Farbod Biglari is an Iranian composer, singer-songwriter, and guitarist currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Deeply rooted in the lyrical richness of Persian language and shaped by his background in cinema and theatre, Farbod’s artistry is a seamless blend of East and West. His music draws heavily from jazz, experimental sound textures, and poetic storytelling, all while maintaining a strong sense of emotional authenticity.
Currently pursuing academic studies in jazz, Farbod brings a thoughtful, improvisational sensibility to his craft, enriching his musical palette through formal training and a highly personalized creative vision. His performances, including solo voice-and-guitar sets at Vancouver Community College, highlight his ability to transform songs into intimate emotional experiences. Farbod is a performer who sees each track as a moment lived, a memory captured, not to remain trapped in the past, but to allow healing and movement through sound.
His album “Nightmare”, released on May 13th, 2025, stands as a stirring testament to his deeply introspective approach. Known as ‘Kabous’ in Persian, the project is a quiet storm of unresolved feelings and drifting memories. Sung entirely in Persian, the album explores the terrain of emotional fragility, personal conflict, and the silent pull of memory. What makes this release especially powerful is the rawness of its execution, recorded with minimal equipment in a modest studio and composed entirely by Farbod himself. Rather than aim for sonic perfection, he embraces the imperfections, allowing ambient noise, breathy vocals, and natural reverb to play a vital role in constructing an immersive, cinematic atmosphere.
Lyrically and thematically, “Nightmare” is rooted in love, loss, and unresolved feelings. There is no attempt here to present clean narratives or satisfying resolutions. Instead, Farbod invites the listener into his inner world, a space shaped by heartbreak, memory, and the ache of what once was or what might never have been. These are not songs to dance to, they are songs to sit with, to reflect upon, and to feel deeply. Through this approach, the album becomes a universal emotional language, transcending its Persian lyrics to reach hearts regardless of background. The album’s production process is deliberately sparse and intimate, capturing single-take vocals and guitar lines that bleed with emotional immediacy. The post-production phase in Vancouver didn’t polish away these imperfections but rather enhanced them, treating the songs as if they were unfinished memories, shifting, incomplete, and tinged with longing.
Nightmare Album Track List:
My Past:
The album “Nightmare” opens with the evocative track “My Past,” immediately immersing the listener into Farbod Biglari’s world of introspection and quiet emotional unrest. The song begins unassumingly with the soft click of drumsticks, a gentle invitation into a soundscape that is both raw and intimate. Anchored by a delicate acoustic fingerpicking pattern, the track establishes a warm yet somber foundation over which Biglari’s vocals unfold. The lyrics carry a poetic weight that resonates beyond language, channeling a nostalgic ache that sets the tone for the rest of the album. There is a sense of emotional excavation at play here, as though Biglari is revisiting moments buried deep within memory, fragments that continue to haunt and shape his present.
Farbod Biglari’s vocal performance on “My Past” is a study in emotional precision and restraint. His voice is soft and unguarded, hovering just above the acoustic instrumentation with a trembling quality that suggests confession rather than performance. Rather than striving for technical perfection, he leans into the raw edges of his voice, allowing its vulnerability to carry the emotional weight of the track. Each phrase is delivered with measured fragility, making the silences between lines feel as meaningful as the lyrics themselves.
What makes “My Past” such a compelling introduction to “Nightmare” is its ability to convey emotional depth through minimalism. The arrangement resists any urge to embellish, allowing the acoustic guitar and voice to remain front and center. This stripped-back approach creates a spacious, reflective environment where every note and nuance is given room to breathe. The result is a track that feels timeless and deeply human, inviting listeners to sit with their own memories and silences. In its quiet honesty, “My Past” serves as a powerful entry point into Farbod Biglari’s album, laying the emotional groundwork for the deeply personal and cinematic journey that follows.
Café:
The third track on Farbod Biglari’s “Nightmare”, titled \”Café,\” unfolds like a quiet whisper in a dimly lit room, offering a delicate moment of stillness within the album’s emotional landscape. Built around a minimalist structure, the song leans into simplicity to create its power. A soft, melodic foundation holds the space gently, inviting listeners into a scene that feels both real and imagined. The light brush of percussion subtly joins the mix, adding a heartbeat-like rhythm that mirrors the ambient hush of a quiet café. Rather than driving the song forward, this rhythmic touch lingers in the background, suggesting time suspended in reflection.
Biglari’s vocal delivery in “Café” is restrained and deeply intimate, as if speaking directly to one person in the room while the world moves on unnoticed. There is a softness in his voice that evokes the feeling of unspoken thoughts and memories unfolding behind the eyes. His phrasing is quiet but emotionally vivid, carefully shaped to blend with the track’s understated mood. He crafts a space that transcends language, allowing the listener to feel the story even without understanding the words. Each note carries the subtle weight of a remembered conversation, or the ache of a thought that never found a voice.
