Taken from Saint Abdullah's To Live A La West CD available via Imprec.com

Every new St. Abdullah record is an attempt to present new ideas and To Live A La West is no exception. Spread out over a CD on Imprec and a cassette on sister label Cassauna, To Live A La West is simply moving, a collection of profound and spiritual tracks miraculously existing at the impossible intersection of free jazz and electro where mystery and clarity exist together. Neither complicated or complex but profound, St. Abdullah’s new work is partially inspired by their love for Jon Hassell’s compositions. 

This CD is packaged in a heavy duty digipack with metallic gold printing. Guest appearances by John Butcher and Aquiles Navarro.

Saint Abdullah  - Like A Great Starving Beast (feat. John Butcher)- from To Live A La West CD

Machina

A new work form Mo H. Zahreei.

"More than a decade ago, I made a piece of beat-based electronic music and titled it "Middle Eastern IDM" for a course assignment. After listening to it in class, my professor asked what was Middle Eastern about it. It was only a year after I had left Iran to study in the US, and I didn't know that I could say "I am. I made the piece". So I went back and superimposed a sample of Egyptian protest chants on top of the piece, to make it "sufficiently Middle Eastern".

What prejudiced conservatism and performative liberalism share are gatekeeping practices that box one in a preconceived state of otherness. While the former overtly regards that otherness as inferior, the latter exoticises it through patronising paternalism. To me, it is especially troubling when exclusionary practices are driven by some form of overzealous "diversity and inclusion" agenda. If you don't fit the diversity box they've made for you, too bad. It's your fault for being "insufficiently diverse". "Poor thing, you've been colonised!", they tell you, as they claim ownership over a collection of frequencies and rhythms. When you look at who gets to decide if something's indigenous enough, you see how decolonisation itself has been colonised.

When you listen to this piece, I'm very happy for you to keep in mind that it was made by someone from Iran. But I might need to clarify that this piece has nothing to do with sufism and the whirling dervishes, the interweaving patterns of the Persian carpet, the poetry of Rumi, or Islamic architecture. And if you hear those moments of "non-western" sonorities, that is because I have constructed this piece from samples of a piece of Iranian traditional music – an overplayed piece that was all over TV and radio while I was growing up Iran, one that I never found particularly inspiring or interesting. Here, I have tried to make it more interesting by completely taking it apart and reconstructing it through my personal compositional techniques, aesthetic preferences, and a wide range of musical influences. So in short, while this piece might not sound like your archetypical Iranian music, I assure you that it is Iranian enough."

Mo H. Zareei aka mHz is an Iranian sound artist and electronic musician based in Wellington, New Zealand. Using custom-built hardware and software, his artistic practice aims to highlight the beauty in the basics of sound and light production and reductionist audiovisual elements that draw inspiration from physical and architectural principles. He has exhibited his work at international venues such as ISEA (Montreal/Vancouver/Dubai), SETxCTM festival (Tehran), NIME (London), Modern Body Festival (The Hague), ICAD (New York), and NZ Festival (Wellington), to name a few. His installation “Rasping Music" was the recipient of the 1st prize for Sound Art at the last iteration of the international Sonic Arts Award in 2015 (Italy). 

Under the moniker mHz, Zareei’s electronic music projects have been published via LINE (US), Important Records (US), leerraum (CH), and Kasuga Records (DE).
-------

head to www.pyramidclub.org.nz for more.

Made with the support of Creative New Zealand

Proof Of Identity - MHz

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Kamran Sadeghi @ The Lot Radio 03 - 24 - 2022

Available via Imprec.com

Mo H. Zareei (mHz) returns to Imprec/Cassauna with Proof Of Identity, an album of pulsating, pattern-based electronic pieces that evolve in ways reminiscent of Steve Reich's early work or Philip Glass' Music In 12 Parts. With Proof Of Identity, Zareei confronts issues surrounding identity and authorship in composition specifically when created by non-Western musicians. He simultaneously tackles orientalism and the normative take on identity politics. 

Artist's Statement: 

More than a decade ago, I made a piece of beat-based electronic music and titled it "Middle Eastern IDM" for a course assignment. After listening to it in class, my professor asked what was Middle Eastern about it. It was only a year after I had left Iran to study in the US, and I didn't know that I could say "I am. I made the piece". So I went back and superimposed a sample of Egyptian protest chants on top of the piece, to make it "sufficiently Middle Eastern".  

