Munma - Transient Organ (2024)

Transient Organ is the first physical solo release by Lebanese electronic producer Jawad Nawfal (aka MUNMA) since 2016's landmark album Three Voices.
The music was composed by Jawad Nawfal between November 2021 and September 2023, in bouts of fractured creativity punctuated by frequent power cuts in his native city of Beirut. Transient Organ features regular Munma collaborator Caroline Tabet, whose evocative spoken word poetry appears on two tracks. Tabet also provided the drawing that graces the cover of the album.

Prior to the release of Transient Organ, Nawfal kept busy with VVVA (vv-va.bandcamp.com), the label he founded in 2019 as a digital-only platform for his expanding archive of unreleased tracks and experimental side projects. To this day, VVVA has released Munma’s duos with El Rass, Elyse Tabet, Charbel Haber, Jad Atoui, Anthony Sahyoun, and Sharif Sehnaoui, as well as solo albums by Sarah Huneidi (the artist otherwise known as xlmxkhfi) and Nawfal himself.

The genesis of the Munma project dates back to the summer of 2006 and Israel’s deadly war on Lebanon – Nawfal created sonic alter-ego Munma as an aural and visual response to the drama unfolding at the time, producing and releasing three albums in quick succession for Lebanese imprint Incognito. Live performances were often accompanied by Caroline Tabet's still and/or moving visuals.
In the early years of dubstep and grime, Nawfal developed a predilection for these genres, and created short-lived dubstep duo Index/Left in 2010, in partnership with Ziad Moukarzel.

Munma composed and produced two highly successful collaborations with Lebanese poet and hip-hop artist El Rass: Unveiling the Hidden (Ruptured, 2012) and Adam, Darwin & the Penguin (self-released, 2014) explored the darker sides of rap and hip-hop, reconfiguring the genre to include elements of bass and electronica, in a manner akin to sorely-missed UK duo Kode9 & The Spaceape.

Between 2012 and 2016, as part of his fruitful partnership with Belgian electronic producer Cedrik Fermont, Nawfal released several full-length albums on the latter's Berlin-based label Syrphe. These included a collaboration with Lebanese electronic producer Liliane Chlela (under the name Infinite Moment of Composure); a duo with Fermont entitled Tasjiil Moujahed; and Elyse Tabet’s first solo album as Litter. Nawfal and Fermont still collaborate on a regular basis on a variety of projects.

Three Voices, Munma's previous album for Ruptured, was released to critical acclaim in 2016. Revolving around an array of spoken word recordings of personal texts from various writers that Nawfal commissioned for the process, these studio recordings were built upon with narrative-aiding musical beds, at times incorporating traditional Middle Eastern sounding samples (“Cadavre Exquis”).