Lebanese Renaissance woman Yasmine Hamdan has been busy. While residing in Beirut, she formed Soapkills, an early electronic duo that had an immeasurable impact on music in the Middle East. Following her relocation to France, she started recording with CocoRosie and Mirwais while also working on a solo career that branched off into some acting.<\/p>\n
Though her self-titled solo disc was released two years ago and embraced well on her part of the world, we’re now seeing an international edition titled Ya Nass<\/i>, with five additional, new songs that keep her roots alive with ideas from her formative years as well as acoustic indie folk and dreamy electro-pop. <\/p>\n
\u201cDeny\u201d starts the album off with dense rhythms and a darker feel, which spills over to the following track \u201cShouei.\u201d The twinkling acoustic guitar leads the song with a feel similar to Peasant, and combined with Hamdan’s breathy vocals, it’s a tune that wouldn’t be out of place at any coffeehouse in America, minus the Arabic singing of course. <\/p>\n
\u201cSamar\u201d is where the electronica comes into the equation, although in a more upbeat fashion compared to the beginning of the disc. \u201cEnta Fen, Again\u201d follows and continues on, paving a trip-hop and mysterious path which brings to mind a less bleak Portishead. As alluded to earlier, this entire disc is in Arabic, though it covers many different dialects so each song has its own unique feel. Often times, it’s hard to even notice she’s not singing English, though in the case of \u201cLa Mouch,\u201d where she really enunciates, it’s a pop spirited tune that dips into chilling ebbs.<\/p>\n
Though the front end of this disc has moments of pop fun and the memorable chorus of \u201cNediya\u201d could easily have mainstream appeal, the second half of the disc is much more reserved and seemingly contemplative. \u201cAleb\u201d leads with gentle pianos and remains calm throughout, and later tracks like atmospheric \u201cHal\u201d seem fraught with tension and despair. <\/p>\n
Unless Middle Eastern sounds are your genre of choice, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve never heard anything like this. While her pop rock influences are certainly on par with what’s going on in the Western world, she keeps her roots nearly at the surface most of time, making Ya Nass <\/i>a collection of tunes that is easily embraced regardless of where you live on the globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":31911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9381],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-43637","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-yasmine-hamdan","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43637"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}