repetition providing some welcome calm until Jaar’s stormy wind contribution starts to flood through the undersea cables, portending that the distorted electronics will be arriving again soon to strike militants, elected officials and innocent family and bystanders alike.