Yasmine Hamdan 'Ya Nass'

Back in the early days of The Ashraf Obsession I wrote about Soap Kills, an underground electronic Lebanese band from the 90s'. The singer, Yasmine Hamdan, has released her first solo album, Ya Nass. Fahad sent along the link from NPR a few weeks ago, and I kept streaming the album non-stop.

It's entirely in Arabic, and Hamdan likes to play with different Arabic dialects. I barely understand any Arabic but I can at least tell when she's singing in different dialects, and its pretty neat. The songs themselves flow very well together and the instrumentation is very unique and engaging.

I can't really describe the album much more than that due to my limited skills, so just have a listen to a couple of songs off the album. And also here's another NPR link, this one of a live performance.

Once my CD arrives I can't wait to play this album again and again! I'd like to get some Soap Kills stuff too, but Fahad says "there is no soap kills to be bought on the internet!".

Soap Kills

I first heard of the band Soap Kills a few months ago when I got word of Y.A.S., which comprises of Yasmine Hamdan, the former singer of Soap Kills, and Mirwais, the famed electronic producer who produced Madonna's Music album.

I have been reading Pity the Nation by Robert Fisk which is an account of Lebanon's 15-year civil war. The band Soap Kills pops in my mind frequently because the band's name was meant to not let the Lebanese forget about the war, despite reconstruction's attempts to wash away the memories of war.

Here's an excerpt from this very insightful and intriguing interview that is about Y.A.S., which gives details on the origins of the now-defunct Soap Kills. The following is what got me very interested in the band:

"Zeid and Yasmine wrote a song together called Soap Kills, which was meant, at the time, as a scathing commentary on the reconstruction of Beirut after the civil war.

“With all the war being wiped clean,” recalls Zeid, “we thought, wow, it’s shiny and it’s awful.” More than just a song, they also thought Soap Kills would be a good name for a band. And so, one of the legendary stories of the Beiruti underground began.

For nearly a decade, Soap Kills was held up as the next big thing. It was a band that blended old-school Arabic music with trip-hop and downbeat techno, a band that served as an unprecedented artistic hothouse for live experimentation and studio innovation, a band that was always on the verge of a major record deal but never quite made it happen."

So far, I haven't been able to get my hands on many songs by Soap Kills, but here are a couple that I'm very fond of.

I like this one because it fuses classical Arabic singing with some good ol' drum and bass!
"Tango"



This song is cool and definitely threw me off with its reggae tones.
"Herzan"