Desert Equations: Azax Attra

Back in 1986, Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim was in New York, working with electronics and sampling multi-instrumentalist Richard Horowitz. They recorded an early release for the Belgian label Crammed, with this remastered reissue now reigniting those innovative fires made by the pair. Deyhim stacks up multiple vocal lines, as much a musical foundation as the slow beats, basslines, ney (flute), gong-shimmer and synthwave surrounds of Horowitz, assisted by Steve Shehan and Drem Bruinsma. This palette recalls the early albums of Laurie Anderson, loaded with those old chestnuts, the Prophet, Fairlight and Emulator techno-armoury of the time. The terrain is also similar to that explored by Jon Hassell, inhabited by plopping percussion, breathy drones and swarming atmospheres.

Deyhim favours a ritual, invocatory character, her twining, often wordless voices constructed into a self-sampled ensemble, striking from all locations around the sonic sphere. Deyhim makes glottal quakes, as deep panting parts curl around the basslines, her various vocal facets colliding, sometimes quite aggressively. This recalls the strictly controlled Satanic shrieking of Diamanda Galás. As the original album progresses, the songs become increasingly evocative, as if the desert landscape is gradually dissipating. Three previously unreleased tracks also appear here, all of high quality, though more conventionally produced, with fewer spiny exteriors.