(10.31.06) Sote is for sure the most puzzling artist I’ve ever come across. His single on Warp had been a shock, those devastating breaks with overloaded distortions seemed extremely hardcore when I wasn’t into breakcore yet, and keep on scaring me now. A few years later I receive this Dastgaah, and it’s a totally different story.
The man behind Sote, Ata Ebtekar, is Iranian, he has lived for years in San Francisco and now is back in his native land, so he wisely chose to re-invent Persian and Iranian folk music modifying traditional instruments and voices with heavy experimental electronics. If the first couple of tracks sound indeed oriental, with recognizable melodies and voices, track from 3 to 8 (no titles, sorry) are spooky, creepy digitalized nightmares filled with hisses, echoes, growls, shrieks, creating something really alien and unsettling. This gives you the same uncomfortable feelings of those electro-acoustic albums released some time ago on Rephlex, like Robert Normandeau or Peter Green. You know that what you’re listening to is based on organic sounds and samples, still you can’t recognize them but only feel their human nature beneath thick layers of processing. Track 9 finally brings some sunshine with what I’d describe as dripping sitar to give you a rough idea, although the sitar is probably not Iranian (what are these instruments called, anyway?). The final tracks relieve some of the fearsome pressure, but in my mind this is frankly a frightening record; deep, obscure and exotic. Terrific piece of work, seriously recommended, a bit hard to digest but extremely rewarding if not for the packaging alone.
Dastgaah is out now on Dieelectric/Record Label Records. Buy it at Amazon.com
