Musician and composer Sahba Sizdahkhani serves as a unique crossroad of East meets West. Influenced heavily by both 1960’s spiritual free-jazz and Persian Classical Music, he channels the fire-energy and longing for connectivity these two stormy histories represent. At age 12, his self-proclaimed “aha moment” occurred while listening to The John Coltrane Quartet for the very first time. He was hooked and immediately began studies on jazz drum set and classical snare drum.
     As the years passed, however, his ferocious love of jazz and improvisation would open pathways and pointers to his native roots of Persian Classical Music, and eventually, he would begin formal studies on the Iranian santur with master santur player Faraz Minooei.
     Sahba has completed two separate Bachelor of Arts degrees: one at Berklee College of Music, in Jazz performance, and the other at The University of Maryland, in Art History & Archeology. He worked in Paris for several years in textile design but ultimately moved back to New York city to further pursue jazz drumming.
He has composed film scores for Chelsea Winstanley (JoJo Rabbit), Whalerock Industries, maverick avant filmmaker Paul Clipson, as well as a live score performance for the Cinema 16 series in the legendary tunnel underneath the Manhattan Bridge.
Additionally, Sahba has recently recorded with Michael Morley(Dead C) and currently has running musical collaborations with Derek Monypeny, Rob Magill, and Zachary James Watkins + Ross Peacock.
He has shared live bills with a vastly diverse class of artists including Laraaji, C spencer Yeh, Susan Alcorn, Henry Kaiser, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Sunwatchers, Wizard Apprentice, Talibam!, Plankton Wat, Peter Brötzmann, and Don Dietrich (Barbetomagus). He has performed at The White House, Park Avenue Armory, Kennedy Center for the Arts, Basilica Hudson’s 24 Hour Drone Festival, WFMU live performance, “Fire Over Heaven” at Outpost Artist Resources, The Embassy of France, VOA studios, and Garden of Memory Festival at The Chapel of the Chimes.
Sahba’s hazy, atmospheric solo performances with 104-string santour and drums have been described as “a dispatch from antiquity.” And WIRE magazine recently stated “Sahba Sizdahkhani starts playing [his] instrument as if  he's pleading for his life. His playing is breathtaking. . .”
     This particular work, “GANJ,” which translates to “treasure” in Farsi, documents the magical first meeting between a musician and a new instrument. It is the first ever raw, unrefined recording of Sahba on solo santur as opposed to drum set. It was recorded in solitude during the Winter Solstice of 2019 without any prior training or study whatsoever on the mystical 102-stringed trapezoid dulcimer. The consequent emphasis due to lack of any technical skill,  was pure sonics, overtones, resonances, and an homage to minimalist composers such as Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and early Miles Davis. Days after completing this work, Sahba rushed to seek out formal studies of the Persian Classical Radif with his current teacher, Faraz Minooei.

Sahba Sizdahkhani- Ganj Pt. 4 - from Ganj tape on Cassauna

Ak’chamel continue their sonic assault on the false gods of neoliberalism with a stunning collection of unreleased tapes and miscellaneous recordings from their archives 2008-2012 buried under a mountain of tape hiss and dirt. Murky lo-fi soundscapes of deep psychedelic folk, Ak’chamel conjure a fourth world of radical exotica, a place populated by old ghosts, forgotten magic, and discarded fetishes. 

Check out our 24/7 online radio station here: https://www.radioisaforeigncountry.org/

Lo-Fi Shadow-Folk Sounds Buried Under a Mountain of Tape Hiss and Dirt  (RIAFC066)

Buddhist prayer machines and Hindu mantra or chanting machines are small plastic boxes resembling transistor radios that play various Buddhist and Hindu prayers and short music loops used for meditation. Found throughout India, China and Tibet, these portable, usually battery-powered, low-fi electronic devices are popular across the region. This mix features samples from these devices and the FM3 Buddha Machine brand, as well as a number of artists who manipulate them to create new sonic textures.    

