Aural Aggravation

Dragon’s Eye Recordings – 20th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The sad fact is that many of us have become somewhat numbed by the endless live rolling news of war in recent years. It’s easy to do when smoke and rubble and statistics are standard. In some ways, COVID – or more specifically, the media coverage of the pandemic – prepared us for it, by keeping us in isolation with only the TV and Internet to connect us to the outside world. As the numbers kept ticking up, as the number of deaths grew, so did our panic, but equally, so did our sense of distance. Unless we had directly lost a friend or relative, it wasn’t quite real.

And now, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the genocide in Gaza – it’s not a war – and its escalation to surrounding areas, plus in recent weeks Iran and the whole middle east exploding, our shock and alarm gradually becomes mutes by overexposure and – worse – for many, a lack of concern over something that’s so distant. There’s annoyance at rising prices, particularly of fuel, but little more: people go about their lives as normal and don’t give too much thought to what life must be like for the people living in these places – or how it must be to have friends and family in constant fear for their lives, what it must be like for those who have fled to witness the scenes and the news reports, and likely see a huge disparity between the versions.

Cities burn as we dream of a return gives pause for thought and to reflect on these things. He’s a Beirut-born, Paris-based multi-instrumentalist, and the album is described as ‘a profound meditation on displacement, longing, and the impossible distance between memory and its aftermath’.

As the accompanying notes detail, ‘The album began as home recordings in 2024 — fragments inspired by Beirut and the quiet melancholy that had always permeated Haïdar’s childhood place. Shortly after beginning work, the aggression against Lebanon escalated, and Haïdar found themselves in the surreal position of documenting their relationship to home while watching that same place be destroyed from afar. The recordings became inseparable from the violence unfolding in real time, each track absorbing the grief and anger of witnessing loved ones continually hurt with no ability to intervene.

‘As Haïdar entered 2025, they continued recording, carrying more grief and anger than when they had begun. What emerged is not simply an album about a place, but about the way we carry our homes and the people we love within us—how they become part of our interior landscape regardless of physical distance or destruction.’

In context, what’s perhaps surprising about Cities burn as we dream of a return is just how gentle it is. Each piece takes the form of a masterfully spun cloud of abstract ambience, the layers and textures twisting and merging and separating, a constant flux, as distant samples echo through the mists.

The tone does, however, shift somewhat as the album progresses. Although indistinct, the samples appear to convey a narrative of increasing anxiety, as do the titles. The title track’s serenity is broken by the sound of panicked voices, while ‘On people we once met and places we once saw’ is imbued with a heavy air of melancholy beneath its soft flow. With it comes the realisation that many of those people and many of those places either no longer exist, or are otherwise altered beyond recognition. Everything changes, everyone changes, but the difference between growth and progress over time, and absolute destruction is beyond compare.

‘At dusk, looking down’ draws the album to a close with an achingly haunting atmosphere and a sense of loss that’s difficult to define but nevertheless inescapable. The album’s six pieces are subtle, gentle, and comparatively sparse, and much of the emotion they convey is indirect and implied. Cities burn as we dream of a return is nuanced and contemplative, and quietly moving.

AA