An Interview with Omarleen

By Deniz Hakman

Omarleen escapes from the realm of images to seek comfort in noise. Her work, both improvisatory and compositional, resonates as a collage brimming with the nostalgia of melodies and laments familiar from her past. She finds musical accomplices in ghosts and jinn, who have guided her stories prior and continue to do so in the noise she brings forth now. Sometimes, between the grainy cuts of old samples or the crackling static of a potentially possessed mixer, her voice gleams through. She iterates, “If my voice allows me I will sing.”

Ahead of her performance for the upcoming Loom, we sat down with Omarleen for a conversation on cassette tapes, spiritual rituals and her ongoing beef with images.

Hi Omarleen, I’m curious what this conversation will bring forth. Let’s start with how you got into sonic research and exploring sound as a medium? What drew you to this domain?

I started working with documentaries.––at the time I was occupied with analyzing images, not really focusing on sound. About five years ago, I became overwhelmed with the politics present in the arts and how I positioned myself in that world too. I noticed there was a lot of fetishization happening––a tendency to work with images that were a kind of social pornography”. I was also working a lot with images at the time, like war documentaries and footage. I basically got fed up with it all. That’s when I started my sound practice centering improvisation and more expressive works.

“I feel like a lot of my sounds come from things that can shake you like grief.”

What are you drawn to in your process of working with sound?

I like when things are not rehearsed or scripted. That’s why I was drawn to improvisation, which I did a lot with friends, using feedback loops to create harsh noise. My own work started to involve a lot of noise too. Not like punk noise or noise for the sake of noise but something separate, my own kind of noise. I don’t come from a music background so I don’t have the theoretical music knowledge some people do, but I have other knowledges like my hearing and singing. I like to use sounds and music I’m familiar with, melodies that come naturally to me like Syrian ataaba, mawawil and Arabic/Turkish makams. I like the kind of singing that’s stretched out, that takes its time to express sorrows and pains. And I like to mix these with noise. I’m taking a form I’m used to and bringing it into a new context through my own voice.

Could you elaborate on your relationship to noise? Were you interested in noise music before it came to fruition in your own work?

I was surrounded by a lot of punk and post-punk at some point. I would go to these concerts and there was always a noise act opening up the evening. They didn’t care so much about pleasing the audience, and yet I was still pleased. I really liked that.

When I started improvising with my friends, I was intrigued by the noise shaped through feedback loops. The mixer making noise by itself felt ghostly, as if the machine were possessed. Figures like ghosts and jinn are really interesting to me––they’re like invisible entities that reveal themselves only through sound. I resonate with that. I also only want to appear through sound because my image is too overused and fetishized, too easily consumed. I’m still salty toward images.

What does “appearing through sound” sound like for you? How do you achieve your own noise?

I use a lot of cassettes in my work, I relate to the kind of grainy noise that comes out of old recordings. I source most of my sound from a collection of cassettes I bought in Lebanon last year. It’s a collection of 65 cassettes with pop songs, recordings of recipes and a lot of religious singing as well. Like the Tatbir ritual where Shia grieve the death of Husayn after he was killed by the Sunnis, and the grief is what generates the rhythm. I use these sounds a lot because I grew up listening to them, and I relate to them too. I feel like a lot of my sounds also come from things that can shake you like grief.

“I’m taking a form I’m used to and bringing it into a new context through my own voice.”

What about when you incorporate your own voice?

I consider myself a sampling machine. Even when I’m singing I’m using references, like the things I grew up hearing. I don’t feel like there is a difference between my own voice or the samples I use. It’s like I have the same relationship of ownership. As much as I own my voice I also own these materials and as much as I don’t own these materials I also don’t own my voice.

When I sing I like to sing lullabies––I consider them bedtime songs because they exist in the gap between being asleep and being awake, when you’re most open to being possessed, crossing between these two spaces of consciousness.

Could you walk me through your artistic process? What are your preferred methods of working and what parts of the process are most important to you?

My work is both improvisation and composition. When I was working on an album with a friend of mine, we did a full series of improvisation which I cut into tracks. That’s the way I like to work. And when I perform is when the two actually meet. I have my composed pieces––I know what to start with, how to continue and how to end, but there are still these empty spaces in between. That’s when improvisation happens, on the spot, through feeling. I think this method is a way of making myself feel comfortable on stage. It’s like using a script that you know the content of, but you are allowed to change the way you say them.

I know you mentioned you are salty toward images but I still want to ask what your relationship to them is?

I still love talking about it because my heart is full of images. I was interested in documentaries generally, I think as a side effect of war. Looking back I wonder why. Maybe I felt like I needed to document what was happening, but that’s my reflection retrospectively. The camera is so violent and the frame is like a prison. The image is never owned by the people that are depicted––it is always owned by the one taking the image.

When I started studying arts in the Netherlands I also realized many artists were using these images of social pornography in their work. It was kind of an edgy thing to do. I wanted to say “Come to me, I’m on the edge. Come meet me on the edge.”. So to me this was an issue to be dealt with––my whole bachelor study was spent dealing with this issue. At some point I was done with it, also because I didn’t want to cater my criticality to white people anymore.

I’m curious if your occupation with images has also transitioned into your sound work? And to follow up, how do you experience the two differently?

At times, sound and images do meet for me. I like images that circulate in family group chats. The kind of image where you don’t know who owns the copyright for it. I think these images are perfect visuals for my sound. They’re also noisy and low quality a lot of the time, and they’re shared around so much that they become public property. Other than that, the themes I work with for my sound are not so related to my work with images. The difference between the two for me is that with images you can close your eyes, but with sound you can’t escape. Even if you close your ears it’s going to vibrate your body. I’ve found comfort in that aspect of sound.

“I want to appear through sound because my image is too overused and fetishized, too easily consumed.”

I would also love to know what inspires you. What are the things you draw inspiration from?

Honestly, inspiration is so rare these days. I’m struggling to find inspiration and hope generally. But I like to hear new music. I like Nancy Mounir. She’s an Egyptian artist and she has this album called Nozhet el Nofous. She uses old recordings of Egyptian singers and she recomposes on top of that with a small orchestra. She recently performed at Le Guess Who? in Utrecht. I also like to hear Shia latmiyat rituals or spontaneous videos of people singing, or videos of Palestinian resistance on Instagram when they add their own music, like Palestinian rap. I really hate it when videos of people dying have sad music. I like to see resistance, I think it’s a true source of hope.

In anticipation for the next edition of Loom, could you tell me a bit about the performance you will be doing?

I was expecting this question, maybe I can say some key words, “Radio noise, Arabic maqams, cassette tapes, and if my voice allows it I will sing…”

And lastly, is there anything you’re looking forward to exploring in the near future? What can we expect from you?

I’m releasing an album soon through a platform called Les Shapeshifters with my friend Kim Kamilla Jäger, who plays the cello. We made music for a film together but a lot wasn’t used, so we’re making it into an album. It’s mainly noise and atmospheric sounds. It’s amazing.

I’m also looking forward to more collaborations. It’s something I really enjoy doing, especially when it involves improvisation. I want to sing more and rest a bit, take it easy.