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dedicated
to: ali asghar bahari the master of iranian radif
and kamancheh
all music copyrights amir baghiri 2004
all music composed, performed and produced by
amir baghiri 2003-2004.
recorded, edited and mixed at the bluebox- lemgo-germany
by amir baghiri.
concept by amir baghiri & janusz
leszczynski.
final editing and digital mastering by amir
baghiri, fritz dalbke and jeremy
arenberg at ambience 1, bielefeld-nrw-germany
june 2004.
artwork & complete design by krzysztof slaby
& janusz leszczynski
amir baghiri played:
unplugged instruments creations by using :lead
vocals, khaliji drums,persian
tumbak, egyptian dumbak, liquid drums, bendirs,
azerbaijan
frame drum, surdo, mahogany pro djembes, tamborin
and persian zarb & dohol
drums. rababa, ouds, saz, kamancheh, panjab
clay flute, native iranian ney
and sipsi stone flute and various chimes, shakers,
rainstick and some other
forgotten objects.
electronic soundworlds creation by using :additive,fm
and analog
synthesizers, processors & subliminal nature
sound programming, groove
programming & multidimensional ambient
creations.
guest artists:
reza ardalani (addtional zarb and ney),
malek halime ( distant azan,nohe khani and
and spoken words),
zhale mikhaili (tar,setar,additional spoken
vocals as sample foods),
rob newgarden & farideh farraokhian
additional editing on pro tools session
at the bluebox-lemgo-germany.
soundworlds by using: near eastern desert
ambience and nature atmos, all
recorded by amir baghiri on a sony dat station at
the different places in
asia & north africa between 2000-2004, edited
at the bluebox by using sony
sound forge in june 2004 by amir baghiri.
technical support:emu &ensoniq germany,behringer
germany,sonic foundry
usa,native-instruments usa,eventide and lexicon
usa and digidesign germany.
special thanks to:janusz, farhad, joerg zdarsky,
alexa.hoeber&brita, mike
scheibinger,stefano gentile,nic&joke, max
corbacho, mantu, johnny kim, jerry
andrews, steve piper, vanessa lowe and werner&gabriele
for their ongoing
friendship, inspirations, support and creative
inputs during this recording!
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REVIEWS
De woorden raar, vaag en vreemd maar ook
interessant komen in me op bij het beluisteren
van deze cd.
Op Ghazal, van de ambient componist Amir Baghiri,
wordt muziek uit het Midden-Oosten gecombineerd
met electronica. Het resultaat is een mooi werkje
waarbij traditionele muziek op perfecte wijze
wordt versmolten met moderne invloeden.
Het is knap hoe ritmes gespeeld op traditionele
instrumenten en ritmes uit synthesizers
harmonieus samen worden gebracht en één
structuur gaan vormen. De traditionele melodieën
geven de muziek een mystiek en mysterieus
sfeertje mee. Hoewel de muziek levendig is en een
redelijk tempo heeft, is het alles behalve
stampmuziek. Subtiliteit is in alle nummers
bewaard gebleven. Dansbaar is het wel vaak maar
geen dance dus. Een wezenlijk verschil.
Ghazal is één van de betere etno-digitale
platen die ik de laatste tijd gehoord heb.
Martijn van Gessel, waardering: 8,5
http://www.folkforum.nl/
Being the Western, Eurocentric fellow I am,
I don't have a great familiarity with genres of
music that commonly find their way into the
"ethnic" category. I would
contest the implication that white Europeans do
not constitute an ethnicity, but that's another
matter that will not be discussed here.
Curiosity got the best of me, however, and my
interest
in Middle Eastern music materialized in the
acquisition of this record. Though
infused with a healthy dose of electronics,
Ghazal sounds as I imagined it would, based on my
prior experience: heavily percussive, usually
fast, and repetitive. It must be kept in
mind that "ethnic" music, like a lot of
underground fare here in the West, goes beyond
mere entertainment. It's not merely meant
to be something "with a good beat" that
you jam out to in your car, but an agent that
takes you somewhere else in your head. It's
sometimes meant to accompany some kind of
religious ritual, involving altered states of
consciousness, hence its repetitive, trance-like
nature. This intention will serve as
a good standard against which to judge this
collection of recordings. How well does
Amir Baghiri, a musician hailing from Iran, do
his job? It starts with "Nasime Saba,"
one of the highlights. I don't know exactly
what it is that happens here, but I liked it.
"Mozhde Sheida" only needs a kick drum
and a few voice samples to be a Jungle/Techno
song, and "Chashme Mahtab," my
favourite pick of the bunch, puts a bit more
instrumentation in the mix without losing the
feel. Like Trance music, Ghazal tends
to be ethereal and very conducive to specific
actions . and, like Trance music, can be boring
in its repetition if only listened to.
