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LP
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RPTD 076LP
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On her second album, Sawt El Doumouh ("The Sound of Tears"), Beirut-based Sandy Chamoun summons flickers of light from sadness. Influences from the Arabic tradition of Tarab -- one of the first styles Chamoun learnt to sing -- and polyphonic Cantu are reinterpreted and reimagined through her voice and electronics, synths from her SANAM and Ghadr bandmate Anthony Sayhoun, and live percussion from Ali Hout. Sawt El Doumouh is a gorgeous refusal to be silent. It opens with a booming drum. Over keening autotune Chamoun's pure voice cuts through, burying the despair to illuminate rays of hope. On "Ward W Shok" a shuffling swing gives way to a righteous organ interlude. The title track sees a choir of Chamoun's vocals lull and lap. Drums arrive and indignation stirs, what's mournful begins to stride. Chamoun's tracks are as beautiful as they are defiant. Why write songs in the face of horror? Perhaps because music can hold onto something better. By turning to song, Chamoun catches the hopeful glints and sparks that persist and strive outside the terror. In SANAM and Ghadr she often borrows lyrics from Arabic writers through the centuries, listening to what their words say in the present while reminding us the world can and has been different to how it is now. Solo she writes her own words, and the way her songs alternately soar and sigh evokes hopeful pluralities and suggestions of other, kinder realities. Even hearing someone cry is a connection to humanity. It's a possibility conveyed in the album's most jubilant moments. "Shahed" is an incandescent dance of percussion and levitating synths. Although it comes from darkness, in Chamoun's music listeners can hear faith in something beyond it.
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