Crammed Discs are delighted to re-issue the catalogue of Soapkills, Yasmine Hamdan’s former band, whose cult status has kept growing in the Arab world ever since the group’s demise in 2005.

One of the very first indie bands to emerge in the Middle East, Soapkills was founded at the end of the ‘90s by Yasmine Hamdan and Zeid Hamdan, both born in Beirut, Lebanon, but not related. They drew their inspiration from Arab music (both classical and folk) and from electronic music, dub and trip hop.

Soapkills recorded three albums, respectively entitled Bater (2001), Cheftak (2002) and Enta Fen (2005), which all came ...