Beirut City Pop brings together ten tracks from Lebanon’s private press cassette scene of the late 1970s and 1980s, when short-lived bands and studio projects moved freely between disco, pop, soul, jazz, bossa, rock and AOR.
Many of the musicians belonged to the same extended circle around Ziad Rahbani and his Bypass Studio, rehearsing, recording and contributing to one another’s projects. Often copied at home and circulated among friends and musicians, many of these recordings remained within small local circles. This limited distribution was closely tied to the fragmentation of Lebanon during the civil war, when movement between neighbourhoods and different parts of the country was often difficult. Some tapes existed in…
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…Recorded between 1988 and 1989 in a small 8-track home studio in Amman, Jordan, Pieces of a Dream captures a side of the Arab music scene rarely documented: a group of musicians deeply inspired by jazz, soul, yacht rock and city pop, creating music that sounds closer to late-night LA or London than what most would associate with Jordan at the time.
Coming off two excellent records released on Habbi Funk that showed off his skills as a beatmaker, sample wrangler, song crafter and arranger, the Lebanese musician 
Bourj Hammoud Groove celebrates the music of Armenian-Lebanese artist 
…This compilation isn’t a sweeping history of Libyan music — it’s a personal journey into the sounds we fell in love with while digging through tapes, conversations, and stories across Libya and beyond. Rather than spotlighting the country’s most famous musical exports, the compilation brings forward a mix of overlooked gems and local classics of the cassette era: artists whose work thrived in spite of political limitations, and scarce international exposure.