Sote - Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran [CD]

'Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran' is an all electronic affair, harmonically maximalist, predominantly symphonic-synthetic, requiring active listening.
The making of this album was intentionally a very personal process, going into self therapy territory at times, interpreting the composer's contemplating mind dealing with tolerance, destruction, compassion, misery, grace and tyranny in an auditory manner.
Some pieces function as challengers of musical structural habits, provoking the short attention span culture, others present a problem-solution scenario, collectively via a neoteric noise aesthetic and detailed melodic weaving.
Ultimately, the objective was to engineer an assortment of works, awash with euphonic sound vivid in its essence, with a deep focus on various synthesis techniques within a compositional framework.

Dedicated to Peter Rehberg aka Pita

Music & Audio paintings: Ata 'Sote' Ebtekar
Mastering: Gabriel Dubois
Design: Mountain


Ata 'Sote' Ebtekar composes music with a deeply-held conviction that rules and formulas should be deconstructed and rethought. He alters musical modal codes from their original tonality and rhythmic tradition to achieve vivid, synthetic soundscapes. Over the last three decades, his work has been published by labels such as Warp, Sub Rosa, Opal Tapes, Diagonal, Mute and Morphine, among others. In 2018, he founded a new label called 'Zabte Sote', which focuses on releases by Iranian experimental electronic composers from around the globe.

Known for creating compositions that range from the delicate to the abrasive, using sounds both of acoustical and electronic origins, Ebtekar sees music as the expression of cultural habits in sound and anti-sound (silence). Seeking to expand such traditions he creates music that, while rooted in many cultures at once, belongs to none in particular. Sote's work deals with various blueprints, in particular his solo all synthetic music, his electroacoustic audio/visual group project, and his multi-channel sound installations.

Sote is on the jury panel of The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, and has created commissioned work for and performed at a.o. Berghain and CTM Festival (Berlin), Unsound Festival (Krakow), Cafe Oto (London), Jazzhouse (Copenhagen), TodaysArt Festival (The Hague), Bozar (Brussels), Ultima Festival (Oslo), Donaufestival (Krems), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Mira (Barcelona), Terraforma (Milan), and many more.


Sote - Selected Discography

Sote - MOSCELS/ Opal Tapes
Sote - Parallel Persia/ Diagonal
Sote - Parallel Persia Remixes Mark Fell & Rashad Becker/ Diagonal
Sote - Sacred Horror In Design/ Opal Tapes
Sote - Hardcore Sounds From Tehran/ Opal Tapes - Sub Rosa
Sote - Hyper-urban 20 30/ Ge-stell
Sote - Arrhythmia/ RLR
Sote - Architectonic/ Morphine
Ata Ebtekar & Mazdak Khamda/ Sonic Within - 333 Rec/Digitalis
Ata Ebtekar & The Iranian Orchestra For New Music - Ornamentalism/ Sub Rosa
Ata Ebtekar & Alireza Mashayekhi - Persian Electronic Music - Yesterday
& Today/ Sub Rosa
Sote - Dastgaah/ Dielectric/RLR
Sote - Electric Deaf/ Warp