Swiss DJ collective and record diggers Turbo Falafel decided to visit the Lebanese capital after stumbling upon the Beirut vinyl store guide we published a few weeks ago.

During their stay, the group chose the best way to go around Beirut: riding the famous and infamous taxis of the capital.

If you’ve ever taken a cab in Lebanon, you’d know that the drivers are curious, love foreigners, and tend to be chatty, very chatty actually. Most foreign correspondents  get their political insights from their cab drivers. Not kidding. Read every Thomas Friedman article about the country, they’re full of found-nowhere-else information.

Anyway.

As they described it, Turbo Falafel “wanted to discover the tastes in music from these people who drive all day long through back roads, littles lanes and huge urban railways.” So they recorded the tracks that the cab drivers decided to play for them, all on their cellphone. While the quality is not super good, the mixtape is a trip into a different time and space, giving Lebanese immigrants a taste of what they left back at home, and future visitors an insight on how this chaotic place would sound like.

Besides this mix, Turbo Falafel did quite some digging at Chico Records, and recorded their favorite findings into this beautiful mix:

Photo taken from Lepetitjournal.com