A Closer Listen
Dog Plug feels exactly like its title suggests: a live wire connecting three musicians whose shared history spans decades and still produces sparks. Tony Elieh, Mazen Kerbaj and Maurice Louca approach electroacoustic improvisation as a process of constant recombination, where melody, noise, rhythm and texture are perpetually dismantled and rebuilt.
What immediately stands out is how melodic the album is beneath its dense circuitry. Fragments of tunes surface and disappear, interrupted by looped electronics, distorted trumpet interventions and synthesizer detours. The opening “Dakkerha” [“Recall it”] establishes this approach perfectly: repetitive rhythmic figures circle through the mix before giving way to bursts of chatter and interference, as though memory itself were struggling to remain coherent. Elsewhere, “Da’eri” [“Circular”] and “Shamm el Hawa” [“The Scent of the Air” or “The Breeze of the Levant”] evoke traces of place and cultural inheritance without ever settling into recognisable forms.
The trio’s greatest strength lies in its refusal to treat instruments reverentially. Kerbaj’s trumpet, much like in his visual and musical practice more broadly, becomes a source of squeaks, breaths, percussive stabs and electronic mutations. Louca’s keyboards constantly hover between abstraction and song-like suggestion, while Elieh’s bass — already pushed into new territory on his recent collaboration with Burkhard Beins as Zone Null — acts as another unstable current flowing through the system. Together they seem less like a conventional band than a group of tinkerers testing circuits, redirecting signals and discovering unexpected connections; this is music assembled through experimentation, adjustment and occasional controlled malfunction as if put together in an auto repair shop.
Dog Plug is born from connection rather than composition in the traditional sense: sounds passing between three musicians like jumper cables transferring energy between stalled engines. The result is playful, abrasive, often funny and never sterile. Even at its most chaotic, the album remains animated by the possibility that a melody might suddenly emerge from the noise, only to vanish again before it can be fully grasped.
Luckily, Elieh, Kerbaj and Louca were at hand to explain what Dog Plug means to them.
Dog Plug is presented not as a meeting but as a “short circuit” between three musicians whose histories have been intertwined for decades. What was different about finally recording as a trio after so many years of collaborations in larger constellations such as Karkhana, Elephantine, and other projects? Did sharing the same city for the first time fundamentally change the chemistry?
As friends and long-time collaborators, we’ve shared stages, recordings, and long musical conversations for years through different projects and formations, but usually within larger groups where the dynamics were distributed among several voices. What’s different about Dog Plug for us is that the interaction became more immediate, more exposed, and more direct.
Living in the same city certainly played a role in bringing us closer, not just musically but also on a personal level. Being able to meet regularly, having a continuity of encounters rather than isolated occasions, helped shape a lot of what Dog Plug means for us.
The original Arabic name, Kilab al Bottariya (“battery dogs”), evokes jumper cables, broken systems, and the improvisational survival tactics familiar to cities like Beirut and Cairo. How much of the album emerged from this metaphor of connection, repair, and energy transfer? Do you see the music as reflecting broader social realities in the region?
The name came before many of the meanings attached to it, but we quickly realized how much it resonated with the way we work. We are like connectors, feeding off each other’s sonic explorations in real time.
The album was recorded in Berlin in late 2022, but its release was later affected by the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, which disrupted the production and distribution process. How has the reality of making and releasing music from—or in relation to—Lebanon changed in recent years? Did the delays and disruptions alter your relationship to the record itself?
Making music from—or in relation to—Lebanon was never an straightforward task. This said, what is happening today is way beyond considerations about music making and productions issues.
Annihaya has long described its mission as one of displacement, deconstruction, and recycling of popular and folkloric musical cultures. How does Dog Plug fit within the label’s broader philosophy? Do you see the trio’s electroacoustic improvisation as another form of musical recycling, where fragments of memory, melody, noise, and history are constantly dismantled and rebuilt?
Dog Plug operates within that territory. Elements that might evoke folk music, popular song, free improvisation, electronic noise, or experimental composition appear and disappear without settling into fixed identities. What interests us is not purity but circulation. Sounds move between contexts, lose their original functions, acquire new meanings, and enter new relationships. In that sense, the trio’s practice is very much aligned with the broader philosophy of Annihaya.
Listening to tracks such as “Dakkerha” and “Shamm el Hawa,” one hears a fascinating tension between collective improvisation and the emergence of fleeting melodic or rhythmic figures. When working together, how do you balance structure and spontaneity? Do pieces begin with an agreed framework, or do they emerge entirely through listening and reaction?
We are interested in moments where a melody, rhythm, or texture appears and transforms before becoming fixed. Those temporary forms often carry the strongest energy because they exist on the threshold between recognition and disappearance. The music develops through listening rather than planning. Structure is not imposed from the outside; it emerges from the interaction itself and remains open to disruption at any moment.
Each of you comes from a distinct artistic practice: Mazen from visual art, comics, and extended trumpet techniques; Maurice from composition and the rich hybrid worlds of projects like Elephantine and Lekhfa; Tony from post-rock, free improvisation, and photography. Looking back at Dog Plug, what do you think each of you brought that the others could not have contributed, and what did the trio create that none of you could have achieved individually?
None of us knows exactly what he brought to the group. What we do know for sure is that this group makes each one of us play in a different way than in any other group.
(Gianmarco Del Re)
Thu Jul 16 00:01:26 GMT 2026