Saba Alizadeh

Tehran Contemporary Sounds is proud to invite Saba Alizadeh to present his new album Temple Of Hope to be released on 17th of January on 30M records in Hamburg.

How can a sense of beauty be found amidst fear and cruelty? How can the unspeakable be made audible—alongside rage, hope, and an unrelenting will to live? With his third album, Temple of Hope, Iranian composer Saba Alizadeh has created a deeply moving homage to the people of his homeland. The events of the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, as well as the struggles of the population in previous years, are transformed into powerful electro-acoustic music. These compositions are intensified by the vocals and lyrics of Andreas Spechtl, Sanam Maroufkhani, and Leila Rahimi.

In his work, Saba Alizadeh blends the traditional string instrument Kamanche and other string arrangements with modular synthesizers and no-input mixers. The result is a tension-filled soundscape that explores the inexpressible and the fragmentation between suffering, resistance, and hope. Historical radio sequences root his pieces in the culture and history of his homeland, while the strong distortion and deconstruction of these acoustic elements point toward the incomprehensible—the existential upheavals and processes of dissolution.
In his Temple of Hope courage and hope converge. While Saba Alizadeh's layered compositions may often seem like echoes of horror, they simultaneously unfold a profound and unsettling beauty.

Support by: rouge-ah

Urška Preis, aka rouge-ah, is a composer, harpist, visual artist, and writer. Under the moniker rouge-ah they explore sound, and are currently researching dreams, nightmares and other sleep disruptions. Their main instruments are acoustic and electric harp, with a tendency of extracting uncharacteristic sounds from them. Since relocating to Berlin in spring 2022, rouge-ah has become a regular at some of the edgiest live music venues in the city, carrying their electric harp and effects pedals everywhere, from smoky underground basements and cozy record shops, to established performance and music venues, always bringing fresh and unexpected sounds, from layers of delicate notes to roars of feedback and distortion that seem to conceal an orchestra or a choir in full flow.