Charlie Megira

Israeli guitarist and songwriter Charlie Megira crafted ethereal, hypnotic soundscapes that wove together the drenched reverb of surf rock, flashes of Cramps-style psychobilly tension, shadowy gothic post-punk atmospheres, and an idiosyncratic charm that remained unmistakably his own. Across a short lifetime spent largely out of the spotlight, he issued numerous albums on CD-R, continuing until his death in 2016. Numero Group soon initiated a series of reissues encompassing singles as well as full-length collections such as the 2019 compilation Tomorrow's Gone and the 2024 release of The End of Teenage.

Born Gabriel Abudraham in 1972 in Bet She'an, Northern Israel, he performed in bands through the mid- and late 1990s before adopting the Charlie Megira moniker for his first solo effort, the 2001 album Da Abtomatic Meisterzinger Mambo Chic. That record emerged as otherworldly and exquisite, its sunlit surf textures suggesting an early-1960s origin even as a lo-fi haze underscored its actual creation two decades later. Further self-released projects appeared throughout the 2000s, among them 2006's Charlie Megira and the Hefker Girl and the raw punk drive of 2009's Love Police, recorded alongside the Modern Dance Club. By 2013 he had assembled the Bet She'an Valley Hillbillies, who embarked on a brief American tour in 2014 while also issuing the cassette-only EP The End of Teenage that year. Megira took his own life in Berlin during November 2016 at age 44. In the compressed span of his career he tracked dozens of recordings across disparate styles, prompting Numero Group to launch archival compilations beginning with Tomorrow's Gone in 2019. The label proceeded over subsequent years to restore and re-present both catalog titles and previously unheard material, culminating in the 2024 expanded edition of The End of Teenage that added eleven further demos to the original tracklist.