Ata Ebtekar aka Sote is an electronic music composer and sound artist based in Tehran, Iran.
In the past 20 plus years, companies, such as Warp, Sub Rosa, Digitalis, Morphine and Opal Tapes among others, have published his work. Global cultural exposure through transmigration has been a significant stimulant for his aesthetics. Sote's goal is to create unique and timeless pieces of music that are not available anywhere except in his mind.
Photo by Sadaf Zadehfar
His compositions and multi-channel installations are sonic tales synchronously decoding and regenerating customary pattern of thought in nature; aural designs of crisis and harmony where contempo aligns with folklore, orchestrating an artificial saga with a variety of illuminations and analyses. His passion for all music especially all forms of electronic music, and his extensive involvement in the sound art academia world, has led him to compose in a wide variety of musical styles with a strong emphasis in electro-acoustic techniques, microtonal systems and polyrhythmic motifs.
He has a firm conviction that rules and formulas must be deconstructed and rethought; hence he alters musical modal codes from their original tonality and rhythm (tradition) to achieve vivid synthetic soundscapes.
In order to accomplish dynamic expression on electronics, gesture and texture, he employs various synthesis languages and dsp techniques in a modular sound environment. Ata 'Sote' Ebtekar believes that music is a cultural habit of sound and anti-sound (silence). Therefore, he generates music without a specific culture, which he believes to be "the other sound."