Temp Illusion - Autolected (Side A)

Ixuol - Abstraction In High Fidelity
Tape / Digital (Zabte Sote - ZS003)
Released April 12th 2019

“Abstraction in High Fidelity” is the new album by Ixuol (Arastoo Darakshan), an artist whose complex electronic work draws inspiration from western composition and traditional Persian music, specifically the micro tuning of the Santur and Ghanoon instruments. The music, while entirely synthesised, shows an ear for beautifully subtle timbral and performative changes, blurring the lines ever more of the computer as an instrument. 

The tracks compiling the A side of “Abstraction…” are selected and arranged cohesively with their focus on melodic phrases and a warmer more introspective aesthetic. Side B is colder, more enigmatic and directly synthetic in quality. It’s barren sound design and dislocating rhythmic ideas force away the embracing warmth of the previous side making this an album of binary feeling. Ixuol admits that his music does not directly reference any current social or international situations but that such feelings do operate subconsciously. It is this obfuscation of information, emotion and passion behind the blinking light of the screen which is perhaps the driving force here. A music both inspiring, beautiful and occasionally harrowing, saturated within a subconscious of intelligent feeling for our world.

Ixuol - Mekanizm Deux

“Abstraction in High Fidelity” is the new album by Ixuol (Arastoo Darakshan), an artist whose complex electronic work draws inspiration from western composition and traditional Persian music, specifically the micro tuning of the Santur and Ghanoon instruments. The music, while entirely synthesised, shows an ear for beautifully subtle timbral and performative changes, blurring the lines ever more of the computer as an instrument. 

The tracks compiling the A side of “Abstraction…” are selected and arranged cohesively with their focus on melodic phrases and a warmer more introspective aesthetic. Side B is colder, more enigmatic and directly synthetic in quality. It’s barren sound design and dislocating rhythmic ideas force away the embracing warmth of the previous side making this an album of binary feeling. Ixuol admits that his music does not directly reference any current social or international situations but that such feelings do operate subconsciously. It is this obfuscation of information, emotion and passion behind the blinking light of the screen which is perhaps the driving force here. A music both inspiring, beautiful and occasionally harrowing, saturated within a subconscious of intelligent feeling for our world.

Abstraction In High Fidelity

Ixuol - Hold

Rojin Sharafi - Urns Waiting To Be Fed
Tape / Digital - Zabte Sote - ZS004
Released September 6th 2019

An abstract music that narrates. Makes you form your own image from the event, story and built up history.
Elements turn into characters, characters into myths, myths live together, grow, react and go their paths. The paths that surprise you. The beauty of uncertainty and the beauty of parallel lives.
Couldn’t guess where they are going to lead you; in each track and in the whole album. You follow and they chase you.

Harsh and mellow or Soft and hysteric. Folklore elements and microtonality of traditional instruments mingle with synthesisers and electronic defamiliarised sounds; electronic produced elements which sound acoustic and acoustic elements, which sound electronic. The origin of sounds varies but they form their own village and history together. We witness it.

Rojin Sharafi (b. 1995, Tehran) is a sound artist and composer of acoustic, electro-acoustic and electronic music based in Vienna.

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Rojin Sharafi - A Barrel Of Monkeys

Nima Aghiani - Convergence Zone
Tape / Digital - Zabte Sote - ZS005
Released September 6th 2019

"Convergence Zone" is about that moment of impact, of clash, of mergence; the acceptance or the rejection of instruments, machines and devices as an expansion to one's body. The extension of one's body into an object, or into a machine capable of making decisions, to a point where it's a new interaction and no longer a mere utilisation. How far can the body expand into the machine and how deep can the machine penetrate the body, where does this growing stop and what are the limits; which one dominates and which one submits.
Tehran-born, Paris-based Composer/Violinist, "Nima Aghiani", is one-half of the duo "9T Antiope” with SarrSew.     
                                                                       
He tries to design his sonic world by constantly juxtaposing divergent musical elements and atmospheres, using acoustic instruments, sound synthesis, noise, and field recordings, which allow him to create the high-contrast colour combinations and textures present in his works.

Nima Aghiani - In The Flesh

Temp-Illusion is an experimental electronic duo consisting of Shahin Entezami (Tegh) and Behrang Najafi (Bescolour), both natives of Tehran, Iran.

