Otashgah: Place of Fire

Where Dariush Dolat-Shahi’s first album with Folkways sought to blend traditional Persian instruments with electronic music, here he uses an exclusively electronic palette to compose an aural odyssey informed by Persian epics. Otashgah: Place of Fire explores the theme of struggle between light and darkness as inspired by the 11th century poet Ferdowsi’s Shah-nameh (“Book of Kings”). As Goldstein comments in the liner notes, “Dolat-shahi's music achieves its raw power through grand gestures, occasionally, but more commonly through the obsessive repetition of short, blunt ones;” Otashgah forgoes some forms of musical phrasing and “contains a spontaneous, organic, and unpremeditated quality that reflects the philosophy of the composer.” Liner notes provide biography for Dolat-Shahi and information on the album’s concept.