Sametou Sawtan by SANAM

"Sametou Sawtan sees SANAM moving away from unmoored group spontaneity in favour of more compact and coherent tunes. There's also a difference in tone, with Sametou Sawtan nailing a darker, more nocturnal mood." - The Wire

"An album that embodies the platonic ideal of forward-thinking guitar music." - Bandcamp Notes

"Psychedelic guitar swirl, Arabic lyrics and pounding drums cohere to create a loud and lively eight tracks, with highlight "Harik" using singer Sandy Chamoun’s gasping vocalisations as punctuating rhythm." - The Guardian

"Confrontational, progressive and at times deeply beautiful, SANAM's music is a thrilling example of the magic that can come from chaos." - UNCUT 8/10

"The constant tension between ancient and modern that underpins Chamoun's vocal performance is embodied in the instrumentation too. Pounding angular grooves with thudding drums, throbbing bass and jagged guitar are flecked with the thorny splinters of Farah Kaddour's buzuk lute." - Songlines

"There’s a fluency and physicality in SANAM's music that propels the listener along with them, plus a dramatic intensity which draws you in… Serious, dark, elevating and passionate." - Backseat Mafia

"Transforms twelfth-century poetry and contemporary texts into experimental rock that captures both the intensity of their cult-like recording sessions and the existential weight of living under constant threat." - The Tone Arm

"On Sametou Sawtan, the band summons urgency through restraint, channeling lived experiences of economic upheaval, social crisis, and war. Psych-rock can take many forms, but it rarely sounds this emotionally overwhelming." - Musikexpress

"There’s a deep spirit to these recordings; wandering psychedelia steeped in locality; SANAM mels together open-sourced kraut-rock with subtle synth-based electronica fermenting underneath the mix." - Sun-13

"Chamoun wails in free-form cascades, as drums surge and guitars twitter, tapping into a wild primal force." - Dusted Magazine

"Pure skronk, dense strings and chanted vocals sit atop some thunderous desert rock as singer Sandy Chamoun yelps and hollers with ever-increasing intensity." - Loud & Quiet

"A crucial record, filled with vitality, imagination, and a willingness to experiment. The Beirut sextet have a message to convey, and now is the time to listen." - Jumbo Records

"Sametou Sawtan is a disorienting, deeply felt record—alive with ritual, resistance, and release." - Norman Records

"A brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop." - Utility Fog broadcast, FBi Radio

"This is music of force and delicacy, searching for stability in a convulsed world." - Loop

"SANAM’s Sametou Sawtan is one of the most original and deeply felt albums to emerge from Lebanon’s fertile independent scene.” - Ondarock

***

The title of the second SANAM album is as alive with possibility as the Lebanese band’s music. Sametou Sawtan translates from the Arabic to ‘I Heard A Voice’. Spooky or spiritual, however one reads the phrase, it speaks to the ability of sound and language to cause pause, steal attention, and open us to the moment. Likewise, the music of SANAM blurs tender frenzies and fire-scorched ballads, collapsing free-flowing rock and jazz frameworks into deeply rooted Arabic tradition. To hear them in full flight is to be held in the present and reorientated towards an open horizon.

Work on Sametou Sawtan began in early 2024. Initial ideas formed at Tunefork Studios in Beirut were fleshed out in April during a residency at Beit Faris, a medieval house in the coastal city of Byblos. The sextet: Sandy Chamoun (vocals), Antonio Hajj (bass), Farah Kaddour (buzuq), Anthony Sahyoun (guitar, synth), Pascal Semerdjian (drums), and Marwan Tohme (guitars), were joined by producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart). The album’s last two tracks are recordings from the Beit Faris sessions, while the rest were captured at La Frette Studios in Paris during the band’s summer 2024 European tour.

The record processes feelings of distance and dislocation. “For the last five years it feels like everyone is leaving Lebanon,” explains Chamoun. “The album isn’t literally about that, but the idea that something is leaving you….A distance from events even though you’re living them, a distance from your house even though you’re inside it.”

Whether in the yearning ballad “Goblin” or the slow-burning, autotune-doused freakout of “Habibon”, Sametou Sawtan captures the striving for stable ground in a world seldom capable of offering it. It rides the mesmerizing intensity of the SANAM live experience while affording their music nuance, depth, and tremendous dynamic range. Like their debut, lyrics for many tracks are borrowed, words placed into new contexts to process the present. “Hamam” reinterprets an Egyptian folk song. In “Hadikat Al Ams”, the cracked hard-rock stomp propels text by contemporary Lebanese writer Paul Shaoul. And both “Sayl Damei” and the title track use poems by twelfth century Iranian poet and groundbreaking mathematician Omar Khayyam. “When you read something from Omar, you feel a connection to now,” Chamoun says. “The feeling that there’s not a clear path.”

Sametou Sawtan also features two songs with Chamoun’s own lyrics, including opener “Harik”. It was the seed of the album, written by Chamoun in February 2024, with the band building the track around her words. It begins with a shudder, razored electronics, and gasping voice perforating pounding drums before the band locks into triumphant ascent. It is about immersion in “an infinite fire,” Chamoun reveals. She wrote the lyrics to “Tatayoum” alone before bringing them to the band. It reflects a different kind of intensity, “a loop, an obsession,” she suggests. Buzuq weaves through hovering electronics and urgent drums while Chamoun recites Arabic words describing love. The incessant energies explored in these tracks aren’t necessarily negative. She compares their intensity to a writer locked in a train of thought, for better or worse.

“It’s not about being depressed or sad,” says Chamoun. “It’s a trap, but it can also be magical.”

Daryl Worthington, May 2025