PEND’s soundscape deals with assembly of carefully designed sonic micro structures that ultimately result in an artificial macro environment of hard electronic funk, taking the listener from a meditative to a hyper demented state.

Artist Statement:

For a long time, our lives have been controlled by the decisions of other people in other times. It’s been years that the news about the probability of an impending war go through our eyes and ears as audio and visual signals, infiltrate the brain, create stress and fear, which travel through the body. Fear engulfs the body unknowingly and you can see its effects on behaviors, conversations, lifestyles and mental states. 

This situation takes over the society, ruins the economy and brings devastation. It seems that using media as a war weapon is a more tempting strategy and a better looking facade for the gore-mongers. As this weapon is used more and more, is the border between truth and lie still recognizable? Has anyone ever estimated how much destruction is caused by a simple piece of news about the escalation of tensions between two countries and the possibility of a war? Aren’t the devastating consequences of war such as death, destruction, poverty and disease the same as the consequences of living with fear and stress in the suspension and dread of war.

In general, isn’t a piece of news about the possibility of war, an act of war itself?

Temp-Illusion - Caustic Surface

Temp-Illusion is an experimental electronic duo consisting of Shahin Entezami (Tegh) and Behrang Najafi (Bescolour), both natives of Tehran, Iran.

PEND’s soundscape deals with assembly of carefully designed sonic micro structures that ultimately result in an artificial macro environment of hard electronic funk, taking the listener from a meditative to a hyper demented state.

Artist Statement:

For a long time, our lives have been controlled by the decisions of other people in other times. It’s been years that the news about the probability of an impending war go through our eyes and ears as audio and visual signals, infiltrate the brain, create stress and fear, which travel through the body. Fear engulfs the body unknowingly and you can see its effects on behaviors, conversations, lifestyles and mental states.

This situation takes over the society, ruins the economy and brings devastation. It seems that using media as a war weapon is a more tempting strategy and a better looking facade for the gore-mongers. As this weapon is used more and more, is the border between truth and lie still recognizable? Has anyone ever estimated how much destruction is caused by a simple piece of news about the escalation of tensions between two countries and the possibility of a war? Aren’t the devastating consequences of war such as death, destruction, poverty and disease the same as the consequences of living with fear and stress in the suspension and dread of war.

In general, isn’t a piece of news about the possibility of war, an act of war itself?

Pre-Order Tape / Digi

Temp-Illusion - Nankraws

Temp-Illusion - Pend is out now on Zabte Sote - https://zabtesote.bandcamp.com/album/pend
https://soundcloud.com/temp-illusion

Temp-Illusion surfs through hip-hop and electronics in this mixtape for Rinse France, invited by Marylou to her radio show. Merci beaucoup!

DJ Krush – ロムロムの滝 Romromnotaki feat OMSB (00:00)
Bogdan Raczynski – 332 23t422 (02:54)
Brothomstates – Qtio (03:48)
Kindohm – RISC chip (05:20)
Funkstorung – Wu-Tang Clan - Reunited (Reunixed By Funkstorung) (07:24)
Autechre – V-Proc (08:36)
Grischa Lichtenberger – 0406_01_RS_! (11:42)
Byetone – Plastic Star (Alva Noto Rmx) (14:04)
Techno Animal - Bass Concussion (16:53)
 Milanese – Peggy Flynn III (20:26)
 Ryoji Ikeda – Data.Matrix (23:10)
 AOKI Takamasa - Rn3-09 (28:15)
 Ø – Heijastuva (31:26)

Temp-Illusion - Mixtape For Marylou (Rinse France)

Pouya Ehsaei is an Iranian musician, audio-visual artist and performer currently residing in London. Beside his solo sound projects, he is involved in different collaborations with dancers, performers and other musicians.

He is also the composer and bandleader of “Ariwo”, with whom through improvisation and real-time processing, he explores the possibilities of Afro-Cuban rhythms and melodies mixed with electronic percussive noises, hypnotic modular patterns and psychedelic atmospheres.

