Cities Burn As We Dream Of A Return is a lament, something we get from listening as opposed to knowing anything about the author here. When we do know, the backdrop of senseless war and a city in flames is none other than Beirut, the former home of Ryan Haïdar, who has since relocated to Paris under the threat of said attacks.

The fourth track, “On people we once met and places we once saw”, things begin to sound suspiciously organ-like. For a moment,  I thought it was the soundtrack to Carnival of Souls (1962) running along. A few bass notes round out the picture, but the album is quiet, an elegy not for a person but a place, and the desire to keep its memory alive.

Distant voices can be heard, but otherwise the album is mostly a listless, familiar wash of higher frequency “ambience”. It should be approachable, but the absence of non-experiential content means that all is open to projection, sometimes wildly. It is not for me to say what Haïdar is experiencing or experienced, but without the usual textual ephemera, listeners will not stand a chance of knowing either.  The music is its own thing, and this is a parlance all-too-familiar these days. A guitar and some nifty effects can give you instant mood. This is just one aspect among many, and given the biography, the elaboration beyond that was wanting.

Fans of quiet, guitar-processed ambience should definitely find something rewarding here, albeit nothing spectacularly new. For more