Absence is a new compilation of Iranian experimental music organized by Flaming Pines proprietor Kate Carr, and curated by Arash Akbari — who also contributes its second track — with a particular ear to highlight Tehran’s ambient scene.
The opening contribution and accompanying liner notes are from of Tehran-based Siavash Amini, who writes regarding western coverage of “Middle Eastern” music at large; “Faced with the task of writing about artists from Iran it is tempting to oversimplify and go with the easiest way to address them — the way most western media has always treated art coming not just from Iran but from [the] Middle East in general. This approach places artists exclusively within the political context presented by the mainstream media, and only shows you…
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…the day-to-day politics of governments in the region. This biased approach means artists’ works are only interpreted in relation to a reduced conception of the political context. By seeing things this way you only have a handful of artists addressing certain issues with enough exaggeration to be newsworthy.”
What’s clear is that this framework obscures enormous common ground, enormous potential that, it is heartening to see, occasionally tapped into with results as varied and enjoyable as Absence. As a testament to fundamentally Iranian-work, it speaks to real gaps in how we each imagine our distinct pasts and shared future.
Before the beautifully buried payload in the compilation’s fourth track, “Headless,” a contribution from Hesam Ohadi’s Idlefon project — featuring Kamyar Behbahani, and originally released with an EP in 2015 via Chicago’s Tympanik Audio — it’s hard to parse something so specific as national identity from individual tracks. How does a 21st century Iranian accent their music? How should they? How could they? To that extent, the entire compilation is stalwartly cosmopolitan. Considering Siavish Armani’s notes, as well as how popular certain Arabesques are as a signifier for exoticism in some contexts, the ambiguity seems conscious, even distinct to their social project.
More from Amini though: “The Iranian mainstream is not that disconnected from the global mainstream, and the philosophy, politics, and the lifestyle this manifests. The mainstream in Iran is not only what the government endorses but it also consists of very shallow imitations of various musical genres, cleared of any signs of cultural or political resistance, backed and released by private labels and companies . . . The artists presented here, including myself, are people who are constructing our musical language as part of our lives… We are the voices who choose to be absent from the news and the musical mainstream (and in some cases from the city of our birth) in order to express the complex range of emotions and ideas which make up our lives, as honestly as we can.”