Snakeskin - We Live in Sand (2025)

It's been already some years since I posted about Julia Sabra, my favourite Lebanese artist who makes her name as a vocalist in Postcards but also as half of a music duo with Fadi Tabbal. The title of the album they debuted as a duo became the name of the project, but the music stays the same: more experimental than Postcards, but still fairytale-ishly ethereal.

The music here is different from your ordinary dream pop charmers' sounds. The glitchy, the uncomfortably noisy and a bit industrial meets the airy and wavy in the best way possible. It makes the skin crawl a little, but, before it gets too much to bear, it gets ironed over with some beautiful guitar sounds. Or flute. Or cute electronica. But at the same time, it's also very much minimalist: there doesn't have to be much to create the atmosphere and the duo proves it over and over again. The vocalizations in Olive Groves is joined by pipe organ-like sounds and not much more and that's just an example.

But everything here is glued together by Sabra's ethereal vocals. This is deceptive, however, as the beauty of the vocals is counterbalanced by the gravity of the lyrics, commenting on the situation in Lebanon loomed over by the never-ending Near East war. "It’s a stunning paradox — a song about birth, caught in the middle of destruction. Hope, fragile and flickering, seeps through the rubble. Snakeskin has always thrived in extremes, but here the contrast is sharpened to a knife’s edge". It's true, but it's also true that the third album from the duo is their darkest yet but seeing how the situation in the region develops, it may not be the darkest in general.

We Live in Sand costs 10 USD.

Check: Olive Groves

Country: Lebanon

Genre: experimental dream pop

Label: Ruptured / Beacon Sound

Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal - Snakeskin (2022)

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Postcards - Ripe (2025)

Ah, yes, after last week's Cats of Transnistria, there comes another common guest of this blog. I follow the Lebanese Postcards' career since their 2020's sophomore album and I'm never disappointed with what they cook in their artistic, lyrical minds. Last month they released their 5th album with the title suggesting that it is their final artistic form.

So what is this ripe fruit of their work? It is a melancholic and moody as ever, but I feel like the band shifted slightly their sound towards chamber rock (pop/singer-songwriter vocals and compositions accompanied by rock-like yet very moody guitars (Poison!) ) at the expense of the dreamy tones. Slight shift, there's still tons of the oneiric parts (like the beautiful ending of Wasteland Rose), but generally makes me think of how Lucy Kruger plays after Medicine Boy got disbanded. Nevertheless, the music is addressed to the sensitive audience just like it's been up to this point.

This thought is acknowledged by the band itself as the description of the album includes phrases like "[the band] transmute their rage into something transcendental" and "[the album] is as much a departure as it is a natural evolution for the band: rawer, darker, but with the same unflinching resolve". One has to also remember about the wherabouts of the artist's music: coming from Lebanon, it revolves around many hardships their land faces, which is reflected in the titles like Wasteland Rose, Ruins or Construction Site, in many places drawing comparison between the world in shambles and the reality of one's love life.

Ripe costs 10 USD.

Check: Wasteland Rose

Country: Lebanon

Genre: lyrical art rock

Label: Ruptured

Postcards - After the Fire, Before the End (2021)

Postcards - The Good Soldier (2020)

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Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal - Snakeskin (2022)

This blog knows Julia Sabra as the vocalist of the Lebanese dream pop outfit Postcards. But she makes music under her own name too. Recently she joined forces with her compatriot, electronic/ambient music creator, Fadi Tabbal, in order to create a unique record called Snakeskin.

In their music, the artists combine Sabra's ultimately dreamy vocals and Tabbal's experimental electronica into non-obvious compositions. Already the first song here, Still Life, surprises the audience with crunchy samples that are everything but soothing to ears but yet, sounding very well together with Sabra's angelic voice. Later, the compositions get much more flow with the industrial flavours planted all around them. But really, this album is very difficult to attempt any kind of labeling with neoclassical ambient pieces like Past Tense, the unnervingly dark In Our Garden or the hazy dream of One by One. Practically speaking, each song is a different story with different vibes and emotions. And everything makes one whole glued together by the vocals and the melancholic aftertaste.

