Snakeskin

Beirut’s Snakeskin release their sophomore album ‘They Kept Our Photographs’ via London’s Mais Um label on 27 September 2024.

Describing themselves as “electronic dream pop shapeshifting above ambient and industrial undercurrents”, the duo have built on their critically-acclaimed 2022 self-titled debut dialing up the noise while keeping the celestial quality of their soundscapes intact.

Lyrically, singer-songwriter Julia Sabral mines new depths to deliver her most vivid work yet, turning the violence around them into visceral poetry, exploring ever darker and deeper currents: “As soon as we started writing this album, the war on Gaza started, and that heavily influenced the writing. We were glued to our screens watching Palestinians being massacred 24/7 and feeling totally helpless, these images filled our nightmares at night. A lot of the songs are about the horrors, the racism, what it means to be Arab in these times and holding on to love as a way to stay sane through all of it.”

Musically, producer/multi-instrumentalist Fadi Tabbal branches into new directions - adding excursions into hyperpop and electronica to the duo's industrial-drone-ambient palette. Their debut was the culmination of a decade of collaboration and friendship between Tabbal and Sabra who met in 2013 when Sabra came to record at Tunefork Studios. Says Tabbal: “I was immediately drawn to Julia’s understated voice, which reminded me of my favorite singers such as Broadcast’s Trish Keenan. I collaborated closely with Julia’s band Postcards for over a decade, producing all their albums, before she and I finally decided to try something different together, pulling us both out of our comfort zones.” The pair's enduring friendship translates into a rare kind of synergy, recalling collaborations such as Virginia Astley and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Angelo Baladamenti and Julee Cruise or the aforementioned Trish Keenan and James Cargill. Julia: "We’ve been friends for so long and collaborated on so many different projects, we're very in sync musically. The creative process is always very instinctive, everything flows quickly and naturally."