Obay Alsharani is a Syrian artist now based in Sweden who works with both sound and image. His debut album Sandbox is released on Hive Mind Records on 19th February 2021

Music, images and tales from isolation.
From Beirut to the rest of the world [and/or vice versa].

Musiques, images et autres. Histoire de s'isoler.
De Beyrouth vers le reste du monde [et/ou vice versa]

موسيقى وصور وحكايات من العزلة‎
من بيروت الى العالم و\أو العكس صحيح

Beirut and Beyond International Music Festival showcases the region's best independent music.

Across decades, Porest (aka Mark Gergis) has issued a trail of confounding agitprop sound art, post-globalized hate-pop, diabolical radio dramas and carefully rearranged realities. Porest’s blatant embezzlement of human syntax and cultural misunderstanding broadcasts vital mixed messages across all fields. Live performances integrate Porest’s music, performance and sound into a grand total sum that can’t be unseen. Ongoing collaborations have included: Negativland (USA) Alan Bishop / Sun City Girls (USA), and Aavikko (Finland), among others.

 Porest’s Modern Journal of Popular Savagery LP was released by Nashazphone (Cairo) in 2016, followed by an appearance at TUSK festival (UK) and a European tour. In 2017, Porest’s Optimized! – The Parallel Broadcasts was issued as a split LP alongside London’s People Like Us on the Discrepant label (UK), followed by performances in Cairo, and at the Beirut and Beyond festival in Lebanon (curated by Egypt’s Maurice Louca). 2017’s album Flimsy Tomb was released by Sucata Tapes (UK) on cassette, celebrated with a performance at Café OTO, London. Past releases can be found on the Seeland, Resipiscent and Abduction labels. 

 London-based Mark Gergis was born in California, where he begat the Porest project. Mark was co-founder of the long-running experimental Bay Area music and performance collective Mono Pause, as well as its offshoot Neung Phak; performing inspired renditions of southeast Asian folk and pop music. Since 2003, with the Sublime Frequencies label, and more recently, with his own record label Sham Palace, Mark has shared decades of research and scores of archived international music, film footage and sound recordings acquired during extensive travels in the Middle East and South East Asia. 

•

I have no fuckin' idea how to describe this monster...how about brazen, sample-driven, manic, pissed-off, over-the-top, brilliant?  – BLASTITUDE

Porest creates subversively comedic and extremely leftist audio collages on as current and confrontational a tip as creatively possible. …Venomous…uninhibitedly outspoken sound-bite masterpieces. Porest lodges a well-aimed spit-wad into the eye of capitalist America. You can’t argue with the truth.  – Kevin Hainey, EXCLAIM!

All I know is the way Mark Gergis cuts and pastes signifiers of our global predicament into songs that are funny, baffling, catchy, reverent, subversive, absurd, and logical is a knack that has a few parallels (Negativland, Eugene Chadbourne, Gergis’ brethren Sun City GIrls) but no real peers. …The Porest POV is so intact it’s blinding – and I’ll be staring at this sun for a while.  – Marc Masters, 200 WORDS

novel sounds est. 1998
run by @geochen

new for the decade: driftloss @distinctmirrormusic @theacharis @bodydoubleusa @myheartaninvertedflame

معازف | مجلة الموسيقى الأولى والأخيرة من نوعها في العالم

www.enhancement.center
~
Spiritczualic Enhancement Center is a a serendipitous-jazz-cult achieving states of spectral-iamming. A trance-jazz ensemble with a psychedelic-punk methodology. As the self-appointed con-artists of the ''Jazz Circus", they have gathered outernational troupes of exploratory instrumentalists from all over the Fourth World.

Spiritczualic (hard ''tch'') - an esoteric melange of ritualism and spiritism.
As an outernational movement, it functions as an eclectic traveling nexus -- collecting dozens of participants from a multitude of origins to explore alchemical realms of sonic ritualism. 

Witnesses of its gatherings have indeed reported moments of divination - and possibly sorcery. This raises the question, will the audience once again behold the allurement of Higher Sources - or rather testify to trickery.

