KAMRAN SADEGHI
Through Thickness
DE5018
Dragon’s Eye Recordings 2008
12Tracks.  58mins08secs

Kamran Sadeghi confronts one with grand interlocking structures and micromanaged outbursts of intense digital incident on Through Thickness.  As Sadeghi juxtaposes these incongruous traits, setting off mobile, surprisingly rounded, fulsome structures and then, in various manners, swiftly testing them for flexibility and points of weakness, he exploits space to draw out a sense of transience and ending so far as the human species is concerned.

The predetermined orderliness of something like Through is given a virus; its polished, not to mention elaborate, percussion arrangement is slowly infiltrated by fleshy, fatty tones that render its gait sluggish and leave it worse for wear, speckling a trail of goo over its stainless surface. In other places the beats fracture internally; percussive fragments ricochet across the stereo field and threaten to derail the proceedings with every bar.  Yet, for all that, these works maintain their forward pulse; these particles and other such fragments are reabsorbed as desiccated palettes, which allow for more sustained gazes into ever-more specific and refined stylistic mirrors.

Soon each piece bears out its own minute form – composed of looping selections of brittle snaps and clicks, shifting tones, and changing states of momentum.  As the works grow more settled in simply living out their own structure, rather than risking a certain exteriority and feeding off of one another and other such outside influences, they also grow more unstable, more discordant, and often fly off into the more far-flung parameters of electronic music.  The beats grow diarrhoeic, and some of the latter tracks manage to conduct real electricity.  As a whole the album thus canvasses an impressive spectrum of sound, using aleatory elements to dislodge certain residues of habit and enough structural elements to avoid absolute meltdown.

3.5/5

Kamran Sadeghi | Dragon’s Eye Recordings