Tony Elieh - Sighs – آهات (2026)

On Sighs, Tony Elieh deploys chopsticks, metal balls and silicon rods spun by an electric toothbrush alongside occasional electronics to expand the textural possibilities of the electric bass guitar.

Created after Elieh moved to Berlin from Beirut, the record documents turning points personal and musical. From a poor background, Elieh had to make pragmatic choices to shield his family from poverty. In Beirut he worked in marketing for a decade until depression pushed him to escape and become a photographer. Outside day jobs he was a member of post-rock band The Scrambled Eggs as well as other projects around Beirut. In 2020, he won a life-changing residency from Berlin’s Academy of the Arts.

“The album’s title reflects a sigh of relief,” Elieh relates. “At being able to quit my job and focus on music. And, for my family - we moved from Beirut following the catastrophic 2020 nitrate explosion. Things seemed to be getting worse there.”

Elieh had played in Berlin before moving there. He already knew players in the Echzeitmusik scene. Living in the city allowed him to become fully immersed, to not only be inspired by its free-improvisors and experimental musicians, but to begin collaborating with them. His extensive discography tracks the relationships he’s built. But on Sighs, we hear him expanding his personal vocabulary for the bass guitar, integrating into this new community while retaining a voice that’s resolutely his.

The record marks Elieh’s second solo release and his first since moving to Germany, following 2017’s It’s Good To Die Every Now And Then (Al Maslakh Records). Sighs is a single, malleable composition that responds to context when performed live. The version here, separated into individual tracks for this release, was captured in a single take at Elieh’s Berlin home in 2023, recorded by friend, collaborator and fellow Lebanon expat Mazen Kerbaj (‘A’ Trio, Sawt Out) using a portable recorder and a few mics.

On opener “Tantana طنطنَ”, propeller-like rhythms circulate on a transfixing precipice between machinic drones and burbling pointillism. “Unẓuru ilayna naḥtariq أنظروا إلينا نحترق” slips into a more percussive mode, chimes, clicks and rattles taking a clock-like gait. Hints of melody emerge but they remain elusive, closer to wind instruments than bass guitar.

While his compositions use extended techniques inspired by free improvisation, Elieh suggests the ecstatic Arabic tradition of Tarab also subtly influences his music’s gradual forms. “In Tarab you have these pieces with repetitive rhythms and long melodies,” he explains. “Growing up in Lebanon I was surrounded by it. You’d hear it on the street, on TV, it’s hard not to be influenced by Tarab.”

Sighs is patient, but not sedate. Energy surges and accumulations of tension give shape and dynamics; the electronic twitches on “Sadh madh سدح مدح”, or how “X rhythm” equally evokes a river and metal debris animated by sympathetic resonance. The music lets sounds reveal themselves and allows us to absorb the coruscating timbres. But it’s also impelled by dynamics of action and reaction, Elieh’s almost sculptural compositions flexible enough to afford room for scintillating improvised interventions.