Various Artists - Beirut City Pop (Habibi Funk 035) (2026) [Hi-Res]

In Beirut in the late 1970s and 1980s, in the midst of Lebanon’s civil war, a small music scene took shape, playing disco, pop, soul, jazz, bossa nova, rock and AOR. Its members gathered around Ziad Rahbani and his Bypass Studio: musicians rehearsed, recorded and helped one another with projects, while bands and studio ensembles formed and dissolved quickly. The recordings came out on private cassettes, copied at home and handed to friends. The war fragmented the country, and getting from one neighbourhood or region to another was difficult, so the music rarely travelled beyond narrow circles. Print runs were tiny: the album by Andromeda, recorded at Studio Farah, may have been released in twenty copies or fewer, and some tracks were never officially released at all, surviving only on tapes passed from hand to hand. These recordings shared a common musical language, close to the openness of Japanese city pop, though they were born in a very different setting. Some songs offered lightness and a way to escape, while others spoke directly about life during the war. Today ten such tracks are collected on Beirut City Pop, which documents a community whose friendships outlasted the cassettes that nearly vanished.

Tracklist:
1. Stephanie Stephanou - You Turn Me On
2. FORCE - I Don’t Wanna Be Alone
3. Andromeda - New Love
4. Games - Someday
5. Andromeda - The Mirror
6. Walid Itayim - The City
7. Games - There Is A Chance
8. FORCE - Stand Up
9. Games - Music
10. Andromeda - Bossa Blue