TRACKLIST
17 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
3 Hani Pipa – Kink Gong – Voices (Discrepant)
18 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
Dry Valley – Sun City Girls (Staubgold)
16 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
Bp Simple – sunnO))) (Staubgold)
10 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
Center Of Excellence - Buddha Machine Commercial (Staubgold)
1 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
Little Yellow – Blixa Bargeld (Staubgold)
21 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
A Dragon Lies Listening – Alog (Staubgold)
24 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
3 Tietä Valojen Taa – Es (Staubgold)
Winged Life – Minit (Staubgold)
23 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
Layer 02 – Robert Henke (Staubgold)
12 – Chang Fo Ji - Buddha Machine Loops from China (Discrepant)
Random selections from Hindi mantra/chanting boxes

Buddha Machine Radio (RIAFC075)

Animist Records is an Amsterdam-based label specializing in outernational music from the southeast Asian diaspora and beyond. Curated by Olivier Schreuder, this mixtape features a collection of label releases and never-before-broadcasted field recordings made over the past 15 years throughout the region, including local ceremonies, festivals, markets, public announcements, masterclasses of legendary musicians etc. from Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Check out their website here: http://animist.store/. You can also find their released on their Bandcamp page here: https://animistsound.bandcamp.com/

TRACKLIST
01. Selling buddhist lucky cards at Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Burma
02. Apichat Pakwan – Improvisation (Live at Artistry, Singapore) (ANIMIST009)
03. Isan Folkmusic & Dance Graduation Concert, Khon Kaen University, Thailand
04. Tongmek Tabtanon Drumband – Mahasarakham, Thailand
05. Kantrum drumloops (ANIMIST010)
06. Megaphone-tape-loop in the market of Chiang Dao, Thailand
07. Megaphone-tape-loop in front of a shop in Yangon, Burma
08. Megaphone-tape-loop on a driving car in Mingun, Burma
09. Megaphone-tape-loop with public service announcement at Wat Arun, Bangkok, Thailand
10. Apichat Pakwan – Infinite Dub 1-6 (ANIMIST002)
11. Kantrum Dongman – Ajai Waeng (ANIMIST010)
12. Buddhist ceremony in Luang Prabang, Laos
13. Morkaen Sombat Simla playing Lai Lotfay Tailang – Mahasarakham, Thailand
14. Morphin Boonma Khaowong masterclass – Kalasin, Thailand
15. Phi Ta Khon Festival, Dan Sai, Thailand
16. Songkran song carried by the wind – Ban Non Muang, Thailand
17. Sarun-Ngon & Ven Cherk – Tampuon farming song – Ratanakiri, Cambodia
18. Yeak Lom Arts Group – Tampuon handicraft song - Ratanakiri, Cambodia
19. Khmer weddingmusic – Banteay Srei village, Cambodia

Animist Records: Southeast Asian Soundscapes and Folk Music (RIAFC088)

My first introduction to Sound Reporters was the mysterious and beautiful Amazonia 6891, a lush sound collage of field recordings and experimental electronic sounds, echoes, and waves, which we featured on an earlier mixtape (RIAFC025). Much later, quite by accident, I came across a spectacular field recording of frogs calling for rain in Mae Hong Son, Thailand (also featured in an earlier mixtape – RIAFC090). The field recording was made by Fred Gales, co-founder of Sound Reporters. We began corresponding and, thanks to good fortune (mine and yours), he agreed to put together a compilation of Sound Reporters recordings for Radio is a Foreign Country.

As you will hear in this curated mix, Fred is not only a prolific field recordists and musician, he is also an avid collector and student of the world’s music. (He does an amazing show called Klankbron on Concertzender Radio – Amsterdam, the Netherlands). It begins with Sail 85, a stunning 14-minute orgy of foghorns (recorded in the harbors of Amsterdam) combined with a thick atmosphere conjured up by synthesizers and other electronic sounds. This is followed by a series of raw field recordings from West Papua, Suriname, East & Central Africa, and southeast Asia. Enjoy!    

