Iran-based majestic noise maker Sote tells us about his journey from listening to The Cure as a teenager to playing with the LCO at London’s Southbank Centre’s Purcell Sessions this coming weekend.

Iran-based electronic music composer and sound artist Ata Ebtekar, aka Sote, has been releasing mind-melting music on numerous labels for the past 20+ years, including Warp Records, Sub Rosa, Digitalis, Morphine, Opal Tapes, and others.  His passion for all music has led him to compose in a wide range of musical styles, especially all forms of electronic music, with a strong emphasis on electro-acoustic techniques, microtonal systems, and polyrhythmic themes.

His 12th album, Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran, was released earlier this year on Sub Rosa to critical acclaim — Sote will be playing with The London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO) at London’s Southbank Centre as part of the Purcell Sessions on November 6th. You can purchase tickets here.

I was able to catch up with him before he left Iran for his upcoming tour. Due to the situation in Iran, we were only able to communicate over email, and I was fully aware that anything he said about the events in his country could put him and his family in danger. “Today, when I was finishing my answers, we were hearing protest chants and gunshots from our windows,” he told me. “Teargas was released right by our house, and we had to turn on our air purifier. Earlier, when my wife picked up my son from school, the police were shooting at protesters right by the elementary school.”

Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from, and something about the music you make? 

I’m a Tehran-based experimental electronic musician who was born in Hamburg half a century ago, and I’ve been making and loving electronic music for the past thirty-five years. I spent the first eleven years of my life in Tehran, Iran. Eventually, three years into the Iran/Iraq War, I moved to Oldenburg, Germany, where I went to high school until the age of seventeen and then moved again, but this time to Northern California, where I stayed for the next twenty-five years. In 2013, I decided to permanently move back to Iran. 

I’m very aware of what is going on in Iran right now, and my thoughts are with you and your family. It is a nightmare situation, and the bravery of the young, especially the young women and girls, is something I don’t have words for. It is upsetting that they are in such a situation when the freedoms we experience here in Europe can easily be taken for granted. I’d be grateful for your perspective if there is anything you can say on this.

Corruption and greed are ruling my country, and innocent people are losing their lives because of it. Iranian women are absolute warriors and truly revolutionary. People are protesting for their basic rights, their civil rights. It’s a very complicated issue on many levels, but one thing is very simple. The U.S. and the West are not interested in human rights in this region. Crippling sanctions are not against governments. They’re directly affecting and harming the common people. This has been the case for decades in many countries. Sanctions only make the oppressor stronger, richer and more powerful. I wish the head of Western governments didn’t say they support the people of Iran at least. Their actions are very different than their words. 

How did making music start for you?

As long as I remember, I’ve been interested in unique sounds since early childhood. After the Iranian revolution, when I was about nine or ten years old (1981-1982), I would listen to bootleg cassette tapes of Western pop music, being mostly interested in the “strange” synthetic sounds without knowing what synthesizers were at that time. Then when I moved to Germany, I started listening to electronic pop music. This morphed towards becoming obsessively interested in leftfield electronic music such as EBM (Electronic Body Music). My favourite bands at that time were Front 242, Nitzer Ebb and Depeche Mode because of their high-quality sound design, production aesthetics and musicality.

During my teenage years, I, along with two friends, started an electronic band, at first covering songs by the mentioned groups and eventually moving to producing and performing original material at high school events where we made our own percussion instruments with various metal objects, used cassette decks as samplers and of course cheap keyboards and synthesizers. We were making EBM without vocals, which was sort of Techno music without even knowing the term Techno at that point. The whole Techno/House explosion in Europe happened right when I moved to the U.S…

I love your new album, Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran. It is moving on many levels, especially in light of recent events in Iran. Can you tell us a bit more about how this album came about?

Musically, it was a continuation of my MOSCELS album but intentionally more focused on my personal emotional and mental state. I was trying to interpret my contemplation about tolerance, destruction, compassion, misery, grace and tyranny via sound synthesis within a compositional structure. 

I was particularly moved by the track ‘I’m trying but I can’t reach you father’ mostly because of my estrangement from my father. I’m aware this can be interpreted on a larger spiritual level — looking for a caring god in a world gone wrong. Listening to it, I’m curious about your journey with fatherhood and your father and also the father-son relationship in 2022.

I usually like to leave my compositions abstract and open to interpretation. However, since this album was partly a self-therapy process during rather difficult times relating to my country’s society from within as well as the hypocritical policies of other countries towards Iran, I let loose and decided not to filter my work for aesthetic reasons. I think I’ve succeeded the most in terms of doing a narrative style composition with this track as well as the track ‘Life’.

My father passed away when I was eight, and ever since, my attempt to reach him in different shapes and forms has failed. And parallel to my own experience with my father, I tried to sonically portray how so many people are trying to chase the “ideal” but never reach their goal. On a positive note, concerning this issue, I am now seeing the light in my eleven-year-old son, and I’m witnessing so much amazing potential for our world through his generation. 

