Reverberating through the ruins of Downtown Beirut's Grand Theatre, Berlin-based Lebanese musical project Interbellum's latest video for 'Ready to Dissolve', off of their critically acclaimed 2018 sophomore album Dead Pets, Old Griefs, is a misty shoegaze release with a tame and ghost-like lonesome air to it that's rather pronounced by the disintegrating war-torn relic that serves as a setting and a vessel carrying through the song's somber lyrics.
"Everything tastes like ashes, the very sky could crash" Interbellum main-man Karl Mattar and Postcard's Julia Sabra sing the morose apocalyptic words in a sublime, faint harmony that offsets the song's ominous narrative. Similar to many of Interbellum's songs, 'Ready to Dissolve' carries multiple layers, textures and meanings and sees interlaced themes of memory, time and childhood.
The video was shot by Lebanese filmmaker Camille Cabbabe who had to sneak through a blockade alongside the video's two actors (Karl Mattar and Lynn Sheikh Moussa) to film this production in merely two hours, but it seems their perilous efforts did not falter as the simple yet evocative video perfectly compliments the sparse, fragmented themes of the song.
"There’s an emptiness and an eeriness permeating everything. Nature slowly taking over and poking through the cracks. " Mattar said, poetically describing the overwhelming experience of being present in such a space.
