Chosen by the Guardian in January as “Global Album Of The Month”, presented as the gateway to the new frontiers of Middle Eastern music, “Wahj” represents primarily the map of the stylistic coordinates expressed by producer And sound designer Toni Geitani, Lebanese, born in 1992, currently living in Amsterdam. Completed almost eight years after the debut “Al Roujoou Ilal Qamar”, “Wahj” arises from the physical and emotional rubble of a Beirut filtered through a lens that transforms dramatic everyday life into sonic realism. The city, still marked by the explosion that occurred in the port area in 2020, is the mirror of a nation experiencing one of the worst crises in its history, characterized by economic collapse, a serious humanitarian and health emergency, the continuous risk of interruption of essential services, and an area of conflict in the southern part of the country, close to the border with Israel. Geitani's is therefore a work that establishes how necessary music can still prove to be in giving voice to problematic situations.
“Wahj” (translated into Italian as “splendour”) is a project that intends to focus on what is overlooked in the midst of the ruins, what survives and persists, using it to reawaken the fervor of resistance. The author reflects on collapse as a lasting condition, urging us to look towards the light, imagining the future opportunities that could emerge, keeping ourselves distant from the commercial temptations of the most fashionable ethno-ambient.
Geitani represents the consequences of the disaster, of the catastrophe, working by subtraction: he chooses each sound with millimetric care, modeling – he who is also a director – a real film, built on the succession of soundscapes, a fusion of experimental Arabic electronics, gothic-ambient and modern classical. A work that arises from an internal fracture, creating a tension that burns slowly but steadily, without ever fully exploding.
The sound system is rarefied, almost ascetic, the electro textures do not seek immediate impact, they prefer to insinuate themselves under the skin, and then launch into sudden crashes, followed by pauses full of meaning. The melodies avoid any easy expedient: when they emerge, they are almost never consolatory, they rather seem like lines of escape grafted into a twilight landscape, rendered in maqām And layālī. The writing, highly emotional, evocative, favors suggestion over linear narration, the structures often tend to expand, with passages that border on dark-ambient minimal territories.
Geitani never indulges in emphasis, not even in the most intense moments and the result is of great cohesion, a monolith that finds strength in the overall atmosphere rather than in the individual episodes, enveloping the listener both with its shadows and with the sudden ignitions. The electronic textures remain suspended between digital abstraction and a deep, almost ancestral, melancholy, outlining a sense of metaphysical suspension through the masterful management of space: the sound does not occupy the void, but rather tends to shape it.
There is no rush in these compositions: the listener is invited to immerse himself in a flow in which time expands until it loses meaning, a listening experience that requires dedication, total abandonment.
The poignant cello solo played by Nia Ralinova gives the mood melancholic to the opening track, “Hal”, which marries modern classical, plaintive chamber-pop and minimal electronica. “Ya Sah” and “La” intersect Arab tradition and electro-industrial vortices, “Ya Aman” is a melodrama about hardship that visualizes devastated landscapes, “Fajr Al Khamees” a secular procession that lingers on mutilated bodies and countries without peace, as also happens in “Tuyoor”, barely soothed by the presence of the female voice of Reeda Fneiche.
In “Sawtuka”, in the touching “Ala Tughanni”, in the chanting “Shamsuki” the story takes center stage, with the voice taking over almost all the available space. The painful “Wasla” and “2092” transmute the “traditional” parts by welcoming electronics, while “Rawaydan Rawaydan” extends over unexpected jazz structures.
“Ta'Xud II” is the last gasp of a mutilated body lying defenseless on the ground, “Fawqa Al Ghaym” the realistic emulation of a bloody battle, “Naltaqi” the heartbreaking final prayer, a thread of hope that emerges among the soft inflections of the voice. A moment before the curtain falls on the ghostly apocalyptic notes of the crescendo electro-gaze “Madda Mudadda”, a true added value of a record full of dark but at the same time enveloping tension, through which Geitani challenges us to see the beauty among the ruins, confirming the Lebanese scene among the most vital and necessary creative laboratories in the Mediterranean basin.
02/17/2026
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