I’ve been listening to Pink Floyd’s Animals a lot recently, and when listening to your album couldn’t help but find the two albums seemed simpatico, and you have a track called ‘Dogs’ too! Am I crazy in thinking this?

I definitely grew up listening to Pink Floyd with lots of passion and admiration. However, when I was composing this album, I was not consciously thinking about Pink Floyd’s work. I don’t think you’re crazy for drawing parallels here, as ‘Animals’ was a critique of capitalism. The piece ‘Dogs’ is about abuse, violence, friendship and unconditional love, and the album as a whole is a passive protest album, challenging structural habits in music and society in general, provoking the short attention span culture and presenting aural problem-solution scenarios. 

How do you feel identity and place influence your music?

Most of my life, I thought that my music is purely coming from me regardless of location or a specific culture, but now I believe that these factors are very much influencing my work, and I welcome them with joy and open arms. 

You’re playing with the London Contemporary Orchestra for the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Sessions on November 6th. How did this collaboration come about?

I was invited and accepted with delight. I’m very much looking forward to experiencing some of my all-electronic pieces with acoustic performances by the wonderful LCO members.

You release music under the moniker Sote. How did this come about, and is there a differentiation between Sote and Ata Ebtekar? 

Sote in Farsi means ‘sound’, which I’m crazy about, and that’s why I chose it as my moniker. There is no stylistic difference between my real name and my alias.

What’s your songwriting process like?

It, of course, varies from project to project, but overall, I would say I compose with frequencies rather than notes. I do not like to constrain myself to a fixed grid; hence I create in a freeform manner with my instincts. Often, I would take a bunch of rules and formulas and deconstruct them to challenge habits and come up with new forms.  

What advice would you give anyone trying to achieve a similar sound to you?

I would advise not to achieve a similar sound to me and do something unique instead. 

What inspires your music?

Firstly, it would be the desire to listen to a particular piece that I cannot find anywhere. Secondly, anything and everything can be an inspiration. Nature, objects, behaviours, other art forms, silence and most importantly, patterns of any kind. 

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it is important to you.

The Cure’s Disintegration because it is a sound masterpiece with so much detailed melodic and harmonic weaving, making up various worlds of textures and rhythms. It’s epic.

What do you hate right now?

Hypocrisy on micro and macro levels.

What do you love right now?

Experiencing life with my wife and son.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever played?

When I returned to Iran nine years ago, I did several performances, which eventually turned into the Hardcore Sounds from Tehran album. I was pleasantly surprised about the participants’ eagerness, passion and level of acceptance towards radical music. Truly beautiful. 

What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?

Nine Inch Nails ‘Fragility Tour’ in support of The Fragile album.

Is there a particular place in the world you would love to play a gig one day? 

Japan.

What comes next in the Sote story? 

Next will be two projects for the upcoming year (2023). One will be an intense all-synthetic work heavily focused on polyrhythms and microtonality, and the other will be an Iranian electro-acoustic project on a much larger scale compared to my previous works, but in order to be able to fully execute it, I will have to find funding for it.  

What Iranian artists should we be listening to?

I have a small label called Zabte Sote, which releases music by Iranian experimental electronic and electro-acoustic composers from all over the globe.

What upcoming 2022 music releases are you most excited about?

The release titled COH meets Abul Mogard and Depeche Mode’s new album coming out in Spring of 2023.

Is there any new music from 2022 you have been enjoying?

In the past few years, I’ve enjoyed music releases by the following labels (in no particular order): Mondoj, OOH-sounds, Gin&Platonic, Ad93.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

I would like to share a statement released by the ‘Tehran Contemporary Sounds’ Festival based in Berlin, where I will be performing this year.

“Sadly, we have to announce that unfortunately this year again, we can’t have Roody’s and Temp-Illusion’s performances at the TCS 2022! All three artists have been rejected for the visa application by the German embassy in Tehran! The reason? ‘There’s not enough proof that these artists will return to Iran after their performances’. We are extremely offended by this decision, by this approach and the Eurocentric, dehumanizing, disrespectful and hypocritical essence of the bureaucratic system in Europe which leads to such unjustifiable decisions regarding travel rights and freedom of movement especially in this case for the invited Iranian artists. Just the idea that these bureaucratic bodies, presume the decision of our highly respected artists to be that of not returning to their home country, shows their view on Iran, on the people of Iran, the artists residing there, the scene that exists in Iran and the quality of the work of these people!
All of this has happened above all, at a time when the German foreign minister (claiming to follow a feminist approach in her ministry) claims to be supporting the recent uprising in Iran, talking about sanctions, and travel bans for the people involved with the government of Iran and the oppression of the protesters, while on the same day the German embassy rejects the visa application of 3 artists, one of them a female renowned hip-hop artist. All three have been facing suppression in the past years by the Iranian government, and now they face the same by the German government. In 2021 the same three artists were rejected for a Visa application, for not being able to provide proof of Covid vaccination approved by the German government. The same vaccines that Germany did not sell the patent to other non-EU countries and the Iranian regime could not buy due to sanctions imposed on Iran by the west, as well as political corruption by the Iranian government …”