Therefore, I think judgment of this album should
be withheld until you listen to it while doing
something else, such as meditating or working on
a creative endeavour. If I could draw or
paint, I would probably listen to Ghazal or
something like it while painting or drawing.
If you like experimental electronic music (or if
you paint or draw), pick up this album and
experience the pleasure of a journey through the
mystical land of Iranian music.
Jason Van Kemseke / www.sickamongthepure.com
Amir Baghiri - "Ghazal" CD -
Moving beyond his more ambient previous work, the
prolific Baghiri here produces a highly
percussive collection of instrumental sound
pieces that range from trance-inducing tribal
dance to mysterious fusions of ancient middle-eastern
instrumentation and exotic location recordings (from
Asia and North African deserts and natural
environs). 'Ghazal' is quite the journey,
presenting the listener with a rich travelogue of
moods and surreal atmospheres, from distant
ambient to positive dub to energetic drumwork to
electronically-enhanced world music, 'Ghazal' is
a world-class recording from an unheralded master.
Recommendations.
GODSEND ONLINE
A sterling piece of work from Germany based
Iranian Amir Baghiri, a proliftic Ambient
composer. For this release on Polish label Vivo,
Baghiri plays a shopful of Middle Eastern
instruments: oud and saz lutes, flutes and the
Turkish sipsi reed pipe. But it's in the drums
that his heart lies, and a panoply of percussion
from Egypt to Azerbaijan is pressed into service
to create dense, danceworthy workouds. Like a
warmer version of the late Muslimgauze, Baghiri
layers and manipulates textures, drones and
fragments of voice in his dark-hued, mesmerising
tracks. Often it's like listening to the crackle
of a beach bonfire laid over drumming. Baghiri's
trump card is his deployment of field recordings
to thicken the mix, especially a heady desert
wind that seems to blow straight out of a Paul
Bowles novel set in Morocco. The whole of "Emamzadeh
Hashem" is a soup of wind, street noise and
distant music, while on "Eshragh"
a pondful of frogs get involved with the beats.
Baghiri's musical vision is impressive, and by
dedicating the album to Ali Asghar Bahari, an
early 20th century master of the bowed kemancheh,
he unexpectedly underlines his music's place in
the Iranian tradition.
Clive Bell / The Wire [252]
Amir Baghiri is an Iranian artist who
explores the boundries between world music,
electronic music and field recordings in a matter
that results very similar to the style of
Muslimgauze. After his 2003 "Yalda",
Vivo puts out his new album, which turn out to be
very percussion-focused overall. Some instruments
used are: khaliji drums, persian tumbak, egyptian
dumbak, liquid drums, bendirs, azerbaijan frame
drum, surdo, mahogany pro djembes, tamborin and
persian zarb & dohol drums. rababa, ouds, saz,
kamancheh, panjab clay flute, native iranian ney
and sipsi stone flute and various chimes, shakers,
rainstick and some other forgotten objects. To
that you'll have to add additive fm and analog
synthesizers, processors & subliminal nature
sound programming, groove programming &
multidimensional ambient creations. The use of
electronics in this album is remarkable becase it
is mixed in subtly and yet makes for a
fundamental element of the mixture. The balance
between the percussive grooves and the digital
rhythmical structures is so skillfully achieved
that sometimes it's actually hard to tell whether
or not it is in and in what percentage. The field
recordings come from near eastern desert ambience
and nature atmos, all recorded by amir baghiri on
a sony DAT recorder in different places around
asia & north africa. More technical info (such
as software, hardware etc) can be found in the
beautifully packaged trifold digipack. Vocals are
to be found as well, but mostly as added ear
candies or quasi-sampled recursive patterns,
rather than lead parts. The middle eastern
flavours are strong and intense in this record,
you can almost smell it. Overall its grooves are
pretty uptempo, which makes it easy to listen to
and enjoyable.
Finally the album features some guests, including:
Reza Ardalani (addtional zarb and ney), Malek
Halime (distant azan, nohe khani and spoken words)
and zhale mikhaili (tar, setar, additional spoken
vocals as sample foods).
www.chaindlk.com
Po takiej bombie jak zeszloroczna "Yalda"
szalenie trudno byloby powtórnie wprawic w stany
ekstatyczne milosników rdzennego bebniarskiego
transu. Amir Baghiri postawil wiec na taktyke
szoku i nagral zadziwiajaca plyte. O co chodzi?
Juz wyjasniam: wyglada na to, ze jako staly
mieszkaniec Niemiec, kompozytor spedzil sporo
czasu w tamtejszych klubach z muzyka taneczna.
