Stuttering Music by Yara Asmar

"Asmar's music is an unravelling of solidity. Metals, electronics and even the human form have their edges tugged apart, pooling the innards of objects into an amassment of indefinable sentiment, of fuzzy and fallible memory, of whistles like connective ropes hurled into an idealised elsewhere. Her melodies are gorgeous but never vividly asserted, instead appearing like happenstance cloud formations, inciting the listener's own pattern-recognition powers in order to be fully realised." – Jack Chuter, Attn Magazine

"Like the dreamlike atmospheres in Brian Eno and Harold Budd’s The Pearl or the delicate, vibrant melancholia found in the abstract collaborations of Ryuichi Sakomoto and Alva Noto, here Asmar creates a continuous flow that captures a crouching sense of nostalgia for a more livable life (…) The fusion of floating accordion notes, chiming metallophone sounds, and oscillating synths harmonises seamlessly with her ethereal dreamscape – something both deeply nostalgic and hauntingly transient, mirroring Asmar’s exploration of fleeting yet profound emotional states." – Aydin Khalili, The Quietus

"Stuttering Music centres on Asmar’s accordion laments – and metallophone – processed into cathedrals of reverb. Aching music for hard times." – Peter Hollo, Utility Fog broadcast broadcast (FBi Radio)

"The toy instruments and edited field recordings of her earliest work have gradually given way as her grandmother’s accordion has increasingly taken center stage, as it does on Stuttering Music, its drones drifting and mutating, processed and thickened with electroacoustic effects. At times reminiscent of Tim Hecker’s tectonic drones or Keith Fullerton Whitman’s ethereal signal processing, the most obvious referent may be the way Pauline Oliveros treated her own accordion sounds, though Asmar’s dilation of time functions more through streaked harmonic overtones rather than accumulated delays." – Joseph Sannicandro, A Closer Listen

“A captivating collection of slowly unfurling melodic drones and allusive sound design, Stuttering Music’s beauty lies as much in its tentative and nuanced melodic character as it does in the mysterious quality of the harmonics, effects processing, and instrumentation.” – Catherine Kennan, In Sheep’s Clothing: Favorite Releases of 2024

“Asmar’s compositions blur the lines between improvisation and structured melody, creating an ethereal atmosphere that lingers long after the final note fades. Standout tracks include the expansive “in fields of translucent pearls”, which unfolds over nine minutes of shimmering textures and plaintive accordion lines. The shorter “may” offer a more intimate experience, with delicate metallophone tones evoking a sense of nostalgia and loss.” – Imran Mirza, Twisted Soul

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Since you left they’ve continued building the city.
There is a new theater,
Bigger than the old one.
In the library, they hang your two hats
And the coffee machine still brews the coffee (when there is electricity)
And people still drink it.
A couple had their first kiss by the Jesuit garden and
There is a parking lot now where the building collapsed a few years ago.
You’d think the city would be less than it was once you’ve left it but
It’s more of the same
And maybe even
Too much of it.

Eulogies for accordion, metallophone & electronics.

Yara Asmar is a musician and puppeteer currently living in Beirut with her two cats, Mushroom and Fejlé.

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