RocRast plays with our perception of time. How experiencing time leads to sensations, feelings, emotions and how these become the matter that is sound. RocRast seeks to strike an image behind the eyelids. A mass of sound floating in the air, getting in and out of focus. A grumbling tunnel with bursts of fractal shapes. A stranded village, sandstorm, creaking door, drops of water. Or perhaps it strikes an image of a figure flickering in red light, broken and deformed, strumming a broken instrument that never sounds right. RocRast is about nothing, nothing but that window of time when you’re listening to it. It is a malleable mass that can be heard and seen from multitudes of angels. How melancholic, brutal, calming and disturbing it sounds, depends on your experience in the moment, there and then. 

Rocrast’s tracks are all recordings of live performances played on an all-hardware setup with a modular synthesizer at the centre. There has been minimal editing and post-production. This is partly dictated by the continuous aspect of these tracks which made time jumps impossible; and partly in an attempt to be true to the actual moment of these performances. 

Composed by Pouya Ehsaei
Mastered by Nima Aghiani
Artwork (Drypoint on Card Paper) by Aylar Dastgiri
Design by Arash Bolouri

ZS007

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Pouya Ehsaei -  Rocrast #22

Arash Pandi is an experimental electronic musician, sound designer & teacher from Rasht in northern Iran, currently based in Denmark. In his music, he experiments with Iranian classical music through programming microtonal systems, improvising and using various sound synthesis and audio production techniques, to achieve his particular form of 'Persian electronic music’.

Artist Statement:

We live in a world of paradoxes created by humans.

We take care of some animals, while enjoy feasting on others.

We're destroying millions of hectares of rainforest each year, to create pasture for beef cattle.

We have created the largest mass extinction in 65 million years.
Every hour, We kill millions of livestock for food, while 1/10 of our population still live in hunger.

We exclude immigrants and refugees from our societies, forgetting who provides services to us, who does the hard physical labour, who cooks our late night food.

We ban social gatherings to protect our citizens from virus infections, while keeping others densely confined in camps and prisons.

These facts are easy to understand but hard to remember. Living life with respect to all cohabitants of this planet, somehow seems familiar and understandable, but the actual 'doing' of it seems eccentric for many; a discrepancy between what we know and how we act. 
Sounds and tunes in this album too, carry elements that would seem familiar to an Iranian ear, set in a sonic environment that plays with the experience of familiarity and exoticness. They call the listener to question their own "origin" in relation to unfamiliar forms.
These pieces express my thoughts and feelings towards our destructive and 'non-pervasive' consumer culture and our socio-political systems, accompanied with visual story telling in live performances.

Exotic Paradox is an attempt to explore and reflect on new possibilities in electronic music and sound design in a non-western musical system.
A blend of generative algorithms, composed & improvised materials, has developed a 'sonic creature' implanted with Persian rhythmic and melodic motifs, noise and synthetic sound textures. 

Programming, composition and production: Arash Pandi
Mastering: Nima Aghiani
Cover photo: Golara Sajadian
Layout: Arash Bolouri

This album is partly from a live A/V project developed by Arash Pandi (audio) and Morteza Ghahremanian (visuals).

ZS008

Arash Pandi - Chargah

Rojin Sharafi is a sound artist and composer of acoustic, electro-acoustic and electronic music based in Vienna. She has been working on different multimedia art projects and has been collaborated with different musicians, Ensembles, filmmakers, video-artists and performers. Her music passes the borders of genre, while borrowing some elements from different epoch and classes such as Noise, Folk, Ambient, Metal and contemporary music. Fusion texture, narrative layers and formalistic approaches are her musical trademarks.

Her creation process and pre-production include: studies on concept, searching and collecting sound material, improvising with instruments in a group or in solo, working on the texture, experimenting with form and sketching the structural process, recording in studio and realizing the final production.

She was born in 1995 in Tehran. She is currently studying sound engineering and composition at university of music and preforming art Vienna.

ZS009

Rojin Sharafi - Boloor

SAHAB is a musician and painter from Fresno, USA who spent his childhood between Yazd, Tehran and Northern California.

This self-titled debut for Zabte Sote is his seventh album, which is a collection of songs he has written, produced and recorded since 2016.

He mainly uses three synthesizers for all of his work, which are the DSI Prophet 08, ELEKTRON Analog Keys & TEENAGE ENGINEERING op-1.

Written, produced, recorded and mixed by SAHAB
Mastered by Nima Aghiani
Drawing by SAHAB
Layout by Arash Bolouri
SAHAB logo by Frank Sanchez

ZS010

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