Jaki tego skutek? Wyobrazcie sobie czlowieka z
Bliskiego Wschodu, który zafascynowany
dokonaniami Europejczyków w dziedzinie takich
gatunków jak drum'n'bass, house, acid trance,
czy minimal, postanowil zinterpretowac je calkiem
po swojemu. Niemozliwe? A jednak... Zeby nie bylo,
na poczatek cos bardziej "swojskiego",
czyli banghra (jak by Wam to wytlumaczyc... ragga
z bliskowschodnia wokaliza? zlosliwi natychmiast
dodadza: "eee, taka bardziej egzotyczna
Macarena...") z rozbrajajacym zawodzeniem
naszego multiinstrumentalisty - cóz, zostalem
rozlozony na lopatki i dlugo nie moglem sie
podniesc... Pózniej juz z górki: Amir wlacza
znane z poprzednich dokonan "pustynne"
tla, zapetla pracowicie ulozone rytmiczne frazy,
dogrywa dalsze partie perkusjonaliów, okrasza
dyskretnie sosem analogowych syntezatorów i...
hajda na parkiet. A my szalejemy do utraty tchu,
tudziez polamania nóg. Jest lekko, melodyjnie i
jakby bardziej przyswajalnie, a zatem istnieje
duze niebezpieczenstwo przegrzania organizmu -
plyta trwa bite 70 minut! Na szczescie sa chwile
wytchnienia w postaci spokojnych, bezbeatowych
utworów utrzymanych w konwencji poprzedniego
albumu, gdzie przed oczyma przesuwaly sie nam
sceny rodzajowe z kraju pochodzenia muzyka. Co do
odwazniejszego komputerowego programowania
sekwencji, to czasami rytmiczny "loop"
nie zgra sie perfekcyjnie z reszta, co z
zalozenia czyni calosc bardziej swieza i
egzotyczna - prosze, oto nowe technologie w
rekach "nieoswojonego" artysty.
Majstersztyk...
hi-fi i muzyka
Le rapprochement entre les musiques
traditionnelles et électroniques n'a pas
toujours donné de bons résultats. Lorsque cet
assemblage se veut exigeant, il est encore moins
évident. On connaît le rare génie de
Muslimgauze, aujourd'hui les labels souterrains
tentent de raviver la flamme. Amir Baghiri peut
se voir comme un héritier de Bryn Jones (Muslimgauze)
époque Zul'm, mais aussi dans sa gestion de la
répétition, meme si son travail est plus . Les
roulements percussifs sont bien présents, mais
les voix et les instruments a vent aériens leur
disputent plus souvent les premiers rôles. La
production est plus propre. Plus construite donc
plus prévisible, la musique de Baghiri est aussi
plus émotive. Mais elle sait se faire sombre
aussi. Ce qui surprend sur ce disque captivant, c'est
l'énergie qui soutient chaque morceau, peut-etre
due au fait que Baghiri joue de tant d'instruments.
A la croisée d'une musique filmique et d'une
electronica colorée, la musique d'Amir Baghiri
est un véritable voyage immobile.
Octopus
I've been listening to a lot of field
recordings from the Middle East recently (a
number of the releases on Sublime Frequencies)
and have been getting lost in the way music is so
readily accessible from the street in these
regions. Amir Baghiri's Ghazal opens in the same
way: by submerging you in a street somewhere in
the Middle East. Voices float in the background,
nearly drowned out by the music and the singer's
voice. "Nasime Saba" is a pop song of
the street, replete with hand drums, finger
cymbals, flute and the undulating siren song of a
itinerant musician. You are submerged in a
culture thick with a constant flood of music from
hidden speakers, street musicians, distant prayer
calls, and the rhythmic patter of the language.
The trick with Ghazal is that everything is
composed, recorded, played and mixed by Baghiri
himself. Baghiri is recreating the
vibrant energy of the Middle East in the studio,
mixing the spontaneous rhythms of the marketplace
and the city streets with carefully edited loops
and field recordings. An ocean wave draws us in
to "Shure Baran," a liquid wash of
sound that transports us to a seaside community
where a five piece percussion ensemble is banging
out a rhythmic piece. It almost feels live until
studio effects warp the sound, altering the
rhythm and distorting the clarity of the drums.
