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Charbel Haber is Lebanese musician, performer, visual artist, and composer from Beirut. His work has seen him collaborate with artists from a wide range of disciplines -- film, video art, visual art, theater, dance -- both in Lebanon and abroad. As a solo artist and as a member of post-punk band Scrambled Eggs, he has composed music for directors Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas, Ghassan Salhab, Mohamad Malas, video artists Lamia Joreige and Akram Zaatari, Maqamat dance company and playwrights Rabih Mroueh and Lina Saneh, to name but a few. His prolific and collaborative career includes free improv group Johnny Kafta Anti-Vegetarian Orchestra, psychedelic Arabic music ensembles Malayeen and Orchestra Omar, cold wave band The Bunny Tylers and minimal ambient duo Good Luck In Death. He is the founder of Those Kids Must Choke and co-founder of Johnny Kafta's Kids Menu -- two experimental record labels -- and he has recorded and collaborated with notable artists from the fields of free rock and improv such as Oiseaux-Tempête, Radwan Moumneh, Tarek Atoui, Jean Francois Pauvros, The Ex, Michael Zerang, Mats Gustafson, Eddie Prevost, Xavier Charles, and Tony Buck.
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Book
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OP 069BK
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Charbel Haber's A Common Misunderstanding of the Speed of Light is a multi-media musing on the chronic and the chronological, the subversive nature of time. This combination of an album and book observes the slow passing of life and the illusion of retrogradation in his every day. Simply by documenting -- via image, text and tune -- Haber assigns value to everything that is cast in amber by this project. There's an acceptance and appreciation of the destitution he witnesses, it is an homage given in overlapping forms. ACMOTSOL has two parts. The book, hardcover in an embossed orange, features photographs and texts taken from Haber's personal digital diary spanning from 2020 to the start of 2022. Broken into six chapters -- named for the six tracks on the album -- the entries are an artist's log of sorts during a peculiar period of global hyper stagnation and navigating the aftermath of the Beirut explosions. The 96 pages highlight Haber's interest in decay, negative space, and the temporality of the human condition. At the center of the book is a sudden burst of orange pages, with stylized pluckings of the text framing a QR code that grants access to the album. With the brilliant orange covers and matching innards, pregnant with the music at the core, it's almost as if these central pages act as a way to turn the book inside out. ACMOTSO's second half is that mirrored album. The music could be a continuation of his solo albums Of Palm Trees and Decompositions (CREP 026LP, 2016) and It Ended Up Being a Good Day Mr. Allende (2012), an exploration into the expansiveness of seemingly simple loops of a lilting guitar. Careful electronic effects add dimensions or reground the listener. There's a swelling of sound, the illusion of the push of space before it retracts back into itself or fades into the distance. Much like the images and texts the music complements, the songs challenge the purity of cycles. In music, in words and in visual storytelling. ACMOTSOL is a work that can be calming or disorienting, depending on what is requested of it. Similar to the way loops and cycles can signify both meditation and mania. The tendrils of Haber's past -- his home of Beirut, fictional and real characters encountered, authors read, films watched, composers listened, walks taken -- knit themselves together for a presentation of the immediate present. Album mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. Design by Maziyar Pahlevan. Printed by Albe De Coker in Belgium. 96 pages; hardcover.
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Cassette
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SUC 005CS
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Charbel Haber's Songs Of Love, Songs Of Decay is a mixtape of (sort of) songs, ranging from 1998 to 2016, with various projects, solo or not, including Scrambled Eggs, The Bunny Tylers (Charbel's bands), or guest appearances like in Oiseaux-Tempête. The tracks give offer an aperçu of Charbel's approach to composition over the years, a sampler of sorts, effortlessly switching from '90s alternative rock to electronic prepared guitar experiments, whilst always keeping his Middle Eastern background in check. 60 minutes to get lost in. RIYL: Lebanese music, Omar Khorshid, '90s rock.
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LP
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CREP 026LP
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Co-founder and member of longstanding Lebanese post-rock group, Scrambled Eggs, Charbel Haber's work encompasses a wide range of disciplines and styles such as film, video art and theatre, both as a solo artist and as a member of Scrambled Eggs, Malayeen and Johnny Kafta Anti Vegetarian Orchestra. As a solo artist, Haber has collaborated with various visual artists and composed music for a variety of film and theatre performances, both in and outside his native Lebanon. With Of Palm Trees And Decomposition, Haber presents his first solo album since his month long residency at renowned EMS in Stocklom, Sweden. The result is a unique blend of Haber's trademark guitar melodies filtered through an infinite array of modules and synths to present another perfect example of non-western experimental music.
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