Snakeskin costs 8 USD.

Postcards - After the Fire, Before the End (2021)

Postcards - The Good Soldier (2020)

Check: One by One

Country: Lebanon

Genre: dreamy experimental pop

Label: Ruptured Records/Beacon Sound

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Postcards - After the Fire, Before the End (2021)

Last year, the Lebanese band Postcards' album The Good Soldier was one of my biggest discoveries and best dream pop works of 2021 in general. That said, they are together as a music group for almost a decade now. This year they are back with another airy album called After the Fire, Before the End.

Their music is built on the way Julia Sabra's extremely dreamy and accordingly dispersed vocals contrast with very rock-like guitar's crisp sound. Starting from the beautiful Mother Toungue, the album shows mostly compositions characterized by the slowcore pace and ballad-like, poignant atmosphere. The guitars are the only noisier elements and they really do sound inspired by some kind of grunge or americana rock, there's a certain dusty vibe of the Western audible here, perhaps not so much as in the new Holy Motors' music, but it's there. The only song that suddenly bursts out with faster pace and rock'n'roll-like energy is Bruises. But when you start to dance, it's already over and you are sinking in Flowers in Your Hair's ballad quicksand again. 

And this dreamy atmosphere covers a lot gloomier lyrics. The band's background certainly leaves a big mark on Sabra's lyrics that include tons of allusions to violence, war and the Beirut's explosion from the last year's summer (in the poignant Red) as well as to the fate of women in the Middle East. The whole album, both music- and lyrics-wise, culminates in If I Die, a song filled with the feeling of utter hopelessness that at the same time borders with the up-lifting conclusion; it's the "there's nothing left so we can start again" kind of feeling. 

After the Fire, Before the End costs 10 USD.

Postcards - The Good Soldier (2020)

Check: If I Die

Country: Lebanon

Genre: dreamy slowcore

Label: T3 Records

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Fadi Tabbal - Subject to Potential Errors and Distortions (2020) EN

I gotta say that the Ruptured Records label opened my eyes to the Middle East music experiments. It's such a fantastic feeling to listen to a good ambient work coming from some less obvious directions. And this is exactly what's going on with Fadi Tabbal, A Lebanese artist, and his new album..

As expected, there's some Middle East-sounding inspirations on the album, at least to my unprofessional ears, but what really rules the release are beautiful, long soundscapes equipped with some ethereal vibes either in the form of airy backing vocals (as in The New and Improved Guide to Birdwatching, Vol. 1 or the super exciting second part of the track) or simply the inspired, subtle noise. In some places, the music is fantastically euphoric in this ambient, nostalgic way. I don't like some atonal, experimental fragments like the finish in The Sidewalk at Night but I'd say it's a matter of taste. The whole album, really solid.

Subject to Potential Errors and Distortions costs 8 USD. 

Check: The New and Improved Guide to Birdwatching, Vol. 2

Country: Lebanon

Genre: experimental soundscape

Label: Ruptured Records

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Postcards - The Good Soldier (2020) EN

The only thing I like more than discovering new artists who play awesome music is to discover new artists who play awesome music and come from exotic places. This is where Postcards from Lebanon fit perfectly. They create dream pop of the highest quality and have just released their second album called The Good Soldier.

After a well-received debut two years ago they go further with the new album that is "a hauntingly beautiful work that’s welcoming and chilling in equal measure". It's a collection of quite short, extremely airy compositions that may or may not include some aggressively raw guitars as well. On the other hand, Julia Sabra's vocals don't leave any room for doubts - it's dream pop, ethereal masterpiece, cosmic bless. And it only somehow happened that  it's also influenced by slowcore, post-punk or surf rock.

Some of the tracks are dense, airy-sauce-drowning dream pop bangers, some others seem more like twee pop songs in minimalist arrangements (as the title track The Good Soldier). But the best sounding is probably Last Resort in which great role is played by impressive pipe organs-like sounds.

The Good Soldier costs 10 USD.

Check: Last Resort

Country: Lebanon

genre: guitar dream pop

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