Snakeskin, by Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal

Snakeskin

by Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
140g black vinyl LP with download code.

Edition of 300 pressed at Mother Tongue. Ships in mid-November.

Mastered by Rashad Becker.

Design by Josette 'ZOoz' Khalil.

Includes unlimited streaming of Snakeskin via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$8 USD or more

1.	Still Life 03:15	buy track
2.	All The Birds 04:06	buy track
3.	Snakeskin 04:18	buy track
4.	Past Tense 03:39	buy track
5.	In Our Garden 03:45	buy track
6.	One By One 06:57	buy track
7.	Signs 02:40	buy track
8.	Roots 11:02	buy track

about

Beacon Sound and Ruptured announce the second installment in their Corrosion Series and their sixth collaboration overall: Snakeskin, a moody, evocative, and achingly beautiful album by Lebanese producer/musician/engineer Fadi Tabbal and singer-songwriter Julia Sabra from Beirut-based indie trio Postcards.

Shapeshifting above ambient and industrial undercurrents, Snakeskin utilizes tape loops, synthesizers, vocals, and drum machines, combining Julia’s pop-inspired melodies and choral roots (an echo from her religious upbringing) with Fadi’s affinity for minimalism and musique concrète. The album seamlessly incorporates the melancholy electro-pop of 'All The Birds', the quiet menace of 'In Our Garden' (long-lost treasures, ancient lies / another buried paradise), and the beat-driven 'Signs'. The title track sums up their frame of mind, beginning as a lullaby and evolving into a glittering tapestry of distortion and feedback.

The duo began working on Snakeskin in the aftermath of the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, which killed over 200 people, injured 7,000, and left around 300,000 people homeless. Indeed, Julia's home was destroyed by the explosion and her partner and bandmate Pascal badly injured. The first song that they wrote together in the following months was 'Roots', which closes out the album and was composed for the Ruptured-curated series The Drone Sessions in the fall of 2020.

As the artists write, Snakeskin is a product of "the disappearance of life as we know it, and with it the decay of nature and living creatures. There is no rebirth, no renewal. It’s about what it means to feel at home in such a place."

Some tracks were also inspired by events happening in the surrounding region, such as the invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan and the Palestinian uprising of May 2021 (Sheikh Jarrah) - both events shedding light on relationships to home and land across the wider region.

"The moon speaks in tongues we can't discern / A plastic dove hangs from a cypress branch / Haven't you heard? / Nothing grows here anymore / The air is burnt / Nothing grows..."

–––

"A dream pop colossus...the combination of Sabra’s pop-orientated vocal melodies cutting through Tabbal’s minimal yet brutalist musical architecture is both life-affirming and melancholy" - Norman Records

"Night glows while the streets vent an ambiance of decay. Concrete is a noose, a conductor of life’s disappearance. The end was written so long ago that, at this point, it feels like adaptation and survival are all that’s left. Snakeskin explores and expands on these buried emotions, casting imaginative, crumbling arrangements into the dead soil where purpose doesn’t grow but hangs on. Sabra and Tabbal shape melancholic synth patterns, feedback squalls, liminal vocals, and so much more into knife-edged pathways through the growing chaos. Written during the aftermath of the 2020 Beirut port explosion (that destroyed Julia’s home and injured her partner), Snakeskin is a beacon." – Foxy Digitalis

credits

released October 14, 2022

All music composed, performed and produced by Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal between November 2020 and December 2022. Lyrics by Julia Sabra. Drum samples by Pascal Semerdjian.

Recorded by Fadi Tabbal, mixed by Sary Moussa and Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut.

Cover photo by Lujain Jo. Design by Josette 'ZOoz' Khalil.

Mastered by Rashad Becker.

Thanks to Ziad Nawfal, Andrew Neerman, Sary Moussa, Anthony Sahyoun, Pascal Semerdjian, Rachel Tabet, Marwan Tohme.

This is the second volume in the Corrosion Series, a collaborative effort by Beacon Sound and Ruptured, and the sixth collaboration between our two labels.

rupturedthelabel.bandcamp.com/album/snakeskin

rupturedonline.com
beaconsound.com

BNSD069 / RPTD042

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Beacon Sound Portland, Oregon

Upholding the power of culture over the culture of power since 2011.

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