Deriving from an eponymous audiovisual performance, this electroacoustic project by Sote (Ata Ebtekar) blends
traditional music from
Iran with hardcore electronics.
Unusual colour and complex microtonality found in the classical music of Iran / blurts of noise, sour tones, and a vaguely technoid or dubwise impression expose the inner rhythm and counterpoint embedded in this strummed music / emotional, mathematical and polyrhythmic principles underpinning Persian music, the record reveals a dramatic blend of acoustic Persian instrumentation and contemporary electronics.
Sote aims to devise an idealised fusion of the musical heritage and tradition of Iran with the forward-thinking vision which has propelled his storied career producing techno, hardcore and computer music for labels like Warp, Ge-stell, Morphine and Repitch.
Now living in Tehran, his music has frequently grappled with the strict cultural restrictions imposed in his country over the past few decades, finding a space and setting to nurture new developments in experimental sound and performance.
Working with Arash Bolouri who plays the santour (Persian hammered dulcimer), and Behrouz Pashaei on the long-necked, four-string setar, Sote frames and responds to their traditional artistry. On occasions he directly manipulates the music emanating from their ancient instruments, cultivating and thickening up a surreal and beautiful tonality plucked from their strings with a series of processing techniques, but mostly each track is a peaceful arrangement and partnership, Sote electro-acoustically augmenting their movements within his own cybernetic framework.
Ata Ebtekar aka Sote (born 1972 in Hamburg, Germany, lives and works in Tehran, Iran) is an
electronic music composer and sound artist. In the past 20 plus years, his music has been published by various companies, such as Warp Records,
Sub Rosa, Digitalis, Morphine, Opal Tapes plus others. Global cultural exposure through transmigration has been a significant stimulant for his aesthetics. Sote's goal is to create unique and timeless pieces of music that are not available anywhere except in his mind.
His compositions and multi-channel installations are sonic tales synchronously decoding and regenerating customary pattern of thought in nature; aural designs of crisis and harmony where contempo aligns with folklore, orchestrating an artificial saga with a variety of illuminations and analyses. His passion for all music especially, all forms of electronic music, and his extensive involvement in the sound art academia world, has led him to compose in a wide variety of musical styles with a strong emphasis in electro-acoustic techniques, microtonal systems and polyrhythmic motifs. He has a firm conviction that rules and formulas must be deconstructed and rethought; hence he alters musical modal codes from their original tonality and rhythm (tradition) to achieve vivid synthetic soundscapes. In order to accomplish dynamic expression on electronics, gesture and texture, he employs various synthesis languages and dsp techniques in a modular sound environment. Ata “Sote” Ebtekar believes that music is a cultural habit of sound and anti-sound (silence). Therefore, he generates music without a specific culture, which he believes to be “the other sound.”
