Eternal Life No End

Description

Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart) and Oberland (Oiseaux-Tempête) bring a long history of collaborations to fruition on this first studio album as a duo: a striking synthesis of their respective and shared sensibilities. Blending vibrant electronic sounds with acoustic instruments such as the bouzouk, rababa, clarineau, and saxophone, punctuated by Moumneh's Arabic vocals, the album is forged in indignation and lamentation in the face of our current supremacist and genocidal political reality. Between the sensorial and the repressed, the debut album by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Frédéric D. Oberland invokes a poetic musical proclamation of a transfigured reality and social amnesia. These seven tracks are the fruit of a two-year collaboration, born from a series of duos initiated by Moumneh at Montreal's Hotel2Tango studio during the summer of 2023. The Arabic title of Eternal Life No End literally translates to "A dark and cursed night, like the searchers themselves." The album is a cry of revolt against the ocean of injustice submerging the WANA region, haunting the lives and imaginations of vast populations. Like Dante and Virgil in Dante's Inferno, Oberland and Moumneh's compositions paint an emotional whirlwind, where dreams mingle with hypnotic percussions and captivating melodies, channeling collective urgencies that reverberate through Radwan's voice and Arabic lyrics. Oberland's saxophone and clarinet passages evoke shamanic exhortations against evil, while Moumneh's bouzouk, often electronically processed, resonates and amplifies in a poignant mourning for the unfolding tragedies. A rich and varied instrumentation fills out the soundscapes: daf, bongos, modified electric rababa, vibrant bass, and other synthetic sounds created by Oberland's Buchla and Deckard's Dream synthesizers. "It's a kind of healing process," Oberland confides about this album. "Since the beginning of the genocide, I was completely blocked artistically, unable to put into words what people are experiencing," explains Moumneh, who eventually packed his bags and flew to Paris in the summer of 2024 to work seriously on the album with his long-time friend. The two men had already collaborated several times, notably with Oberland's main band, Oiseaux-Tempête, and through Moumneh's work as Jerusalem In My Heart, as well as a producer
sound engineer on various other projects. Eternal Life No End builds on their unwavering collaboration, with Oberland and Moumneh exploring new energies and emotions, fusing their sensibilities, and revealing deeper resonances. "We worked day and night together and made clear decisions collectively," says Oberland, who also ensured that Moumneh's voice shines through in these compositions – it