Saba Alizadeh is one of the leading figures in contemporary Iranian music, known for his diverse use of instruments and neo-musique concrete style. He excels as a virtuoso on Kamancheh, an Iranian bowed string instrument, and explores themes in his works. His compositions often incorporate mixed media and electroacoustic processing, delving into both personal and political subjects. His music is both calming and sinister – listening to his discography makes you feel like your life is turning into a film. Founder of “Noise works” in Tehran, a platform for educating and performing electronic and experimental music, he also gained wide-spread acclaim as a photographer with exhibitions in Tehran, Moscow, Paris, Kuwait, London, and Washington D.C, to name a few.
KALTBLUT caught up with Saba after his performance at this year’s Tehran Contemporary Sounds Festival in Berlin to chat to him about his inspirations and approach to production.
KALTBLUT: Where do you draw inspiration from for your work?
Saba: My inspirational sources are mostly derived from everyday events, which we are all affected by internationally or locally. For example, when the Coronavirus was taking so many lives around the globe, and we were losing so many loved ones, I composed “I may never see you again”, which was originally improvised on Kamancheh with applied effects.
Another example would be the global silence towards systemic brutalism against a selected group of individuals or ethnicity, as we are witnessing now. In response, I composed “Silences in between”, which is composed by the silences in between sentences of the Nazi party’s main figures’ speeches in huge arenas. After cutting them, I played them back in the Wasserturm in Prenzlauer Berg and used the sound material for the composition.
On the other hand, I collect field recordings. Sometimes, I personally record them. Sometimes, I capture them from news clips and utilise them in my compositions as if creating a photo collage. I believe field recordings also have the same function as photographs, which is being a time capsule and a testifier of past events.
In a new piece I’m working on for my next album, I cut audio from a news clip, which was from a demonstration against water shortage in a southern part of Iran. It is a powerful rhythmic chanting in Arabic. Sounds of nature have also been a main source of my inspiration. As a matter of fact, they sometimes become the main element of the piece. For example, in “Ablution” I used a field recording from my “Waters of Iran”– collection, which is an assortment of river sounds I have gathered throughout the years in Iran. I ended up using one of the rivers located in the north of Iran and emphasised on some frequencies from the river sound, which is basically a wall of beautiful noise with Ney, a wooden wind instrument.
Elsewhere, in “Dream”, I use a field recording from the jungles of Gorgan in the North of Iran. I added Setar and skin-surfaced Kalimba to give it a more dreamlike atmosphere.
KALTBLUT: How do you strike a balance between planning and embracing chance in your compositions? Can you provide examples of tracks where the composition process was meticulously planned versus those that were more improvised?
Saba: So far, my compositional process has had three major phases. The first phase is shaping the sounds. This phase also breaks down into other steps of recording, which could be from recording an acoustic instrument or a modular synth, colouring, and applying effects.
The second phase would be organising the created sounds – in other words, composing the piece itself.
The third and the last phase would be retouching and revisiting, if you will. In the first and second phase, there is always room for chance, and as a matter of fact chance is sometimes what keeps the process alive, fruitful, and exciting for me.
KALTBLUT: How do you evaluate and refine your work, and how many iterations or revisions do you typically go through before considering a piece complete?
Saba: Recently, I played my unfinished tracks to close friends to get their feedback. For iterations, it depends on the number of the layers of the music and the effects chain and the automations. To give you a brief answer, I have to make sure that everything is in its right place. Sometimes a piece could take a week. Sometimes three months, or even more.
KALTBLUT: How do you deal with unexpected events or material that arises during the improvisational phase of your work? How do you incorporate these elements into your compositions while maintaining your creative vision?
Saba: I guess you take it as it comes. Having started my musical career by playing an acoustic instrument, I have had this experience quite a few times during the past 20 years performing on stage.
I think, it all comes down to the connection you have with the music you are creating. If you are just playing something you had planned ahead, then an unexpected event could be a distressing interruption. But if you are actually creating the music you had in mind and even planned at the moment, unexpected events become like a dusty road in your path. They can even add something as if a car suddenly pulls into a dusty road and produces a dust cloud behind, a change of scenery happens.
KALTBLUT: In another interview, you mentioned the importance of concept and imagery in motivating your creativity. Can you provide examples of specific concepts or images that have sparked your music projects, and how do you translate them into sound?
Saba: To give you a direct example of an image that affected my music directly. I refer you to my piece on Bandcamp called “Shooting Stars” which I composed in 2012 for the children of Gaza killed in an airstrike carried out on a school by the Israeli government.
The story behind it is that after hearing the news, I kept imagining Gaza’s sky at night through the eyes of those children. Those bombs could look like shooting stars at night for a child. That is where the name of the piece comes, and that is also why I decide to use a lullaby for this piece.
I recorded droppings of a mallet on a bass drum resembling the sounds of the dropping bombs and rearranged an old lullaby on this random rhythm.
KALTBLUT: How do you prepare for a performance, such as, for example, at Tehran Contemporary Sounds?
Saba: I usually combine my unreleased and released music for my live performances. For this year’s Tehran Contemporary Sounds Festival, for example, I performed three pieces. “Believe in the coming of a cold season”, which is the title of a poem from Forugh Farokhzad, who’s an avant-garde female contemporary poet and filmmaker. I used her voice reciting the poem inside my music.
The second track, which was an expanded version of “I may never see you again”, which is Kamancheh with applied effects. The third piece was “Colors wove me in Tehran”, which are layers of manipulated Kamancheh and modular synth mixed and processed on the fly. For all of this, I started rehearsing at least a week before the festival to perfect the flow of the performance with the controllers and my Kamancheh.
Stream Saba’s music on Spotify or purchase his discography on Bandcamp here. Follow him on Instagram at @sabaalizadeh to keep up with upcoming releases and concerts.
Cover photo by @q_vilar
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