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LP
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OPAL 179LP
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What were the skies like when you were young? These days, asking that question likely conjures disappointment in its answer. Dreams of possibility hardened by certainty. Hopes and prayers jet-cooled to brittle acquiescence. A lingering feeling that this is not what we asked for, not what we worked towards. Promises of the future replaced by sins of the father. It is in this particular light that the latest work, Moscels, by Iranian artist and musician Ata Ebtekar, also known as Sote, arrives on Opal Tapes, British label for the sonically curious and aurally disaffected. Contrary to potential expectation, it features no rhythmic exhortations, no colloidal outbursts, and no acoustic instrumentation of any kind. Synthesized entirely from physical models and oscillators, whose union gives the record its name, Moscels is a haunting, beautiful, and auspicious listen. None of Ebtekar's work comes necessarily easy to the listener, but Moscels is suffused with a sense of wonder almost childlike in quality, and so it beckons kindly.
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LP
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DIAG 054LP
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Pivotal Iranian artist Ata Ebtekar mounts a head-buzzing debut for Diagonal, pushing microtonal tunings and timbres into mind-bending geometrical designs that echo the modular synth and strings formulæ of Dariush Dolat-Shahi for Smithsonian Folkways, but keen much deeper into noisy, uncanny valleys of modernist perceptual exploration. Parallel Persia presents the latest iteration of Sote's restlessly searching sound which has been in action for 30 years now. Commissioned for an AV performance at Donau festival in 2018, the album is a natural extension of his stunning Sacred Horror In Design LP, feeding classical Iranian music tropes into a computer and modular synths to diffract and detach their meaning and operation, open them up to strange possibilities of electro-acoustic practice in the process. But more than ever in Parallel Persia, his focus turns from percussion to tonal relationships, combining various synthesis techniques and instrumental recordings at the service of a holistic voice and "locked timbre", or more simply a poetic way of uniting his sounds into a brilliant aural energy. As Ebtekar explains, "Conceptually, Parallel Persia deals with the illusion and creation of an artificial hyperreal culture manipulated and controlled by an imperious agency somewhere within all galaxies. Like all realities, greed and arrogance channels destruction of life. However, the path to havoc includes resistance via beauty, grace and symmetry. Snapshots of an apocryphal Iran is presented via sonic schematics for a synthetic 'Meta-Persian' experience. This experience can be in our present-day life or maybe somewhere else somehow differently in a parallel world..." In this surreal noumenal space, Sote triggers a series of beguiling chain reactions that resonate throughout each track, with electronic frequencies modulating the acoustic and vice-versa in a dizzying and mathematically sound "euphonious complete whole". Here, the tar and santur initially sound like themselves in "Modality Transporter", but by the end of this opener they are transformed into ribboning tendrils of extruded electronics, and continue to morph in fascinating ways, joined by unearthly voices in "Brass Tacks", and pulled into bittersweet taffy on "Atomic Hypocrisy", while utterly upending our proprioceptions in "Trans Force", and ancient-futuristic chants and dance rhythms working in parallel dimensions to Rashad Becker in "Pipe Dreams", until he's speaking in a purely singular language of unique intonation and shatterproof, beatless rhythm on "Pseudo Scholastic". RIYL: Dariush Dolat-Shahi, Marcus Schmickler, Florian Hecker, Parsa. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering. Edition of 500.
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12"
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GESTELL 004EP
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Sote, the moniker of Tehran-based producer Ata Ebtekar, presents Hyper-urban 20 30. The EP aligns hardcore techno with computer music tropes, displacing form and convention while reimagining the in-between spaces between East and West, present and future. His pieces in Hyper-urban 20 30 are sonic tales which synchronously decode and regenerate customary patterns of thought - electroacoustic designs of crisis and harmony orchestrating an artificial saga. For Hyper-urban 20 30. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. 150 gram vinyl. Comes in full color jacket with gloss varnish finish designed by Joe Gilmore and Cameron Shafii.
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LP
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DOSER 024LP
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Morphine continues to take us there, this time with Iranian producer, Sote, with a full album. Architectonic focuses on studies in techno patterns and aesthetics from a maximalist musical perspective, without employing orthodox beats. The focal rhythmic element is achieved with programmed pitched sounds via FM, Physical Modeling and Additive synthesis methods in a modular environment. These aural components that withstand spectral and formant filters, as well as other signal processing units, form harmonies and melodies that interchangeably act as the structural groove. The outcome is occasionally polyrhythmic, aiming for a common-time feel and vice versa. Interwoven patterns and complex ornaments within a pliant grid form a diametric functionality of loop-based trance-inducing music, and require active listening. This is a paradoxical ode to noise and techno progressing further.
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