On their debut EP, The Vapornet, experimentalists, Claudia Khachan and Ziad Moukarzel, create the kind of sonic chasms indicative of the long-distance that this is collaboration is built on.
Originally trained in Fashion Design at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, the Beirut-based Khachan pivoted into the world of sound art, starting with her 2024 debut EP, Illlisaud and Her Sister. Three songs amalgamating meditative elements into the world of sound design, Illlisaud and Her Sister was indicative of an artist harnessing the spiritual elements of sound, where reflection, memory and identity were all key inspirations behind these songs.
Her last dialogue with producer Moukarzel opens up wider portals. Already familiar in one another’s work – the pair co-founding avant-rock band, Wet Silhouette, alongside drummer, Anthony Tawil – The Vapornet sees the pair exploring tone, texture and contrast to strong effect.
Recorded at the backend of 2023, Khachan and Moukarzel dismantle and rebuild soundscapes into something originally abstract and deeply hypnotic. A communication channelled across vast space, these songs, like distant echoes from one to the next.
Claudia Khachan & Ziad Moukarzel - The Vapornet On Gone Beginnings, Moukarzel’s rolling synths form a blanket of thick fog, as Khachan’s voice emerges through it like some otherworldly goddess. The duo pivots on In Memory Of April – a ghostly pulse, breathing vitality into the cold world of sound design. A dispatch from the outer limits, as strings slowly rise from mix, aesthetically it lands somewhere between barren landscapes and a place of worship.
Again, Feel Me is far removed in what is pop music orchestrated from the bottom of the vortex. A raft of thrumming drones, as Khachan’s warped vocalisations are decayed through Moukarzel’s meticulous manipulations of sound.
The residue of these ideas drip into the Lavender. Fractured electro-acoustic composition with an apocalyptic hum, if one thing ties the duo’s ideas together it’s the thread of darkness. And that remains on Spitfire 67. An orbital-like dispatch that thrums with a post-rave anxiety. Bathed in down-tempo electronica, it rattles and hums with new vibrancy.
It brings an end to a release that contains so many positive twist and turns. A world built on tension and chaos, The Vapornet is a reflection of these times. Such as the ground Khachan and Moukarzel cover, there are so many directions they could move to on their next release. And whichever path they do take, it will lead to equally exciting places as the ones they explore on The Vapornet.
The Vapornet is out now via Ruptured Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
