SOTE

Ministry of Tall Tales

Genre: ELECTRONIC

MP3
FLAC
WAV
LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Properly advanced gear from Ata Ebtekar aka Sote on a politically barbed, aesthetically mindbending album for SVBKVLT following a string of mazy and magnificent releases for a whole ruck of noted labels since his debut for Warp over two decades ago. Made out of xenharmonic santour chimes and itchy polyrhythms, it’s a fully a hypnotic, bewildering reflection of the world's corrupt sociopolitical systems that taps into the same curious goo that triggered our obsession with Theo Burt’s unfathomably brilliant ‘Gloss’ album, as well as foundational/conceptual work by 0PN.

Sote is an artist who's equally comfortable rustling up jet-engine hardcore deconstructions as he is unpicking traditional folk and classical motifs; his last album 'Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran' re-evaluated tinny '80s digital sounds and bombastic themes, but this new one swings in a different direction, using synths to recreate familiar Persian instruments that teeter between the real world and science fiction. Musically, it's not a million miles from 2019's massively underrated 'Parallel Persia', but where that album matched Ebtekar's artificial instrumentation with real santour and human vocals, here the producer works with just synthesis, challenging our perceptions of reality to suggest the bias and corruption that underpins the flow of (dis)information.

As always, Ebtekar shifts from crystalline beauty into rampaging, ear-scraping clangor. The momentum lends the album a character that's transfixing from the start; crafting sound that's been carefully developed to paint out a complex portrait of a confusing political status-quo. Ebtekar works with counterpoints and cracked mirror images; corroded fragments of Iran's distant past are bent around pulsing, acidic basslines and skittering, ping-ponging sonic vortexes. If one track sends you towards tranquillised nostalgia, the next transmits you into a fungible future: similar but different - and always surprising. Ebtekar has never been silent about his politics, but he sounds energised on 'Ministry of Tall Tales', willing to melt perceptions in real-time, confronting orientalist stereotypes while simultaneously throwing our expectations back at us.

'Separating Ingredients of Rituals' is particularly alchemical, countering cement block punches of sparkling, distorted harmony with long, philosophical pauses. It's a far cry from tracks like the santour-rich opener 'River of Pain' and the eerie, ruminative 'Lips Seeking the Forbidden'; these moments provide us with historical context or place, which Ebtekar pulverises as he stretches the narrative, wondering where refined beauty might fit into a world strangled and paralysed by bigotry and dogma. The album appears to darken (or camouflage itself) as it progresses: 'Reign of Insanity' interrupts its ominous, pulsating electronics with uncanny strings that stretch and contort around doomed metallic clangs; and the stark 'Death-dealing' provides the album’s grimmest stretch, with demented, electo-plated remnants of traditional instrumentation and stomach-churning bass. Ebtekar makes an about turn again on the extended closing track '1401 Beautiful Souls', letting pure, golden light poke through the thick, inscrutable fog.

Unmissable, honestly.

MP3 Release (9)