As a part of the album’s broader emotional journey, “Café” serves as a reflective pause, a solitary moment where external noise fades and inner dialogue takes center stage. It evokes a cinematic stillness, conjuring the image of someone sitting alone in a café, surrounded by the low hum of life but lost in their own quiet world. The track captures the melancholy of isolation, not as emptiness but as presence, the kind that makes a person acutely aware of their thoughts, surroundings, and longing. Through its understated beauty, “Café” becomes one of the album’s most poignant moments, reminding listeners that even in silence, there is profound meaning.
Leap Year:
The sixth track on Farbod Biglari’s “Nightmare”, titled \”Leap Year,\” descends Into one of the album’s most emotionally intense and shadowed spaces. Centered around a slow and somber piano motif, the song breathes with a deliberate heaviness, each chord falling like a weighted step through memory and sorrow. The piano does more than provide melody, it anchors the emotional tone, carrying a sense of inevitability and quiet desperation that underscores the track’s thematic weight. Sparse in its arrangement, the song leaves room for silence and stillness, allowing the listener to sit with the emotional fatigue and lingering ache that define its core.
Biglari’s vocal performance in “Leap Year” is marked by a deep and trembling restraint, a kind of grieving whispered between breaths. His delivery suggests someone caught between holding on and letting go, with each word delivered as though it costs something to speak. The trembling nuance of his voice blends seamlessly with the minimal instrumentation, making every phrase feel intimate and intentional. Ambient textures gently swell and recede in the background, never overpowering the piano or vocals but adding an ethereal depth that pulls the listener further into the track’s cinematic melancholy. Time seems to stretch across the song, as if each moment is suspended in the tension of something unresolved.
“Leap Year” explores the concept of time not as a healer, but as a silent witness to unchanging grief. In Farbod Biglari’s hands, the leap year becomes a symbol of emotional limbo, a space where time moves on but certain feelings remain untouched, frozen between days. The minimalism of the track serves to magnify its emotional resonance, drawing attention to the quiet devastation within its lyrical and musical phrasing. As part of “Nightmare”, this track deepens the album’s exploration of inner turmoil and memory, offering a stark, poetic meditation on absence and the ache of waiting for something that never arrives.
Nightmare (Instrumental):
The final track of Farbod Biglari’s “Nightmare”, titled \”Nightmare (Instrumental),\” closes the album with a gentle, wordless reflection that carries the emotional weight of everything that came before it. Stripped of vocals, the piece shifts the focus entirely to mood and atmosphere, using ambient textures and subtle melodic fragments to convey a quiet sense of release. There is a softness in its construction, as if the music itself is whispering the last lines of a story already told. The pacing is unhurried, moving with the natural rhythm of breath, allowing the listener to absorb the emotional journey of the album in its aftermath.
Unlike the emotionally charged, lyrically rich tracks that precede it, “Nightmare (Instrumental)” speaks through absence. Its layered sounds drift in and out like fading memories, each one hinting at a feeling or moment without defining it. The use of space is especially powerful here, as silence becomes part of the composition, giving the track an open, meditative quality. It feels less like a resolution and more like a gentle landing, a place where emotions are no longer questioned or fought, but simply observed. This subtle shift in tone signals the end of a long emotional night, suggesting peace not through answers, but through acceptance.
As the album’s closing statement, “Nightmare (Instrumental)” offers a fitting conclusion to a deeply introspective and emotionally raw body of work. It does not attempt to tie every thread together or deliver a dramatic finale. Instead, it invites the listener to remain in that space of quiet contemplation, where the echoes of memory and feeling can continue to resonate. In this sense, the track serves as both a coda and an open-ended pause, reinforcing Farbod Biglari’s gift for emotional storytelling through sound. It leaves behind a lingering sense of stillness, the kind that follows after an intense emotional journey, making it a poetic and evocative end to the album.
Musically, the album leans toward acoustic folk and soft rock, with ambient textures adding a dreamlike haze. There is an intentional patience in the way the songs unfold, allowing every nuance to be absorbed slowly. The album never rushes; it breathes, lingers, and leaves room for silence, giving the listener time to process and connect. The real triumph of “Nightmare” lies in its emotional clarity and artistic honesty. The music does not chase trends or conform to commercial expectations. Instead, it honors the tradition of storytelling through melody and mood, presenting each song as a scene from a forgotten film. Farbod treats every track like an emotional still frame, haunting, unresolved, and deeply personal. The effect is cinematic yet grounded, abstract yet intimate.
Nightmare is a Raw, Persian Album That Blends Ambient Folk And Emotional Minimalism Into A Haunting, Cinematic Experience.
Ultimately, “Nightmare” is a masterfully restrained debut from an artist with a clear vision and a deeply personal voice. In many ways, “Nightmare” is less a collection of songs and more a cohesive emotional diary. Farbod Biglari has not only crafted a moving album but also carved out a distinct space in the landscape of Persian and experimental music. In a world often obsessed with polish and perfection, “Nightmare” offers a rare invitation to sit with vulnerability, to embrace imperfection, and to feel every lingering echo of a song that refuses to be forgotten.
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