PirateBeirut

Genre: compilation, electronic, Post Punk, rap, trip hop.
Year: 2011
Download this release (torrent)

About: The 12 songs on this compilation look at the Arab World through a new pair of glasses: Beirut’s underground. The CD focuses on a young generation that is tired of war, fed up with politics, sick of religious madness, and angry about Euro-American exoticism. It is keeping itself alive with electro beats, raw aggressive hip hop or in-your-face indie rock. Together these musicians show a new picture of this war-shaken city and region and show a different Beirut. The Beirut alternative music circuit does not get the same media attention the commercial pan-Arabic satellite-TV Pop-Industry does, but is closely linked to the civil society networks that are of great importance in the ongoing revolutions in the Arab World in 2011. These artists show a new, open-minded city reminiscent in its open mindedness in a way of the Golden Beirut of the 60ies and 70ies only updated. In those “golden“ years before the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) Beirut had a name as a hub between orient and occident. (Review by OutHere.de)

Credits:

Extensive info about the album: http://norient.com/blog/goldenbeirut/
Compiled by Thomas Burkhalter (founder of norient)
Photos by: Tanya Traboulsi
Label: Out Here (Indigo)