Return to the Caspian - More Persian Dance-Pop

I normally never walk past the Caspian Food Store here in Kista, since it's in an area that the city planners in their infinite wisdom have decided is to be unreachable by foot (!), but on Midsummer's day it was the only store open in the area. So I walked past only to see that they'd stocked up on piles of Persian pop CDs, each only 40 kr (€4)! I promptly bought a couple.

The titles of the albums are very generic (in the "Persian Collection Vol. 2 Dance" mould), but here are four MP3's harvested off them that can work in a club environment.

I like the chugging starkness of this one, it reminds me of bass-frequency-oriented 80s disco by artists like OFF and Franek Kimono, only funkier.

Barobax feat. Gamno - Soosan Khanoom (Mediafire)

This one I can't decide whether to love or hate - it's inconsistent, and jumps all over the place, and seems to be a novelty humour piece, but the lilting groove is amazing when it works. And it has Vocoder.

Hamed Hakan - Ye Bous (Mediafire)

Now for two poppier numbers. Saman's Bahaar has a classic melody, and this remix adds a lovely synth solo and a wicked drive. Leans over into techno-schlager hell a bit, but it just works I think, especially past the first verse.

Saman - Bahaar (Remix by ?) (Mediafire)

And, finally: a straight pop number, though without the mediterranean/eurovision trimmings these things often have. Disco and the guy's vocal uniqueness saves it. Plus it has breath sounds and rapper that sounds like a prepubescent boy.

Ashkin & Alishmas ft Moshen - Shabash Shabash (Mediafire)

Oh yeah, also I've been away. To Hungary. I planned to Blog during my absence but the weather and company was too nice. :)

How does news events influence your listening habits?

Quick question, awaiting a better-working blogging computer next week or so.

How much do current events shape the way music is used and heard by its listeners? I don't just mean facile stuff like Michael Jackson resurfacing as a commercially viable artist in the wake of his death and the umpteen related tributes, but subtler shifts in the allowed terrain.

Take Iran. When I posted about Iranian music in March I couldn't claim to be part of any trend (although as usual Rachel was ahead of the curve), but after the election and the resistance I've seen posts of Iranian music everywhere, from Jace's Mudd Up! to Mad Decent. But also, in addition, I think there might be a generalised shift towards interest in the whole middle east, an area that's usually underrepresented in blog music. It may just be a coincidence, but the current global ghettotech blogging hotspot Generation Bass has posted an awful lot of arabic and persian vibes recently...

Cound resistance in Iran shift the centre of the music-blogging world eastward? It's hardly unprecedented, but it's interesting that the music thus discovered isn't just directly political or revolutionary. Definitely a product of our times – the news as an Esoteric Research Method, coincidence providing an opportunity to focus in on a spot in the endless information flow; politics as being seen on the internet no matter the message.

Can I go to this event?

Honestly. I love me some Persian-diaspora tunes, and the event below looks absolutely massive with six DJs and two performers, from all over the European end of the Persian diaspora.


But I'm not Persian, and the event is clearly directed at Persians. I don't know anyone who'd be willing to fork out the nearly twenty euros to come with me. I'm not a researcher, nor a journalist in this capacity. Can I really go alone without appearing to be a complete tit? There's no chance in hell I'd fit in.

I'm beginning to see the hipsters' problem.

Caspian Autotune

As the Autotune fad in the US is reaching a peak it's interesting to compare it to places where it's been running heavily much longer, just to see what the future holds for you guys. One such place is, obviously, Iran.

I've recently been intrigued by the newly put up signs at a nearby gas station for a "Caspian Food Store", thinking it would be full of wondrous South-Russian foodstuffs. Wrong end of the Caspian, unfortunately, since it was the usual Persian fare... But I was struck by the music they played, completely smothered in autotune. A bit of asking around and googling later I found the track: "Ashegh Shodam" by one of the few huge stars in the Persian world apparently still resident in Iran, Benyamin.

Ah, I thought, latched onto the T-Pain bandwagon have we? Well apparently not: the first Iranian track to heavily use autotune came out in 2002!



Apparently the auto-tune effect has been "the de facto style of singing" in Persian pop music for years, gelling well with the generally melismatic style the genre has anyway. (Although some of it goes way beyond that, rebelliously against heavy-handed repression.) And three years later, after the main wave blew over, the effect is still a somewhat common part of the vocabularly. On the Iranian MP3s Blog, at least a quarter of the tracks use audible autotune in some way. Curiously, it seems to have migrated down from the dance remix tracks to the ballads, where most of the manipulated vocals are found. Here are some of the better ones to my tastes:

Mohsen Yahaghi - Tamanna (download from iranianmp3s.com)

Hamid Hashemi & Elina - Raftani (download from iranianmp3s.com)

Morteza Shahryari ft DJ Shadow [I'm guessing not that DJ Shadow] - Mina (download from iranianmp3s.com)

Bonus: the inevitable Reggaeton track. No AT though.