Maud Zeinoun: For The Waves I Rode / And The Ones That Broke Inside Me

On her debut LP, For the Waves I Rode / And the Ones That Broke Inside Me, Beirut-based multi-disciplinary artist, Maud Zeinoun pieces together parts of life in beautifully abstract ways. Whether it be from the past, the present or the mundane to life-changing, moving between glory and gloom, Zeinoun’s compositions are a cinematic rollercoaster of emotions.

It’s Zeinoun’s background in film that makes her compositions like half-forgotten dreams. The nostalgia of a younger mind immersed in more innocent times, entwined with conflicts at the coal face of her native Lebanon, and the results see Zeinoun capture a borderless range of emotions.

Recovering from her own mental health struggles almost a decade ago, it’s these experiences that frame For the Waves I Rode / And the Ones That Broke Inside Me. Described by Zeinoun as her “dark passenger”, per the press release notes, she went on to say that “Music was the only proof I had that I was worthy of dreaming at all — and that I was capable of achieving those dreams. It reminded me how I belonged. How I mattered.”

Thematically and sonically, the dream residue is evident throughout For the Waves I Rode / And the Ones That Broke Inside Me. Held together by a barreling drone, Oublie is a mélange of field recordings and archival audio snippets where Zeinoun lulls her listeners into the dream-state. And it’s here where Zeinoun orbits throughout the proceeding five pieces. Constructivism sees her dismantling the ideas of Madonna’s Vogue, pulling it into the present with a new wave of colours in what is the antithesis to a pop banger.

Pleasure Land travels on a similar flight path. Euphoric BPM synth-wave designed for summer festivals and open fields, We Were Never Forever, After All retreats to other parts within the festival grounds: namely the dark corners that are illuminated by strobe lights, as Zeinoun orchestrates a song centred on a relationship breakdown (“If we drift apart and fate won’t bend / In this sad symphony, you’ll always be my end”).

Elsewhere, the scanner-like drone-pop of Fighting Wars sees Zeinoun looking outward to a different kind of horror. Like her labelmates Snakeskin, here she reveals a crushing real-time story of an existence crippled by war through the eyes of a young protagonist who struggles to see a future beyond the debris (“I need to know what’s in a soul / Get a glimpse of what it holds / Protect me from these thoughts, these heavy lows / Release me from feeling like a lost cause Don’t leave me here”).

It’s the most harrowing moment on the album, and finishing with the title track, Zeinoun bookends For the Waves I Rode / And the Ones That Broke Inside Me with another collage of sound that occupies the mind’s eye of the dream-state. The sound of endless possibilities where light at the end of the tunnel can be seen. And while Zeinoun professed that her dreams and music combined to forge a clearer path in her own world, hopefully that same path will include more music and even more dreams in the future.

For The Waves I Rode / And The Ones That Broke Inside Me is out now via Ruptured Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.