TRACKLIST
1. Sail 85, Plompentorengracht & Secret Journey – Fred Gales/Sound Reporters (Amsterdam)
2. Love Song of the Zongonau clan (West Papua)
3. Pieriemja tiero notamore panong – Yamore (Surinamese Caribs)
4. I am innocent – Wat Mon and group (North Uganda)
5. Ngbindi – Ngbanda and friends (Central African rainforest) 6. Teum Luang Namtha – Khammu Villagers (Laos)
7. Flirting – Tüpo (Northern Thailand) 8. Love song – Nai Lu Pang Le (Burma/Myanmar)   9. Winwong Sawet – Mae Buason Mueng Prao (Chiang Mai, Thailand)
10. Suffer and worry – Nang Sün Nay Lang (Northern Laos)
11. Luuk Kam Pla – Taw Bun, Taw Keo, Nang La (Laos) 12. A New Year Song and Talk with a Lady – Ha Paa (Northern Thailand)
13. Akha Love Song – Nang Meu Se, Nai Seto vocals (Northern Laos)

Sound Reporters, 1985-2022 (RIAFC098)

An immersive and head-spinning collage of radio broadcasts and field recordings made on location in Syria in 2007 by Jahmorinz. You’ll hear street and market sounds, muezzins, local radio transmissions, local dabke bangers, cats and frogs, a killer Omar Souleyman recording, the eerie groans of a noria or hydropowered wheel, and more.

Suonds from Sourya (RIAFC099)

with Foodman, KAKON 
        Babyfather?flammes
        Strange ways, Aum 
        Tortoise, A simple way to .... not work 
        Eurytmics, Julia 
        George Coleman, TRANSISTOR Radio 
        francesco Cavalere della lezion 
        steve pepe CRSTN 
        Hunlef, UP UP and away

akaphonica

This composite track consists of edits from many different Harry Bertoia compositions included in the Complete Sonambient Recordings box set available on Important Records.
This 11 CD box set contains a 114 page book. Digital downloads are also available directly from the label. 
Purchase the box physically or digitally here: 
http://importantrecords.com/


Harry Bertoia Complete Sonambient Collection - Composite Mix

First track of "A une Gorge" the debut album of Orgue Agnès (Sourdure - Clement Vercelletto and Èlg) 
Released by Three:Four Records, Standard In-Fi and A1000P
Recording and mix by Mim
Mastering by Julien Grandjean

Le Désert Est une Nonne - from "A une Gorge" LP

Podcast to support — Neo-Pastiche: Changes in American Music
April 25th - April 28th, 2019 | Asheville, NC
SEM Ensemble, Jeff Witscher, Sarah Louise, DeForrest Brown Jr., Eugene Chadbourne, Nick James Scavo, Petr Kotik, Shane Parish, Voice Training, Theodore Cale Schafer, Motown Willie, Phenoma, Anka, and more!

In Partnership with the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

http://neo-pastiche.us/

Neo-Pastiche: Changes in American Music is a critical musical gathering featuring presentations by living American composers and performers whose work comes from outside standard academic or popular music contexts. Bringing in a diverse group of musicians from around the country, focusing particularly on New York City and local Asheville artists, the festival will take place over the course of four days in April 2019 (April 25th -28th) at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center.

Neo-Pastiche: Changes in American Music will create a space for considering the work of living American musicians on the basis of shared sensibilities and methodologies across discursive and social boundaries of style, institutional affiliation, race, sex and age. Beyond positing what these shared sensibilities and methods might be, our mission is to provide an opportunity for inspiring musical experience outside of standard institutionalized discourse; our hope is that the festival encourages a consideration of American non-institutional musics propelled by those performers and audience-members participating in this event in a spirit of fun and criticality.

