Rayan Haïdar - Cities burn as we dream of a return (2026) Hi Res

Beirut-born, Paris-based multi-instrumentalist Rayan Haïdar arrives with CITIES BURN AS WE DREAM OF A RETURN, a profound meditation on displacement, longing, and the impossible distance between memory and its aftermath.

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.

Through ambient guitar, effects processing, and experimental techniques, Haïdar weaves melancholic tones with the contrasts that defined their hometown: beauty and turbulence held in the same breath. Layers of processed guitar drift and dissolve, building atmospheres that feel both tender and raw. The music exists in the space between presence and absence, between the physical place left behind and the emotional terrain that remains indelible.

CITIES BURN AS WE DREAM OF A RETURN is a document of dislocation and devotion, of the unbearable act of watching from a distance. It reminds us that home is not simply a location it lives in the heart. This album is a statement that people will continue to create and exist, regardless of the odds.