Author Archives: Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Martin Bisi – a Brooklyn troubador!

His credentials as a recording engineer and producer

Martin Bisi the engineer and producer

Martin Bisi the engineer and producer

As the person responsible for recording a dizzying number of groundbreaking albums by the likes of Sonic Youth, Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Herbie Hancock, Brian Eno, the Swans, Foetus, Cop Shoot Cop,The Boredoms, Unsane and The Dresden Dolls—to name just a few.

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Documentary: The Glass House

About this documentary

The fringes of Iranian society can be a lonely place, especially if you are a teenage girl with few resources to fall back on. The Glass House follows four girls striving to pull themselves out of the margins by attending a one-of-kind rehabilitation center in uptown Tehran. Forget about the Iran that you’ve seen before.

With a virtually invisible camera, the girls of The Glass House take us on a never-before-seen tour of the underclass of Iran with their brave and defiant stories: Samira struggles to overcome forced drug addiction; Mitra harnesses abandonment into her creative writing; Sussan teeters on a dangerous ledge after years of sexual abuse; and Nazila burgeons out of her hatred with her blazing rap music. This groundbreaking documentary reflects a side of Iran few have access to or paid attention to: a society lost to its traditions with nothing meaningful to replace them and a group of courageous women working to instill a sense of empowerment and hope into the minds and lives of otherwise discarded teenage girls.

The director’s statement

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Rowan Atkinson (UK) – Comedy vs. music vs. criticism

Rowan Atkins

Rowan Atkins

Rowan Sebastian Atkinson (born 6 January 1955) is a British comedian, actor and writer, famous for his work on classic sitcoms such as Blackadder, The Thin Blue Line, Not the Nine O’Clock News and Mr. Bean. He has been listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy, and amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians.

Barbès

Barbès

Barbès is a bar and performance space located in the South Slope part of Brooklyn.

Barbès is also a neighborhood in northern Paris famous for its discount stores, its large North African population as well as the record stores which helped launch the Rai music explosion of the mid 80’s.

Owned and operated by two French musicians and long-time Brooklyn residents, Barbès functions as a neighborhood community center of sorts.

The Art of Listening: A Sense of Place

By Gerry Hemingway
Article courtesy All About Jazz

I am writing to offer my insights about the experience of listening from the perspective of being a musician. The art of listening is, of course, a somewhat open-ended topic that, for the sake of this article, will concentrate primarily on a few points of what I have observed and can articulate verbally about on the experience of music and sound for me as a player and creator of composed and improvised music. I am hoping that sharing my experience may enrich your next encounter with a music performance or recording.

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