What prejudiced conservatism and performative liberalism share is gatekeeping practices that box one in a preconceived state of otherness. While the former overtly regards that otherness as inferior, the latter exoticises it through patronising paternalism. To me, it is especially troubling when exclusionary practices are driven by some form of overzealous "diversity and inclusion" agenda. If you don't fit the diversity box they've made for you, too bad. It's your fault for being "insufficiently diverse". "Poor thing, you've been colonised!", they tell you, as they claim ownership over a collection of frequencies and rhythms. When you look at who gets to decide if something's indigenous enough, you see how decolonisation itself has been colonised.

When you listen to this piece, I'm very happy for you to keep in mind that it was made by someone from Iran. But I might need to clarify that this piece has nothing to do with sufism and the whirling dervishes, the interweaving patterns of the Persian carpet, the poetry of Rumi, or Islamic architecture. And if you hear those moments of "non-western" sonorities, that is because I have constructed this piece from samples of a piece of Iranian traditional music – an overplayed piece that was all over TV and radio while I was growing up Iran, one that I never found particularly inspiring or interesting. Here, I have tried to make it more interesting by completely taking it apart and reconstructing it through my personal compositional techniques, aesthetic preferences, and a wide range of musical influences. So in short, while this piece might not sound like your archetypical Iranian music, I assure you that it is Iranian enough. 

bio

Mo H. Zareei aka mHz is an Iranian electronic musician, sound artist, and researcher, based in Wellington, New Zealand. Using custom-built software and hardware, his experiments with sound cover a wide range from electronic compositions to kinetic sound-sculptures and audiovisual installations. Regardless of the medium, Zareei’s work aims to highlight the beauty in the basics of sound and light production and reductionist audiovisual elements that draw inspiration from physical and architectural principles. Over the course of his PhD, he developed a portfolio of works focused on the intersections of sound art and Brutalism. 

Zareei has presented his work at international venues and festivals such as ISEA (Montreal/Vancouver/Dubai), SETxCTM festival (Tehran), NIME (London), Modern Body Festival (The Hague), ICAD (New York), and NZ Festival (Wellington), to name a few. His installation “Rasping Music" was the recipient of the 1st prize for Sound Art at the last iteration of the international Sonic Arts Award in 2015 (Italy).

Under the moniker mHz, Zareei’s electronic music projects have been published via LINE (US), Important Records (US), leerraum (CH), and Kasuga Records (DE).

mHz - Proof Of Identity (Part I) - Tape

Frank Bretschneider - bring.hopes (super.trigger)| Clark - Ted (Body Riddle)| Pan Sonic - Current 1. (Katodivaihe)| Múm - Við Erum Með Landakort Af Píanóinu (Loksins Erum Við Engin)| Kangding Ray - Odd Sympathy (OR)|  Loscil - Nautilus (Submers)| Télépopmusik - Breathe (Genetic World)| Pan American - Het Vol (Quiet City)| Ametsub - Precipice Drive (All is Silence)Atom™ - Stop (Imperialist Pop) (HD) |  CocoRosie - Tekno Love Song (Noah's Ark)| Alva Noto - Haliod Xerrox Copy 1 (Xerrox Vol.1)| Byetone - Capture This (Part I) (Death of a Typographer)| Byetone - Capture This (Part II) (Death of a Typographer)

Mixtape Vol. 1

All 30 beats from my 30 Day Beat Challenge

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Day 5

Very happy to present Hadi Bastani's debut double album Emergence 'a hazy ballad of a refugee and a travelogue' charting his exile from Iran to Belfast, and subsequent re-connection with his homeland through composition. Words from Hadi are below. Album design by Amir B Ash. 

"emergence was formed within a feedback system that began as I made contact with composers, producers, coders, and artists in Iran whose works and words formed the basis of my academic research. The research was a way to rediscover the space I had left behind and the bridges that were burnt, through practices and imagination of individuals with whom I had shared memories without having met most of them. In these ways this work exists as a hazy ballad of a refugee and a travelogue. It is an aphasic narration of my journey from a sunny nowhere to a rainy bunker in Belfast. It is my story, one of an Eastern nomad finding refuge in Western academia, only to reimagine musicking in the alleys of my distant home. As such, this collection is both an impulse within the resonance chamber of Iranian experimental electronic music and the resonance of its diverse and colourful impulses. It is also a diary that anachronistically narrates the different stages of this journey. It brings together a host of field recordings, found object recordings, live improvisations, recycled sounds, synthesis, and voices, produced in Tehran and Belfast over the span of 10 years. It is an escapist soundscape that is meant to mark a period, stain it with sounds, and materialise it through composition. It is a dialogue between two times, places/spaces, cultures, modes of doing, thinking, and sociality. Since each of these are multiple, emergence too is a heterogenous assemblage. It is a playful engagement with conceptual and physical objects and memories. It is a musical album carefully curated for Flaming Pines, whose presence within the Iranian scene has been a passionate and nurturing one."
-- Hadi Bastani, May 2020