It is a Muslimgauze-like effect (a comparison
which you really can't avoid when talking about
Middle Eastern rhythms being distorted by
authorial manipulation), but with more subtlety
and less abrasiveness. The subtle field
recordings wash across track divisions, lending a
cohesive flow to the music as if we were sampling
the ethnic music styles of the region. The ocean
tide of "Shure Baran" gives way to a
field of buzzing and chirping insects in "Daryaie
Golfeshan," a lengthy piece that gradually
winds up to a tumultuous explosion of sound
before fading again into the distant burr of
insect noise. "Eshragh" returns us to
the street corner again and Baghiri works in cut-up
loops and a persistent background crackle of
insect life and whispering noise. "Sukhte
Balha" builds as a duet between a water
faucet and a field recording of street vendors
and sing-song conversations.
And everywhere there are drums: Khaliji drums,
the Persian tumbak, the Egyptian dumbak, liquid
drums, bendirs, the Azerbaijan frame drum, surdo,
djembes, tamborin, the Persian zarb and Dohol
drums. Ghazal is a sea of drums, beats, rhythms
and percussive threads which run run run
throughout the tracks. Baghiri's fingers and
hands are never still on Ghazal. The more I
listen to Ghazal, the more I get lost in the
vibrant texture and hypnotic complexity of
Baghiri's compositions. Highly recommended.
Mark Teppo / www.igloomag.com
This new CD by Amir Baghiri, called 'Ghazal',
came to me as quite a surprise. I expected to
hear more of the ethnic ambient that I associated
with Baghiri (like the amplexus stuff). On this
CD, however, Baghiri presents some very rhythmic
and danceable tracks. The tracks sound
like some sort of 'pop' music from Iran, Irak, or
perhaps Syria. Uptempo drum rhythms and Iranian
singing form a moody and exciting atmosphere that
can perhaps best be compared to the danceable
releases by Muslimgauze. 'Ghazal' certainly has
the same kind of 'in your face' attitude that the
Muslimgauze works are so well known for. But,
admittedly, the tracks are also less industrial,
and far more energetic. While real 'pop' music
from the middle east tends to be way too poppy (and
often downright annoying), Baghiri manages to
fuse 'pop' and 'classical' elements into a
perfect mix. Surprises can be very nice,
and I have to say that I'm quite stunned by this
album. The overall quality and atmosphere are
very impressive and the beats are simply very
addictive. This album reminded me of trips in
North Africa and the Middle East, and is
certainly one of the best soundtracks for desert
travellers.
TD www.funprox.com
Na stronie Amira Baghiri przeczytac mozna,
ze Iranczyk byl jednym z prekursorów dzwieków
electro-tribal ambient, od roku 1980 nagral
prawie 30 solowych albumów, uczestniczyl w wielu
innych projektach, nagral równiez sporo muzyki
do filmu. Czlowiek-instytucja wiec, niezwykle
plodny i wciaz zapracowany artysta tworzacy
niezwykle glebokie, pelne emocji, mistyczne
brzmieniowe swiaty. Czy tak jest wlasnie na
"Ghazal", ostatniej plycie Baghira,
wydanej przez polskie Vivo Records?
Poprzedni plyta Iranczyka - wydana rok temu
"Yalda" - byla ostrym, elektronicznym
galopem przez pustynne krajobrazy. Tym razem
muzyk, za pomoca calego arsenalu wschodnich
instrumentów i elektroniki, tworzy klimat
bardziej miekki, przystepny. Muzyka "Ghazal"
nie gna, raczej saczy sie w transowym pulsie.
Calosc, nasycona klimatem wschodu, przypomina
spacer przez ulice iranskiego miasta, czyli
ciagle odkrywanie nowych miejsc i obyczajów.
Baghiri na swej plycie uzyl sporej dawki
naturalnych dzwieków, nagrywanych w latach 2000-2004
w róznych rejonach Azji i pólnocnej Afryki, i
choc calosc zgrywana byla w Niemczech, to muzyka
"Ghazal" pelna jest egzotycznego dla
nas 'zadymienia', mimo ogólne estetyki 'easy
listening' czasem niepokoi, prowadzi w rejony
obcej kultury, czasem porywa bardziej tanecznym
fragmentem. Slucha sie tego z jakims dziwnym
zaintrygowaniem. Podobne wrazenie wywoluje
okladka - dziwaczny projekt, kilka telewizyjnych
obrazków, podkreslajacych dystans, jaki dzieli
kultury zachodu i islamu. Muzyczne polaczenie
wschodniej duchowosci z zachodnimi rozwiazaniami
produkcyjnymi daje dosc ciekawy efekt.
Jest
wiec gleboki, mistyczny swiat. Nie kazdemu
przypadna do gustu melodie wygrywane przez
Baghira, jednak dla tych, którzy lubia
wszelkiego rodzaju elektroniczne kulturowe
romanse - "Ghazal" powinna sie okazac
plyta przyjemna w odbiorze.
jman / www.nowamuzyka.prv.pl
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nasime saba 