T-Slam

A band assembled in an army radio studio

T-Slam took shape in 1979 in the studios of Israel Army Radio, where Dani Bassan, Izhar Ashdot and Yair Nitzani began working together — Bassan singing, Ashdot on guitar, Nitzani on keyboards. The line-up filled out with Yoshi Sadeh on second guitar, Tzuf Philosof on bass and Sami Avzardel on drums, and that same six-man configuration is the one still billed in 2026, which is unusual for a band whose original run lasted four years.

Their first recorded song, "Tnu Li Rokenrol" ("Give Me Rock 'n' Roll"), was cut at those Army Radio studios once Sadeh had joined. The sound owed more to hard rock and glam than to the Hebrew songwriter tradition that dominated the charts around them, and it arrived at the same time as Benzin, the other band Israeli rock of the early 1980s is usually measured by. The two were rivals and, by 1983, collaborators.

Three albums in three years, then a full stop in Beer Sheva

The debut album, Radio Hazak ("Loud Radio"), came in 1981 and sold more than 40,000 copies in Israel — a large number for the domestic market at the time. It took Band of the Year and Song of the Year, and it still supplies the backbone of the set: "Radio Hazak" itself, "Re'e Ota Hayom" ("See Her Today"), "Tiltan Poreach".

Tislam 2 followed in 1982 with the full six-piece in place. The third record, LeAsfanim Bilvad ("For Collectors Only", 1983), was less an album than a clearing of the desk: re-recorded versions and tracks made jointly with Benzin. By the time it was out the band was finished. They played their last show in Beer Sheva and announced the split on 23 October 1983, four years after forming and two years after their only genuinely successful album.

The members did not vanish. Ashdot became one of the more sought-after producers in Israeli music; Nitzani went into the business side and ran the Hed Arzi label. That divergence matters to the reunions — the people organising them were, by then, insiders rather than hopefuls.

The reunions that outlasted the band

The first return, in 1990, was the biggest. The band filled Israeli stadiums and put out the compilation Nagnu Achshav ("Play Now"), which went platinum and carried one new song: "Partzufa Shel HaMedina" ("The Face of the Nation"), a blunt piece of protest writing that has since become the most quoted thing they ever recorded and, by their own account, the last hit they released.

They came back again in 2002, briefly under the name Gold Fingers before reverting, and a Tel Aviv concert in January 2003 was released as the live album Or Shel Kochavim ("Light of the Stars"). A 2009 anthology added three new songs. In 2011 they played 30th-anniversary shows at Heichal HaTarbut in Tel Aviv. In 2018 a street in Makhmanim was named after the band.

Between those markers the pattern was modest: four or five summer shows a year, no new material, no pretence of being an ongoing concern. Ashdot said as much in 2020, when he described the band as something that had not made music together in a decade.

A dead manager, a lockdown single, and an orchestra

Two things restarted them. The death of their long-time manager Miron Richtman put the six back in contact; then the first coronavirus lockdown gave them time. On 7 April 2020 they released "Eize Olam Meshuga" ("What a Crazy World"), written and produced by Ashdot, with each member recording his part alone at home or in a personal studio. It was their first new song in more than a decade. Ashdot framed it as a test: if they could find a way to make music together again, he expected them to carry on. He also used the interview to talk about what the shutdown was doing to self-employed musicians in their thirties, who had neither savings nor pensions to fall back on.

The other engine has been the orchestral project. They played with the Raanana orchestra in 2015, filmed for television, and on 28 February 2023 appeared with the Israel Philharmonic at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv. The Philharmonic programme has now run three times, arranged and conducted by Ilan Mokhiach, working through the hits from Radio Hazak onwards. In 2024 the band also toured jointly with Yehuda Poliker. The result is a group that plays more now, and to more varied audiences, than it did in the years it was actually a band.

What critics make of the orchestral version

The most detailed recent assessment came in a January 2025 review of the Philharmonic show, and it was mixed in a useful way. The writer's judgement was that the six are not technical virtuosos and never were — what carries the material is the chemistry between them, which survived the transfer to a concert hall. Mokhiach's arrangements were heard as reaching towards Renaissance and Baroque figures and occasionally towards Tchaikovsky and Brahms, and the orchestra genuinely thickened the band's vocal harmonies.

The criticisms were specific. Some charts felt like rock songs being dressed up rather than an exchange between band and orchestra, Nitzani's Hammond B3 was barely audible against the amplification, and the whole thing needed more rehearsal time with the players than it had been given. The high point was "Partzufa Shel HaMedina", which the strings pushed towards something close to ceremonial and which read, in a room after 7 October 2023, as a song written about the present rather than about 1990. The verdict was a moving evening short of a finished one.

Where they stand at the end of September 2026

The current billing is the 45th anniversary, played by the original line-up, and 2026 has been the busiest year of the reunion era. They opened it at the Jerusalem Theatre on 20 January. On 9 February they played the main stage at City Winery in New York — doors at 6.30pm, show at 8pm, tickets at $114, the whole performance in Hebrew — on the back of the Philharmonic shows and a sold-out run at home. Then came Zappa Amphi in Binyamina on 12 June, the Sunset Festival in Rishon LeZion on 27 June, a return to the Israel Philharmonic at Habima Hall in Tel Aviv on 29 July, and a show at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem on 8 September.

Autumn is where the demand shows. The 1 October date at Beit Gabriel on the Kinneret, where they host Shalom Hanoch and Danny Sanderson, sold out. That leaves exactly one date on sale: Thursday 29 October 2026 at Theatre HaTzafon in Kiryat Haim, Haifa, at 9pm, from ₪189. No new album has been announced, and "Eize Olam Meshuga" remains the most recent release six and a half years on.