In case you haven’t noticed your BIA2 is celebrating its 5th birthday this year! Time has flied by and our veteran visitors remember the transition from the personal djsoltan.com to the people’s BIA2.com back in 2003. The ambition was to create a meeting place and forum for young Iranians around the world through entertainment and interaction! And today we are proud to say that we have managed to do exactly that and perhaps even a bit more! We were the very definition of grassroots cooperation and are the perfect example of how word-of-mouth does serves such genuine projects better than any commercial advertisement! “What” we are today is due to our efforts and principles but “where” we are today is thanks to your sincere support and assistance throughout these years!
We are constantly planning and navigating towards a more progressive and productive BIA2, but we try to do so without detaching ourselves from our origin and originality! So thank you for staying tuned!
Due to the current parliamentary elections in Iran many of the planned concerts have been cancelled or postponed! Hamid Askari managed to open his tour with a concert to then postpone the rest till after the political event.
In an article in the latest issue of the musical monthly Gozareshe Moosighi, Kambiz Roshanravan discusses the fact that the Iranian music has gradually become political rather than cultural. This is a rather controversial statement as most critics would rather suggest the opposite!
You have seen her name in many of my reviews and blog entries, always helping me in my quests for songs and various information. Ladan is namely your fellow reader and my dearest friend. Not only being intelligent and beautiful she is also a very talented young lady! As a matter of fact she has recently worked on a film called “Act of Grace” as a production assistant.
“Act of Grace” is a story about love, betrayal and the Chinese Mafia (Triads). Filmed in Liverpool, the European Capital of Culture for 2008 and famous for being the oldest Chinese community in Europe. The film is going to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Ladan is 20 years old, born in Tehran but raised in London. Speaking both Persian and Azeri fluently! She will be graduating in July with a BA degree in International Journalism, specialized in Television Journalism. And I for one am very proud of her!
OLDBOY, the ULTIMATE EDITION! The most expensive and rarest (single movie) set in my collection! Released five years ago and constantly increasing in price! Its gorgeous and pics just don’t do it justice!
As you might have been noticing there has been hiccups in my blogging the past weeks and its due to a project I’m working on which consumes more time than its ranson! Sadly affecting my other commitments such as reviewing and blogging! So please bear with me this coming month as the deadline is looming! Thank you my friends!
Kamran Delan’s follow up to the successful debut album “-U” has been titled “24:00″ and is due out September 2008! With the first music video from the album to be broadcasted next week! As I’ve said before I have had the privilige of hearing a few tracks from “24:00″ and if the rest of the songs sound anything remotely close to what I’ve heard its gonna be a KICK AZZ album!!!
If you happened to be a kid or even older back in the 80’s chances are that you have owned a COMMODORE 64. The cartridge equipped computer and its practically stored games on cassette tapes, which in TURBO format could contain hundreds of games on one single tape, were household gadgets of the late 80’s! And through the years one has found himself getting nostalgic over games played twenty years ago and thinking “man those games were both fun to play and beautiful to watch”! Why cant today’s game reach the same level? Yet when you get a chance to replay old classics and favourites for the first time after technological light-years suddenly your whole perception changes! Naturally to our over-trained eyes the games aren’t that cutting edge as they once were! However the immortal scores of the games still stand the test of time and are in fact more charming than contemporary compositions! Here are 10 minutes of walk down the memory lane with 100 game samples! Enjoy the nostalgia!
Last year I wrote a blog on cassette tapes, the albums that were never transferred onto compact discs and the lost musical heritage! A few days ago I was looking for a certain album in the sesame aka my archive when I came across this album. Released 19 years ago! The music was produced by Farokh “Elton” Ahi and promoted by Alireza Amighassemi. If you recall the famous Ahi flavour from the 80’s then you have an idea how this album sounds like! We are talking about extended mellow 6/8 tracks on a 6-track EP! Shiva herself looked- and acted like a Barbie! And I’m sure that if Barbie have had a voice she would have sounded just like Shiva! For better or worse! “Dozde Del” is one of those forgotten albums that unfortunately didn’t make it to the era of compact discs. In the end I have to -once again!- mention Behzad Mahjour who was by far the best and still unchallenged designer of the Iranian industry! As you can see on this cover Behzad didn’t only design the packaging but he rather “illustrated” images! And this was the time long before Photoshop, so he actually handheld the airbrush and there is a certain promotional clip for Andy and Kouros’ last album “Goodbye” which shows the master at work in his studio working on perhaps his most elaborate cover art!
So far 537 pieces have been submitted to the Farhad Awards of which 20 are supposed to make it to the actual contest. According to Yahya Shariatnia, the member of the board, around 180 of these belong to female artists who are by law prevented from competing in the first round of the competition. He also states that “Khaaneye Farhaad” as an institution aims to establish a musical legacy and not in any way serve as entrainment.
Ershaad has extended its granting of one-year-permits to all the participants of the last year’s FAJR music festival and not just the winners like it was planned from the beginning. These permits basically mean that all the artists who performed on the latest FAJR music festival don’t need any other permit for their activities this year! Hamid Askari is the first to use the opportunity, planning several concerts in a row in the biggest concert halls of the country!
I’m not really impressed or amused by Kanye West’s cocky superstar attitude but I have lately started to appreciate the experimental path he has been taking in his crossovers! His song “Flashing Lights” and in particular the music video for it are perfect examples. I love the clever clip and its not just for the Tarantino influences and the appearance of the lovely Rita G.! …well maybe a bit! hehe!
Thanks to Niloufar H. we now know that the sought after Persian version of “Abdelkader” was done by the jonoob-born singer Amir Abdollah on his album “Ghosse Makhor”. I havent been able to find the song for varification but its highly likely that its the same song I heard, considering the theme and title “Man Irooniam”.
Mohsen Chavoshi who is still desperately waiting for a permit from Ershaad says in an interview with Panje Sobh that he doesn’t believe in such thing as bad luck but rather that his career is suffering from questionable decisions made earlier in his life. But explains that he wants nothing more than an approval by the authorities whom once black-marked him for not reporting the leaking and illegal distribution of his songs. He deeply regrets handing out copies to friends and the fact that he didn’t know that he should report such activities even if he is not directly involved, due to this negligence Ershaad rejected his debut “Nefrin” which had alreday been granted permit and will most likely not grant him any in near future!
Khaaneye Moosighi states that it has in the past year provided half of its members, more then 3500 people, with a social security insurance and the goal is to have all the members insured by the end of the new year.
In an interview with Shahrvande Emrooz and as a reply to the question regarding the unusal tight release schedule of his albums, Ali Reza Eftekhari explained that he has commercial commitments to his producers, to make them profit as much as possible from their investments not to forget that sales numbers also bring comfort to his voice and motivation for new albums!
Not so long ago I mentioned the movie “Caramel” in my blog and how much I wanted to see it. Well it finally arrived to Sweden, to only two selected cities as these narrow niche foreign movies often do! But let me tell you that the train travel to the distant city was worth the while since I found the movie charming and beautiful! Exactly how I had imagined it to be! Well a beauty deserves a beautiful edition on DVD and this French release does it justice!
The Afshin review was published only few hours ago and an update is alread here, “The Song For X” track looks like having taken music from The Braveheart OST without crediting! Thanks to Ahmad and Richard for informing me!
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