Sote

Sote serves as the chief artistic identity for Ata Ebtekar, a leading figure among Iran’s electronic and experimental composers. He launched his career in the 1990s with techno productions that gradually shifted toward heavily processed, abstract textures, attracting interest from Warp and other forward-thinking imprints. Recognition later arrived for his integration of Persian classical elements into electro-acoustic frameworks.

Born in Hamburg, Ebtekar divided his formative years between Iran and Germany, absorbing new wave and industrial sounds. Relocating with his family to San Francisco at age sixteen exposed him to techno; he then pursued formal training in sound design and issued several techno and trance pieces under the alias Atax toward the end of the decade. His debut release as Sote, the ferocious drum’n’bass and breakcore single Electric Deaf, appeared on Warp in 2002. The more textural XOXO EP followed on Dielectric Records in 2003, while the atmospheric full-length Dastgaah, which largely dispensed with beats, surfaced in 2006.

Wake Up, issued by Record Label Records in 2007, marked a return to techno and drum’n’bass, yet some of his strongest experimental work surfaced on the second disc of Sub Rosa’s double-CD anthology Persian Electronic Music: Yesterday and Today 1966–2006, shared with Iranian composer Alireza Mashayekhi. By then residing again in Tehran, Ebtekar also performed Mashayekhi’s compositions with the Iranian Orchestra for New Music on the 2009 album Ornamental. A collaboration with composer and pianist Mazdak Khamda produced Sonic Within, first issued as a cassette on Digitalis in 2010 and later pressed on vinyl by 333 Recordings/2 Hed. The solo album Dear Iran, Miniature Engines Throb in Time for Your Beating Heart arrived on Merzbild in 2013.

Ebtekar revived the Sote name and a rhythmically driven, techno- and industrial-inflected approach with Architectonic, released by Morphine Records in 2014. Arrhythmia, realized entirely on modular synthesizers, appeared digitally via Record Label Records in 2015. The cassette Hardcore Sounds from Tehran, comprising edited live recordings, came out on Opal Tapes in 2016. Repitch issued the 10-inch 10inch04, containing previously unheard 1990s material, while the EP Hyper-urban 20 30 emerged on Ge-Stell. In 2017 Opal Tapes released Sacred Horror in Design, an electro-acoustic album commissioned by Berlin’s CTM Festival.