Ata Ebtekar, better known as Sote, is an electronic music composer and sound artist based in Tehran, Iran. His wide-ranging love of rich sounds and textures is embodied in diverse paths such as hardcore club sounds, collaborations that straddle (traditional) acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and solo experimental electronics – making Ebtekar equally at home in concert halls, galleries, or clubs. Over the last three decades, he has released on labels such as Warp, Diagonal, SVBKVLT, Sub Rosa, Morphine, and Opal Tapes.
Much of Sote‘s output deals with a continual exploration of abstract musical form as a commentary and reflection on current social and political experiences, mental states, and the human condition. His music challenges the listener with mutating sonic movements that contrast moments of fleeting melodic beauty and deep emotion with painful dissonance and abrasive noise. On his latest album Ministry of Tall Tales, out in February 2024 on SVBKVLT, Sote has further intensified this compositional approach in an attempt to process the immense amount of frustration, anger, confusion, helplessness and fear he went through in the recent years because of what has been happening in his surroundings and in Iran’s sociopolitical system. Consequently, he describes the album’s all-synthesis based music as an equally dark, melodic, and noise-driven contemplation on corruption, oppression and murder.
Ministry of Tall Tales, by Sote
Ministry of Tall Tales, by Sote