Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night explores the idea of ghosts as intergenerational trauma, through a mixture of acoustic folk, fuzzy psychedelia, melodic pop rock, ambient passages and experimental sound pieces. Its 15 tracks deal with memory, time and the past, casting intimate trauma as a microcosm of Lebanon’s unending cycles of violence, unearthing the crypts where memories and postmemories lie buried.
Interbellum is the project of Lebanese singer-songwriter Karl Mattar. The project blends elements of folk, noise pop, garage rock and ambient music into an idiosyncratic mix centered on Mattar's songwriting.
The first iteration of the group released the lo-fi guitar driven Now Try Coughing and played its first shows in Beirut in 2016.
Sophomore album Dead Pets, Old Griefs (2018, Ruptured) expanded the project's palette considerably, adding synthesizers, samples and electronics to the mix. Recorded with producer Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, the album was released by Lebanese indie label Ruptured to international acclaim.
The project and album have made best-of lists in the Arab world and beyond, receiving praise from publications like Gold Flake Paint, The Wire and GQ Middle East among many others. Interbellum performed at leading Lebanese indie festival Wickerpark Festival in 2018 and played over 50 shows in Europe the following year in support of the album.
Interbellum's 3rd album Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night was released on April 7th, 2023.
Dead Pets, Old Griefs (2018, Ruptured) was recorded with producer Fadi Tabbal and musicians from the Beirut music scene. Revolving around themes of memory, time, childhood and loss, the record plays like a broken music box, its kaleidoscopic melodic songs disjointed and smeared with noise, dissonance and processed sounds
Now Try Coughing (2016, self-released) is Interbellum’s first album and features 8 lyrically dense guitar-driven songs recorded on 8-track cassette at Tunefork Studios in Beirut. Band leader Karl Mattar is assisted by guitarist Fadi Tabbal (Bunny Tylers), bassist Elie Abdelnour (Safar) and drummer Pascal Semerdjian (Postcards).
