The Attic, Leeds 30th November 2025
An amazing hour and a bit from this Lebanese six piece band. As Sandy Chamoun, the striking singer, tells us, this is only their first UK gig. Let’s hope the rest of the audiences are as ecstatic as Leeds was tonight. There was a small contingent of Lebanese women nattering in the corner but everyone else was super excited and rocking to and fro. When we got to the encore Sandy quipped to the side: “Guys we need to do one track without your voiceover”.
This was krautrock that wasn’t krautrock. This was extended hanging drone followed by intense rhythm, Pascal Semerdjian’s drums shifting between jazzy patterns and motorik intensity. Loud and up front in the mix was the buzuq (like an oud). Creating the Middle Eastern sound atop the churning avant-rock sound, Farah Kaddour’s buzuq was essential. Add to that the voice, keening sadly and intently like the Spanish Saeta. Sandy Chamoun held the tension within, bursting into head swinging action when moved, adding percussive gasps and yelps to the beat and alongside moving vocal melody lines.
Lyrics expressed a timeless connection for modern feelings of dislocation, whether written by Chamoun or drawing on folk or even drawing on Omar El Khayam’s ever-popular poems. Chamoun has previously explained: “When you read something from Omar, you feel a connection to now. The feeling that there’s not a clear path.”
The evening began slowly with those remarkable vocals in front of quiet, pensive sounds in suspense then the drum and the bass gave big heavy blows and a groove began. The pattern was set for the evening – long slow sad vocals interspersed with the sort of beats that go with jamming prog rock. The singer swayed and shook, possessed by the feeling and the audience gazed raptly as it moved along with them. Add into the mix a modular synthesizer and you have a mix of old and new, of East and West, of jazz and rock, of sadness and fury. At one point the guitarist/ sound manipulator, Anthony Sahyoun, even twiddled auto-tune on for the singer in ‘Habibon’ and an hour passed in a flash leaving me am strangely sated yet happy for a 10 minute encore.
I have no idea what the songs are about and Sandy suggests we buy the album to get the lyric translations from Arabic. I’ve heard the album (on arbiters of fascination, Constellation Records) and it’s good but this evening is ten times better. The live expression of this band is remarkable and seeing the members in action is remarkable too.
