Home Recordings 2018-2021
Lebanese puppeteer and musician Yara Asmarās stripped-down palette evokes memories of Jan Å vankmajer shorts and Brothers Quay animations that are also not a million miles from Icelandic band mĆŗm's brittle soundscapes or Susumu Yokota's sample-based atmospheres. Her use of her grandmother's old accordion woven into recordings of local church hymns, lullabies and waltzes elevates proceedings, offsetting traditional sounds into glassy, hypnotic ambience.Ā
Onā synth waltzes...' she creates a sound that buzzes with a fantastical quality that speaks to her work as a puppeteer. 'to die in the country' is shadowy and puzzling, slowed to a crawl and made from synth chimes, and her accordion makes its first appearance on 'objects lost in drawers', placing us in a liminal zone between the Black Forest and Beirut. As the track moves into its final third, Asmar drowns it in reverb, adding synthesised chorals that lift it to the heavens. She interrupts the flow mid-way through the record with a well-placed poem from Majd Chidiac, who almost raps over 'are these your hands...', clinging to words like "stick" and "handsā, puncturing Asmar's cloudy atmosphere.
On 'three clementines on the counter...', she shifts her phantom waltz into rubbery surrealism, moving through time cautiously. And with 'Jumana' she extends the courtesy to her accordion, drifting purposely from clattering folk sounds into murky ambience, decorated with evocative bells. It's an absorbing, moving fable.
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Lebanese puppeteer and musician Yara Asmarās stripped-down palette evokes memories of Jan Å vankmajer shorts and Brothers Quay animations that are also not a million miles from Icelandic band mĆŗm's brittle soundscapes or Susumu Yokota's sample-based atmospheres. Her use of her grandmother's old accordion woven into recordings of local church hymns, lullabies and waltzes elevates proceedings, offsetting traditional sounds into glassy, hypnotic ambience.Ā
Onā synth waltzes...' she creates a sound that buzzes with a fantastical quality that speaks to her work as a puppeteer. 'to die in the country' is shadowy and puzzling, slowed to a crawl and made from synth chimes, and her accordion makes its first appearance on 'objects lost in drawers', placing us in a liminal zone between the Black Forest and Beirut. As the track moves into its final third, Asmar drowns it in reverb, adding synthesised chorals that lift it to the heavens. She interrupts the flow mid-way through the record with a well-placed poem from Majd Chidiac, who almost raps over 'are these your hands...', clinging to words like "stick" and "handsā, puncturing Asmar's cloudy atmosphere.
On 'three clementines on the counter...', she shifts her phantom waltz into rubbery surrealism, moving through time cautiously. And with 'Jumana' she extends the courtesy to her accordion, drifting purposely from clattering folk sounds into murky ambience, decorated with evocative bells. It's an absorbing, moving fable.