The program will feature musicians working under the headings of experimental music, both improvised and composed, electronic and computer musics, contemporary dance music, Appalachian string music, honky-tonk, speech and text based musics, video art, and more. The festival will take place in partnership with Western North Carolina non-profit organizations the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center and the Media Arts Project and UNC Asheville to provide public educational outreach surrounding our programming. In addition to musical offerings, panel discussions will be held by participants, food will be available and parties will follow our formal programming. In the spirit of Western North Carolina’s longstanding history as a point of inspiration and creative and collective self-determination, Neo-Pastiche: Changes in American Music hopes to invite a refreshed sense of what contemporary American music can be - where music can be engaged not only in terms of gallery art or popular culture, but also as a discursive field in its own right.

Festival Tickets

APOD0014 Jack Callahan & Alec Sturgis — Agave Expressionist Mix For Neo - Pastiche Festival

It makes less sense to say that Maths Balance Volumes formed in 2002 than to say that, since that year, they have been collapsing into something, again and again. Just as the three members fell together with no plan or allegiance to any style or genre, each track falls together as the broken pieces of songs and sounds meet to make a temporary and frightening whole. Things make their way into a Maths Balance Volumes song when they don’t or won’t work anymore, when they have escaped their owner, or hidden away where nobody is supposed to find them. When things fall together—when the wooden creaks and radio hisses gather for a minute alongside bass lines and melancholy voice—there is a beauty that sounds like it was made by nobody and for nobody.

The city of Mankato, Minnesota has been the steady gathering point for the band since its beginnings. Mankato had always provided an ominous backdrop: built on stolen Dakota land, the city was the site of the largest mass execution in US history, when 38 Dakota prisoners were hanged on in 1862 in a straightforward act of genocide. But in their music of the past twelve years, Maths Balance Volumes has made music in and of a hometown overshadowed and unsettled by its history, music for a world in which things have never been okay. Traditional American folk genres seep in at times, but never as the incarnation of a living popular culture—only as ghosts or unliving effigies.

A Year Closer tells us already in its title what its theme is: approaching death, time ticking away and getting closer with each track of the record. We are told in the first song that our protective mask isn’t working, warned by the storm clouds and a ticking bedroom clock in “Dark Skies.” We hear fears of death approaching in the sad words exchanged by lovers who see they will run out of time, or already have, as in “We Had Time” or the romantic lament of “When I Drink.” In “Work Last Monday,” all of life passes with cold automatism in an “office apartment,” as a narrator broods over early onset dementia, remembers the details of rituals for respecting the dead, and thinks of how a hole is opening up in reality itself. The singer of “Over the Hill” isn’t apparently afraid of growing older and becoming a “man,” but only leaks a few disjointed details of his plans for disappearing, collapsing, turning into a tree, and finding a home. “Angel of Mercy” tries to resurrect the Christian promise of a life after death, anxiously asking if anyone is up there waiting for us after the oblivion of this world. 

But these are just the moments when A Year Closer speaks in words clear and audible enough to be understood. The giddy, agitated voice of “The Price” speaks only to itself in a private language, hidden away in a tin can somewhere. Musically, A Year Closer is a series of pieces that make symphonies out of separate processes of decay and disappearance: unidentified cracking and creaking objects, broken equipment, and lost melodies that seem to have escaped other songs and wandered into the room looking for a place to hide. These are the moments that the listener of Maths Balance Volumes always knows are coming, waits for, and settles in temporarily for a moment of repose. Maybe this is the meaning of A Year Closer: while waiting for the worst, things come together, a “we” with no name but with a rhythm, a tenuous but definite harmony to share as the clock ticks. Even if, when the lights are turned on, it turns out nobody was there. - Paul Buchholz

Taken from PP48 A Year Closer LP coming soon

A Year Closer

Purchase

Maths Balance Volumes - Dark Sky

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Sound Reporters, 1985-2022 (RIAFC098)

RADIO IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY

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