Ata Ebtekar aka Sote is an Iranian-American electronic composer/sound artist. He was born in Germany to Iranian parents, spent the first 11 years of his life in Iran and the next 6 years in Germany. At the age of 17, he moved to the United States and lived in the Bay Area for 15 years. He graduated from Ex'pression College for Digital Arts with a BAS degree in Comprehensive Sound Arts in 2002.
He has spent the last few years, living in Iran and working on several projects. One of these projects was recently released as a double disc set called "Persian Electronic Music - Yesterday and Today". For this project, Ata compiled early electronic music from Alireza Mashayekhi, a classical composer who, to his pleasant surprise, had made electronic music 40 years ago. Disc Two features Ebtekar's own compositions to present a timeline in modern Iranian music history. He was also given the opportunity to collaborate with the Iranian Orchestra for New Music. This project will be published in the summer of 2008.
Sote's compositions are sonic tales synchronously decoding and regenerating customary pattern of thought in nature; aural designs of crisis and harmony where contempo meets folklore, orchestrating an artificial saga with a variety of illuminations and analyses.
His music has been published by various companies, such as Warp Records, Sub Rosa, Sonic Arts Network, Dielectric Records, Record Label Records plus others.
Global cultural exposure through transmigration has been a significant stimulant for his aesthetics.
His goal is to create unique and timeless pieces of music that are not available anywhere except in his mind. He is interested in preserving the tuning of Persian classical scales (Radif) and melodies from Persian folk songs within a new electronic framework. He has a firm conviction that rules and formulas must be deconstructed and rethought; hence he alters some of these modal systems from their original tonality and rhythm (tradition). He does not believe in using traditional instruments or performances on top of electronic music, but rather in making a new form of Persian Art Music with electronic gear. The only occasion he would utilize these ancient instruments is by first preparing them, and then transforming them with various analog and digital equipment in a modular sound environment to achieve vivid synthetic soundscapes.
He uses various recording methods such as music concrete and electro-acoustic techniques, as well as more conventional ones to challenge the way we hear, and more important how we interpret Iranian music within an untried and unfamiliar sonic structure. In order to accomplish dynamic expression on electronics, gesture and texture, he employs various synthesis languages and dsp techniques.
Ata 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."
