Grief is a great generator of art. Breakups have inspired countless celebrated songs and albums, as has the death of loved ones. The combination of the two can be overwhelming. Lebanese musician Ralph Chbeir tackles pain in an understated way on Brief Encounters, a collection of intimate recordings whose tenderness is all the more affecting for their unguarded quality.
The album opens in an almost celebratory mood with “July”, its luminous synth lines lifting the spirits, while fragile, quivering notes hang suspended in the early morning light. “Together We Dance In Circles” introduces a distinctly Middle Eastern inflection, grounding the music in a sense of place, giving geographical coordinates to an inner grief that is simultaneously abstract and precise, universal and local. It seems to echo the olive-tinted photograph on the cover, depicting a dilapidated barn or shed behind a wire fence. “Godspeed, lover” is a whispered farewell to a departed love, the wound still raw but without bitterness. The sound is soft yet unpolished, with a momentary glitch towards the end left intact.
On the lengthy “It’s Been So Long That I Don’t Even Recognize You Anymore”, numbness takes over. A circular drone evokes the exhausting process of replaying a relationship’s final days, returning endlessly to the same questions, searching for a decisive moment or a single explanation where none may exist. The piece fades away suddenly, as though the process has finally exhausted itself. “Mimosa” brings a welcome lightness, with something of the ephemeral beauty of sunlight refracted through glass panes and a cold breeze entering through an open window. There is tenderness here, but also the peculiar desire to preserve pain because it remains inseparable from the memory of love, wanting to remember every minute of it until the end of one’s days.
“As Long As We Touch Limbs”, carried by a warm organ and fuzzy environmental sounds, suggests domestic intimacy and the almost sacred reassurance of home. Everything will be alright. The closing “Embrace”, with its soft piano notes and sketched melodies, extends that feeling of consolation.
The sound palette is richer and smoother than on Chbeir’s earlier recordings, although the bass guitar remains an important presence. Gone is much of the fuzz-driven abrasion of Ready for War, Blessed with Peace (2023), with its declaration of a “sonorous end to a teenage life in Beirut” and the youthful conviction that love could rage forever. Equally absent is the resigned pessimism of Falling Is the Essence of a Flower, which closed with “The Myth of Humanity Has Expired”, its sonorous riff eventually giving way to an extended, unadorned drone.
There is something particularly moving about the way Brief Encounters allows its emotions to remain exposed, without attempting to resolve every contradiction or smooth away every imperfection. The music seems to acknowledge that the desire to hold on and the need to let go can coexist, sometimes within the same fragile melody.
One is reminded of Laura Jesson in David Lean’s Brief Encounter: “This can’t last. This misery can’t last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long.”
To learn more about the album, I had a brief encounter online with Ralph Chbeir.
You describe Brief Encounters as “a breakup album between who I was, who I am and what remains”, which makes the breakup sound wider than the end of a particular relationship. How did that idea develop while you were recording the album? Did making these pieces change your understanding of what exactly you were grieving — a person, a former version of yourself, a place, or some combination of these?
Brief Encounters came from a very vulnerable point in my life, which I could not really understand at the time. The grief was bigger than the joy, and with it came a sort of numbness or mental fog.
In order to fix a problem, you first have to identify it.
Recording these songs was a way for me to lay everything on the table, materializing the grief in order to have the ability to look outwards and understand what exactly I was feeling and why I was feeling it.
It was a way of coping and survival really, and by the end it helped clarify things for me. It wasn’t just about the sudden absence of a partner and the death of my grandmother, It was the loss of the person I was when I was with them.
There is a recurring physical vocabulary in the titles: “Together We Dance In Circles”, “Godspeed, lover”, “As long as we touch limbs” and finally “Embrace”. The music itself often behaves in similarly relational ways, with sounds approaching, overlapping, recurring in altered form and separating again. Were you consciously translating ideas of intimacy and loss into the way sounds interact, or did that connection become apparent afterwards when you assembled the record?
Well I usually start with the title to give myself some sort of ground on what I want to exorcise, but the sounds that come from that are from a subconscious / intuitive state. At the time of recording each track, I had no clear direction not really knowing where I’m headed and an “album” wasn’t really the intention, but in January of this year, I started gathering the material that was recorded from October 2024 to August 2025, and It appeared to me almost legible and continuous in essence.
You call these recordings “hometapes”, and almost the entire album was recorded, composed and performed at home between October 2024 and August 2025, then left rough-mixed and unmastered. What did recording at home allow you to capture during that period? And why was it important to preserve the recordings in this relatively unfinished state instead of returning to them later and polishing them?
I call these recordings “hometapes” and not an album because they were not meant to be listened by anyone other than myself. I didn’t promote it neither have i talked about it with other than with a few people. Recording at home allowed me to be as vulnerable and intimate as I could be at the time and it wasn’t really much of a conscious decision because I never really intended to do anything with the recordings other than help myself go through a rough patch in the only way I know how. When I assembled it, It felt like my work was done and I had to get rid of it as quick as possible, to let it out into the world so it’s no longer mine and I don’t carry the burden of it anymore. Re-working them later on meant that this state would linger for longer and I couldn’t afford to go back to that emotionally. I had to move on to something else.
Your relationship with Tunefork Studios runs through two of the Land compilations: “Together We Dance In Circles” appeared on Land 01, where it was mixed by Anthony Sahyoun and mastered by Lopazz, and you later contributed to Land 03 (أرض ٠٣): A Compilation for the Displaced in Lebanon. Displacement is also one of the words you use to describe Brief Encounters. How do these different contexts connect for you? Did contributing to the Land series affect the way you thought about displacement in your own music, and does the word refer primarily to Lebanon and the upheavals around you, or also to something more personal — relationships, places and different versions of yourself?
My work is always based on my own status quo, and not so much on the external world. Of course everything is a product of it’s environment, being in a country at war where people have had to leave their homes, loved ones and sacrifice so much, definitely has a huge affect on my being and wiring.
These recordings came from a time where I was leaving my parent’s house after the losses I had to endure because It was a place that reminded me of intimacy that had been taken away from me and I had to step into life on my own within new walls.
Since writing this review and conducting the interview, Chbeir has released another album, Familiar Grounds, on Rupture, in which he appears to revisit similar concerns. The pace remains unhurried, with the music allowed to expand and breathe.
Titles such as “Every Sweet Thing Must Come to an End” and “Mono no aware” point once again towards a bittersweet awareness of the impermanence of all things. Yet there is a quiet acceptance of life’s transience, a faith in the silver lining on the horizon depicted in Nour Debian’s artwork, where a goat gazes pensively into the distance, seemingly embodying a sense of gratitude for life’s simplest pleasures. The image also brings to mind Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat, with its allusions to the Day of Atonement described in the Book of Leviticus, although the mood here is one of contemplation rather than desolation.
The album closes with the long-form “And in Those Days a Whirlwind Carried Me Off the Face of the Earth”, where low frequencies and darker tonal shades gradually envelop the listener. Yet rather than feeling oppressive, they offer an unexpected sense of warmth and consolation. (Gianmarco Del Re)
