Today, the Beirut-based free-rock post-folk sextet SANAM releases their debut album, 'Aykathani Malakon صنم - أيقظني ملاكٌ'. The album is mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem in My Heart), who was one of the guest curators for Le Guess Who? 2017, and mastered by Heba Kadry, who is one of the guest curators for Le Guess Who? 2023.
SANAM's music is akin to a ritual, somewhere between a marriage and an exorcism. The six Lebanese musicians blend traditional Egyptian songs and Arabic poetry with improvised rock, free jazz, and noise.
The group came to be as part of a performance of another notable experimenter, Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler, at Irtijal, the oldest music festival in Beirut. The musicians had planned to reiterate their fortuitous experience with Irmler but when this plan fell through, they decided to go on a recording residency together instead in a traditional house in the village of Saqi Reshmaya, Lebanon.
SANAM perform at Le Guess Who? 2023 on Thursday, 9 November. Also performing at the festival are a.o. Kamilya Jubran, Le Cri du Caire, Amina Alaoui, and many more.
Photography by Gabriel Ferneine
