Tag Archives: Persian

Six Pillars – New Music From Iran VI, Siavash Amini

6pillarsThis and next episode on Six Pillars we commissioned two shows from Tehran-based producer Siavash Amini, aka The Waterfront.

This week Amini looks at new ambient music released from Iran in 2014, Iranian ambient artists included are Siavash, Arash Akbari , Porya Hatami and Tegh.
Next Tuesday we’ll be hearing about IDM/Techno and noise from Amini. Earlier episodes of New Music from Iran, and this time last year in fact, we heard Amini discuss his methods for composition and research online and about the state of his music scene currently in Tehran.

Broadcasts 9-9.30pm Tuesday 16th December repeats Thursday 4pm. Listen online via www.sixpillars.org or www.resonancefm.com

Six Pillars – New Music from Iran VI, Siavash Amini by 6pillars

Free Lab Radio – Overheated Motor

#FreeLabRadio – Over-Heated Motor by Fari

Free Lab Radio host Fari Bradley presents a mix for cars on long journeys in blazing summer heat.Broadcasts 11pm Saturday night BST (British Summer Time), repeats Wednesday 2am.

Featured are the Beastie Boys, Persian (from Essex), La Chiva Gantiva, DJ Schmolli, Mr Oizo, Noir Désir, Wildbirds and Peacedrums and Alek AK (Iran) and more.

Listen on air across London 104.4FM, online otherwise.
Follow more of our Free Lab Radio listening on www.freelabradio.blogspot.com

Free Lab Radio – Existence is Resistance

Longstanding underground DJ and jungle producer Persian’s collaborators include MC Mello, UK Apache and DJ Texsta. Producing vinyl since 1991, Persian has remained a dedicated jungle producer and as such is one of the last few proponents of this genre. But will jungle, and especially jungle on vinyl, come back? We spin Persian’s dedicated productions in the studio while mulling over this pertinent question, while playing a few cheeky games based on Persian’s many monikers and on wrongspeed vinyl settings… Follow Free Lab Radio’s blog or more regular posts on Facebook

Existence is Resistance by Fari

Follow Free Lab Radio’s blog or more regular posts on Facebook

Six Pillars – Norouz at the National Portrait Gallery

March 2012 Six Pillars organised an event at the National Portrait Gallery London.
Audio here from the discussion on the origins of Persian New Year, which always falls at the Spring Equinox by Dr. Khodadad Rezakani, recorded at the NPG, plus an intro from rappers Reveal and Hitchkas at the Norooz No War event.

Six Pillars – Cosmic Geometry

Monir with a relief piece, 1970s. Photo courtesy of artist

 

John Cage called her ‘that beautiful Persian girl‘, Jackson Pollock, though unfriendly, openly declared an admiration for her art. Born 1924 in Iran, Monir Farmanfarmaian later brought a flavour of Iran to New York’s avant garde, amongst whom she was circulating. It was often reported that one of her pieces had its place on Andy Warhol’s desk for example.

Her signature work has been since that time, fractal mirror sculpture, mirror mosaic and reverse-painted glass which overall embodies her lifelong fascination for natural beauty and light.  And as any sprightly octogenarian still producing work should, Farmanfarmaian has just released a book: Cosmic Geometry ((Damiani Editore & The Third Line, Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist) with passages written by such artist friends as Frank Stella and Shirin Neshat.

In this frank interview the artist discusses her first moment’s of inspiration with mirrors, kills a money spider, reflects on her life and personal art collection and bemoans the proliferation of cheap Chinese products in Iran.

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Six Pillars – Hamed Nikpay

Composer-singer Hamed Nikpay speaks from USA about writing music, leaving Iran for the US in his 20s and what he’s currently listening to on his Ipod.

The interview comes prior to his collaboration with dancer and choreographer Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam, London 2012. Both Nikpay and Ghalam have experimented extensively with forms of juerga and toque from Flamenco interwoven into Persian classical forms and both are highly passionate in their delivery, so it makes perfect sense for them to work together on stage, Nikpay providing the music, Moshkin Ghalam the dance.

Six Pillars – Shallow Water, Deep Skin

Acid Drops - 2005

Still: political activist and entomologist Shahin Nawai in 'Shallow Water, Deep Skin'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nooshin Farhid, video artist, whose solo show Shallow Water, Deep Skin is now running at East London’s The Agency Gallery discusses her work and process with us back in 2008. Over the years Farhid has co-curated a number of exhibitions including “Use this Kind of Sky” and has exhibited the world over gathering together a considerable body of work and lengthy resumé.

Farhid’s videos employ different subjects and scenarios that thread together with a connecting sense of agitation and grit. We discuss her interests and how Fahid’s ideas form which interestingly harks back to her own experiences as an immigrant settling in the UK. The unwillingness to settle for what is on offer, something that is evident in all her work, reflects Farhid’s views on the current state of society, politics and ideology. Though not overtly political, (for this inevitably enables privileged authority to manipulate the artist into the cul de sac of irrelevance), her work picks away at those daily familiar stabilising forces within the space of the everyday and also within contemporary art itself.

Farhid’s work, eclectic and conceptually nomadic, uses the camera as a notebook collecting fragments of random events and chance meetings that collectively question the incessant drive towards normality and conformity. Farhid appropriates other ‘dumbing’ forms of popular media: soaps, reality TV, Bollywood, MTV, raw material welded together in fragments, each one activating and qualifying its predecessor. This process produces a contemporary surreal space that re-presents the familiar in that which is astonishing and invites the viewer to reconsider. In her most recent work Shallow Water, Deep Skin, featuring political activist and entomologist Shahin Nawai in ‘Shallow Water, Deep Skin’ Farhid reaches the apex of her observations of the human disconnect by melding together the swarming world of nature and human kinds’ own busy, teeming concerns.

Most of all, Farhid turns out to be a quirky and humorous talent, who works as both artist and curator, resident and outsider. This interview was first broadcast from the ResonanceFM studios in 2008.

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Six Pillars – Entee aka Sarmastian

Our interview with new producer Entee aka Sarmastian, who visited the studios in July 2011. Here we sample some of his tracks and detail the rap/singing/remix competition open until August for any budding musicians out there who want some air time on 104.4FM

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Six Pillars – Persian Maps

“History and geography are the basis of all the humanities.“

After falling in love with a map of Persia in Harrods, Dr Ala’i spent years researching the cartography of Iran and Persia before publishing two large volumes by Brill, on different maps of Persia from the 1400s to 1925.

Dr Ala’i was invited by Iran Heritage to give a talk in January 2011 on his extensively researched specialty, and Six Pillars interviewed him to find out more about this passion of his.

This is the whole interview, the first part of which was broadcast in January 2011 on Six Pillars to Persia, from the Resonance104.4Fm studios, London.

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Six Pillars – Drinking Arak Off An Ayatollah’s Beard

Venturing around Iran and Afghanistan with a copy of the Shahnameh tucked under his arm, Nicholas Jubber relates what this pivotal introduction taught him about modern people who still love this medieval text.

Jubber explains how The Shahnameh, or Persian Book of Kings, is still very much alive today for many people, even 1000 years after it’s completion.

His book certainly has it’s own style and he visited the Resonance104.4FM studios to explain certain points: from beards to butchers to free motorbikes.

This show was originally broadcast on 2nd August, 2010

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