Hospital sounds: The electricity of grief-made music
BEIRUT—“It’s cold in the morning / It’s cold in the mourning,” chants Tamara Qaddoumi on the second track of her forthcoming EP, “Sorry Signal,” out Dec. 8. Qaddoumi’s lyrics elide the distance between the natural and the human-made in this electronic album borne out of experiences of death and mourning in relatives’ hospital rooms.
Instrumentally, the album is layered with synths, drum machines, heavily processed guitars, bass and, on two tracks, field recordings of hospital machines. But lyrically, it’s elemental, starting with the album’s lead single, “Under the Knife,” in which Qaddoumi croons about being underwater. In two other tracks, another ancient element, fire, appears as something we can either pass through or perhaps be cremated within…