> contact:  enhancementorchestra@gmail.com

PAST CONCERTS:

2022

09.06.22  Schlosspark, Buckow
10.06.22  Musik für Pflanzen, Dresden
11.06.22  Melt! Festival, Ferropolis
22.06.22  Tour Vagabonde, Fribourg
23.06.22  Ablette at Les Menteurs, Fribourg
24.06.22  Canal 54, Geneva
02.07.22  Enhancement Land, Roya
08.07.22  Kraftfeld, Winterthur
09.07.22  Gurzelen Sommerfest, Biel/Bienne
13.07.22  Punctum, Prague
17.07.22  Cosmic Gathering, Chemnitz
06.08.22  Tragin Festival, Kärnten
11.08.22  Import Export, Munich
12.08.22  Openair am Bielersee
14.08.22  Salon Magika, Vienna  
15.08.22  Jalla Jalla, Ljubljana
16.08.22  Ssssounded at Krater, Ljubljana
17.08.22  Pou at St. Martin, Buje
18.08.22  Radio Roža at Kamov, Riyeka

2021

09.09.21 - Aeden, Berlin
05.08.21 - Aeden, Berlin
04.08.21 - Hansemat, Hamburg
30.06.21 - Patrick of Cagnourine, Tende
03.07.21 - Erika of Lamentargue, Tende
07.07.21 - Tannery TBD, Barjols
11.07.21 - Jardin Rocambole, La Brigue

2020 -

01.02.20 - Hamburg, Westwerk
05.02.20 - Oceanen, Gothenburg
06.02.20 - Copenhagen, Vinterjazz
07.02.20 - Odense, Vinterjazz
08.02.20 - Amsterdam, OCCII
11.02.20 - Cologne, Gewölbe
12.02.20 - Düsseldorf, Salon Des Amateurs
14.02.20 - Marseille, Coco Velten
15.02.20 - Düdingen, Bad Bonn
16.02.20 - Basel, Renee Bar
18.02.20 - Clermont, Black Moon Temple
20.02.20 - Ghent, Kinky Star
21.02.20 - Antwerp, De Audio Plant
22.02.20 - Paris, Le Zorba
27.02.20 - Berlin, Arkaoda

2019 -

17.04.19 - Golden Pudel, Hamburg
18.04.19 - Klunkerkranich, Berlin
04.05.19 - Studio City Gate, Bruxelles
23.05.19 - Voodoohop, Mensch Meier, Berlin
10.06.19 - Ziegrastr.11, Berlin
13.06.19 - w HFBK, GWA Hamburg
14.06.19 - MS Stubnitz, Hamburg
30.06.19 - Fusion Festival, Germany (DJ/VJ Set)
10.08.19 - Kraut am Ebertplatz, Köln
07.09.19 - Camp Cosmic, Chemnitz
06.12.19 - Berlin, Ziegrastraße 11
08.12.19 - Hamburg, Astrastube

2018 - 

08.01.18 Mazkeka, Jerusalem
14.01.18 Postel, Jaffa
14.03.18 Golden Pudel, Hamburg
16.03.18 Punctum, Prague
18.03.18 Rhiz, Vienna
23.03.18 Arkaoda, Berlin
30.06.18 Dubstation, Fusion Festival, Germany
08.07.18 Klunkerkranich, Berlin
21.09.18 Outernational Days Festival, Bucharest
25.09.18 Ziegrastraße, Berlin
30.09.18 New Hamburg Festival, Hamburg
06.10.18 Le Salopard, Biel
16.11.18 Chez Fritz, St. Gallen
21.11.18 Pink Pank, Rotterdam
23.11.18 Le Brass, Bruxelles

a musician and sound artist whose work spans a wide range of musical and sonic practices, and within a variety of compositional and improvisational contexts.

EastEast Radio is an online radio station that presents an alternative to conventional content, giving listeners access to curated sounds with a global scope.

Musician, recordist, mixer and producer, Adham Zidan is a band member of The Invisible Hands, based in Cairo. He is also part of Baskot Lel Baltageyya, Another Time Ensemble, Procession Towards The Unknown and Today Is Tomorrow.

Adham also co-produced Katalog alongside music journalist Maha El Nabawi. Katalog was an Arabic language podcast published by Mada Masr, about the process, production, and inspiration behind selected works from the contemporary Arab and North African music landscape. He also hosted two monthly radio shows; Kaleidophone, on Ma3azef Live, and Music from the Hive, on movement.radio, which are archived here: https://www.mixcloud.com/AdhamZidan/

Adham has worked in the studio and live with Alvarius B, Lekhfa, Maurice Louca, Nadah El Shazly, Nancy Mounir, Praed, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, Tarkamt, The Dwarfs Of East Agouza, Youssra El Hawary, among others.

POREST is following