TONI GEITANI - Wahj

Chosen by the Guardian in January as its “Global Album Of The Month”, presented as a gateway into new frontiers of Middle Eastern music, “Wahj” is first and foremost a map of the stylistic coordinates explored by producer and sound designer Toni Geitani, a Lebanese artist born in 1992 and currently based in Amsterdam. Completed almost eight years after his debut “Al Roujoou Ilal Qamar”, “Wahj” rises from the physical and emotional rubble of a Beirut filtered through a lens that turns dramatic everyday life into sonic realism. The city, still scarred by the 2020 port explosion, mirrors a nation living through one of the worst crises in its history, marked by economic collapse, a severe humanitarian and health emergency, the constant risk of essential services breaking down, and an area of conflict in the country's south, along the border with Israel. Geitani's work thus stands as proof of how music can still prove essential in giving voice to troubled circumstances.

“Wahj” (which translates roughly as “splendour”) is a project that sets out to focus on what gets overlooked amid the rubble, on what survives and endures, using it to rekindle the fervour of resistance. The artist reflects on collapse as a lasting condition, urging us to look toward the light, imagining the future opportunities that might emerge, all while steering clear of the commercial lure of trendier ethno-ambient sounds.

Geitani depicts the aftermath of disaster and catastrophe by working through subtraction: he chooses every sound with pinpoint precision, shaping — filmmaker that he also is — a genuine film built from a succession of soundscapes, a fusion of experimental Arabic electronics, gothic-ambient and modern classical. The work springs from an inner fracture, generating a tension that smoulders slowly but steadily, never quite exploding.

The sonic framework is rarefied, almost ascetic; the electronic textures don't aim for immediate impact, preferring instead to creep under the skin before suddenly bursting into clamour, followed by pauses heavy with meaning. The melodies shun any easy device: when they surface, they're almost never consoling, appearing more like lines of flight grafted onto a crepuscular landscape, rendered in maqām and layālī modes. The writing, intensely emotional and evocative, favours suggestion over linear narrative, with structures that often stretch out, brushing against minimal dark-ambient territory.

Geitani never indulges in emphasis, not even in the most intense moments, and the result is remarkably cohesive — a monolith that draws its strength from the overall atmosphere rather than from individual tracks, enveloping the listener in both its shadows and its sudden flares. The electronic textures remain suspended between digital abstraction and a deep, almost ancestral melancholy, tracing a sense of metaphysical suspension through masterful handling of space: the sound doesn't fill the void, but rather shapes it.

There's no rush in these compositions: listeners are invited to immerse themselves in a flow where time stretches until it loses meaning altogether, an listening experience that demands dedication and total surrender.

Nia Ralinova's aching cello solo lends its melancholy mood to the opening track, "Hal", which weds modern classical, mournful chamber-pop and minimal electronics. "Ya Sah" and "La" intertwine Arabic tradition with electro-industrial whirlwinds, "Ya Aman" is a melodrama of distress that conjures devastated landscapes, "Fajr Al Khamees" a secular procession that lingers on mutilated bodies and countries without peace, as does "Tuyoor", only slightly soothed by the presence of Reeda Fneiche's female voice.

In "Sawtuka", in the touching "Ala Tughanni", in the chant-like "Shamsuki" the storytelling takes centre stage, with the voice claiming almost all the available space. The mournful "Wasla" and "2092" transmute their "traditional" elements by embracing electronics, while "Rawaydan Rawaydan" stretches out over unexpected jazz structures.

"Ta'Xud II" is the last gasp of a mutilated body lying helpless on the ground, "Fawqa Al Ghaym" a realistic emulation of a bloody battle, "Naltaqi" the harrowing final prayer, a thread of hope emerging amid the voice's soft inflections. A moment before the curtain falls on the spectral, apocalyptic notes of the electro-gaze crescendo "Madda Mudadda", the true added value of a record steeped in dark tension yet at the same time enveloping, through which Geitani challenges us to glimpse beauty amid the ruins, confirming the Lebanese scene as one of the most vital and necessary creative laboratories in the Mediterranean basin.

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17/02/2026