ARTIST...: Sote
TITLE....: Sacred Horror in Design
YEAR.....: 2017
LABEL....: Opal Tapes
CAT.NO...: OPAL107
GENRE....: Electronic
TIME.....: 44:46
SIZE.....: 102,51 MB
QUALITY..: 320kbps/44,1kHz/Joint Stereo
ENCODER..: LAME
SOURCE...: WEB
RLS.DATE.: 2017/07/31
WEBSITE..: https://play.google.com
TRACKLIST
01) (06:46) Flux of Sorrow
02) (06:40) Boghze Esfahan
03) (05:03) Plural
04) (10:28) Plebeian
05) (08:17) Segaah
06) (07:32) Holy Error
What would Dariush Dolat-ShahiÆs Electronic Music, Tar And Sehtar classic sound like
if he had access to a Serge modular and digital applications in 2016 That notion is
beautifully answered in SoteÆs remarkable Sacred Horror In Design, which was produced
in Tehran, Iran as the sonic quota of an A/V collaboration with Tarik Barri,
commissioned for a performance at the 2017 edition of BerlinÆs CTM festival, and now
picked up for this special release by the excellent Opal Tapes label.
To more pertinently expand the question at the top; what if Dolat-Shahi had also come
up listening to hardcore, techno and modern electronic music Across six tracks that
idea unfolds in gloriously beguiling fashion, rendering 45 minutes of the classic
instruments - ancient forerunners of the ubiquitous guitar - sublimated into
flourishing vamps and diaphanous clouds of complex harmonics which reprise the beauty
of Dolat-ShahiÆs music, but with a more dynamic keen and microtonal glisten thatÆs no
doubt been inspired by the cultural restrictions of his home country, and also
resonates with the fraught ambiguity of our times.
ItÆs the latest and arguably most impressive example of SoteÆs creative renaissance,
presenting his definitive opus after a winding 15 years of work which has variously
turned up on Warp in the early æ00s, followed by a 7 years hiatus which saw him
return with the Xenakis-at-the-rave styles of Architectonic and Arrhythmia for
Morphine Records and Record Label Records, and a pair of staggering techno releases
for Ge-stell and Opal Tapes in Hardcore Sounds From Tehran [2016].
Opening with the wide-eyed, vaulted dimensions of Flux of Sorrow, incorporating
material from NOVA EnsembleÆs Seyle Ashk, to vacillate serene pastoral motifs with
panicked modular busts in Boghze Esfahan and the demented prangs of Plural, before
lashing out with the intense rave brainfloss of Plebians and sweeping us up in the
folk music advancement of Segaah, the meter-tearing Serge rushes of Holy ErrorÆ
provides a fitting, climactic closure to the albumÆs mind bending equations.
ItÆs hard to think of another artist who has so uniquely pursued a synthesis of
traditional and modern, sacred and arcane, with such vigour and vision in recent
years, and for it all to remain so compellingly coherent is strong testament to
SoteÆs sorely under-regarded brilliance.
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