too_basicc’s عهد الأصدقاء Turns Language into an Urgent, Political Instrument

In March and April, the Beirut audio-visual project too_basicc released three albums in quick succession. The latest, عهد الأصدقاء (“The Covenant of Friends”), borrows its title from an Arabic-dubbed anime series but immediately redirects that cultural reference into more unsettled terrain.

The album opens with a children’s chant welcoming George Bush to Kuwait—a jolt that frames the entire record politically. Language everywhere is broken down: commands, warnings, and fragments of memory emerge through pitch-shifted voices and heavily processed samples. Tracks like “Speak” and “عظام” (“Bones”) pair detuned synth melodies with dungeon sonics and chaotic rhythmic shifts, keeping the energy restless and deliberately unstable.

There are pauses. “موت” (“Death”) slows the tempo, pulling a melodic thread from the turbulence and suggesting that reflection, and perhaps mourning, occupies as much space as confrontation. too_basicc describes the urgency driving these releases as inseparable from the ongoing war. “I started making it during the first few days,” they said, “so, it stemmed from wanting to leave something behind in case of attaining martyrdom.”

That pressure is audible. The production resists polish, letting deconstructed club beats, hyperpop flourishes, and abrasive textures collide and dissolve before they can fully settle. The result is not a refined statement but an immediate one—an