Laï & Liliane Chlela's World of Aggression, Irony, and Vulnerability

Late last year, we were taken by surprise by the release of ’Msh S7ab’, the first installment of the collaborative project between Lebanese singer-songwriter LAÏ and electronic producer Liliane Chlela, brought to life by Lebanese collective SuperBored. We would not have expected the pairing to go together so well as it did, with LAÏ’s intentional yet ironic delivery being amplified by Liliane’s textured production, menacing vocal processing, and deconstructed soundscapes. Then, earlier this summer, the duo released ‘Msh Akeed’, broadening the scope of their work with a vulnerable, trip-hop inspired single. This push-and-pull dynamic, moved along by SuperBored founder Wassim Haddad, resulted in one of the most compelling regional releases of the year.

We caught up with LAÏ while she was in Cairo, with Liliane filming from Montreal, to unpack how the project first sparked. What began as Haddad sending LAÏ’s early vocal stems to Chlela, a trailblazer LAÏ had grown up watching at Beirut’s Metro Al Madina as a teenager, quickly turned into an effortless exchange. Rather than feeling rigid or intimidated, the duo’s dynamic immediately fell into a lighthearted, joke-filled rhythm that shaped the entire creative process.

Musically, the release thrives on a complete lack of blueprints. Instead of looking to standard song structures, Chlela handpicked two demo sketches from LAÏ’s archive that offered the most room to maneuver, treating the material like a blank canvas. This allowed Chlela to process LAÏ’s voice directly into the music’s physical architecture, slicing through volatile patterns and fragmented drum’n’bass pressure on ‘Msh S7ab’, before decelerating into the dense, atmospheric trip-hop groove of ‘Msh Akeed’.

The project also pushed LAÏ to confront deeply guarded personal stories she had hesitated to share for years. Convinced by Haddad to step into that vulnerability, her raw disclosures find a natural anchor in Chlela’s sweeping cinematic strings and heavy drone washes, visually translated through a self-directed music video from LAÏ that captures internal anxiety in syrupy, frozen frames.

Watch the full video here: