Mohammad Reza Mortazavi expands tradition radically without abandoning it. Nexus – his first LP since Ritme Jaavdanegi (2019), released on the French label Latency – marks his most uncompromising step to date. Voice, effects and electronics appear here for the first time. They extend the rhythmic vocabulary of the already virtuosic Iranian percussionist – not as decoration, but as an organic continuation of the Persian drum tradition by other means.
A piece such as »Particle« is pure hypnosis, a loop that draws you into trance in under three minutes. It feels only a matter of time before it turns up at Nation of Gondwana. The subsequent »Kimiya« is almost a drone – an infinitely stretched breath of alchemy, wisdom before its systematisation. »Hidden Current« invites cavemen and astronauts to dance together.
Nothing here is one-dimensional. Everything is in motion. Based in Berlin, Mortazavi does not preserve tradition in his music; he lives it. »Life« is not coincidentally the centre of »Woman, Life, Freedom«. In the opening piece »Zendegi«, Mortazavi disassembles the rhythm of that protest and rebuilds it into a new structure. A gesture towards his homeland, a gesture towards the future. Nexus demonstrates that expansion is fidelity. Tradition lives by transforming itself.
Nexus
