Jerusalem In My Heart & GRID

Jerusalem In My Heart are no strangers to the gents of Use Knife. Band member Radwan Ghazi Moumneh produced The Shedding of Skin.

The core members of the audiovisual performance project Jerusalem In My Heart (JIMH) are Lebanese-Canadian producer/musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Montreal-based filmmaker Erin Weisgerber. Guided by Moumneh’s blend of Arabic song traditions with modular synthesis and electronics, JIMH has released four critically acclaimed albums over the past decade on the experimental Constellation label. The band is one of the most renowned and uncompromising groups in avant-garde Levantine Arabic art and music.

With Jerusalem In My Heart, Moumneh and Weisgerber seek to make modern, experimental Arabic music, which they combine with analogue film using live projection techniques and other approaches. They see the results as multimedia works of cross-cultural and socio-political art. Weisgerber manipulates the properties of 16mm film to enhance both its materiality and narrative range. During a typical live show she used multiple analogue projectors.

The group’s album Qalaq (2021) features haunting electronica and electro-acoustic tracks, complemented by Moumneh’s spoken and sung Arabic, the sounds of the buzuk (a long-necked fretted lute) and some excellent sound design. The album features collabs with a wide range of artists, including Moor Mother, Tim Hecker, Lucrecia Dalt, Greg Fox and Rabih Beaini.

The Arabic word ‘qalaq’ means ‘deep disquiet’. Here Moumneh refers not only to his concern about various world issues, but also specifically to the situation in his homeland of Lebanon: the collapsing internal politics, economy and infrastructure; the tragic geopolitics; and the extremisms tearing apart all its neighbouring states.