impulse | resonance from Emergence - Hadi Bastani out June 5

Pre-Order via Imprec.com or eleh.bandcamp.com 
Will ship for a July 3 release date
Each tape purchase comes with a digital download

Recorded 2015 - 2019
Mixed March - May 2020

Three introspective compositions full of contemplative, emotional ambiguity and time stopping focus. Side B contains the full program backwards.

ELEH’s Home Age series was composed and recorded over a period of 5 years and it reflects a search for color, form, connection and growth.

ELEH - VIII - From Home Age III Cassette - Pre-Order Available

CHIASMA is a prototype, representing the initial results of my project on composing with genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation. 
Genetic algorithms provide means of numerical and combinatorial optimization by generating more promising ideas from a specifiable set of components and processes. Individuals of an initial population with a random set of genes “mate”, and produce “offspring”, which would evolve under the process of natural selection over the course of generations.
CHIASMA uses an intelligent machine listening system to evaluate fitness values of generated individuals, by using fast Fourier transform as its translation method. The initial population is created from two random arrays, representing their random genomes. They mate to create offspring with the successful traits highlighted. Each chromosome array is compared to the target one through a simple linear distance function. individuals would then have an importance weight factor, used as a multiplication value when added to the mating pool, to assure that more desirable genes are passed on to the next generation. A mutation rate of one percent is considered to increase the chance of fit individuals being generated.
The research project focuses on employing the process of genetic evolution as the composition structure, as changes in parameters of the algorithm such as allowed population per generation, mutation rate, search environment, lifespan, etc. influence the events and speed of the system reaching its target. 

The algorithm is written in Supercollider.

Artwork by Arash Akbari
Mix/Master by Remmy for Duality Sound Lab

CHIASMA

Parākandeh-Rooz
Atour X Taraamoon
Part of Encounters
Lyrics by: @Sara-Bigdeli-Shamloo @Taraamoon
Mixed and Mastered by: @Nima-Aghiani
August 2020, Divar Records

پراکنده‌روز
آتور و ترامون
دیوار - تیر ۹۹
از پروژه‌ی «برخوردها» از آتور

متن
-----

آفتاب، پای باختر نرسید
تیره‌ی شب، عاقبت سر نرسید

تنها بود؛
ساتن دستارش پروا بود،
دلهره پیدا بود
می‌باخت.

روز،این گرداب سرد

پاره‌ی درد، تا ابد سر نکشید
لیق چشمش، تا به آخر نکشید

تنها بود،
معطل فردا بود

می‌باخت، به عقب برمی‌گشت؛
آوار.

بیزار، پی آخر می‌گشت این‌بار

Encounters

Atour X Taraamoon - Parākandeh-Rooz | پراکنده‌روز

Mo H. Zareei aka mHz is an Iranian sound artist, electronic musician, and researcher based in Wellington, New Zealand. Using custom-built software and hardware, his experiments with sound cover a wide range from electronic compositions to audiovisual installations. Regardless of the medium, Zareei’s work is particularly targeted at the point where noise meets grid-based structures. He has exhibited his work at international events and festivals including ISEA (Vancouver and Dubai), NIME (London), ICAD (New York), ICMC (Perth), Modern Body Festival (The Hague) and Wellington Lux.

Zareei’s sound-sculptures have been featured on Streaming Museum, Creative Applications and Creators Project. His installation “Rasping Music” was the recipient of the 1st prize for Sound Art in the Sonic Arts Award 2015.

Zareei holds a BS in Physics from Shahid University of Tehran and a BFA in Music Technology from California Institute of the Arts. He recently completed his Ph.D at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where he currently is a lecturer in Sonic Arts.

Mixtape Vol. 1

mHz

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