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VA Absence-Compilation of Iranian experimental music | Flaming Pines

VA Absence-Compilation of Iranian experimental music | Flaming Pines

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Flaming Pines is a label from Sydney and Belfast that fills up our ears with experimental and ambient lust….

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 middle east in general. This approach places artists exclusively
within the political context presented by the mainstream media, and only
shows you 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.



It would be terrifyingly ignorant to think that day-to-day politics in
Iran has no impact on artists, but on the other hand it is too
simplistic to see the wide range of artistic practices of Iranians
though this narrow context.



The tracks collected for this compilation are a perfect example of art
that is not “newsworthy”. And in this way they act as a gateway to the
ignored and overlooked landscape of experimental electronic music in
Iran. It is helpful to listen to all of the pieces in this compilation
in contrast to the established language of what is now an Iranian
musical mainstream. This 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 – a project which
is no less of an experiment than the music itself. 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.



What is the good of this absence? An endless world of exploration and
experimentation, a life of vast possibilities and new forms of cultural
and political resistance.



Siavash Amini, Tehran, Iran.

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