“To become a martyr, one has to be murdered”.

Heroism is seldom born in times of peace and justice, but rather out of the inevitable necessity for resistance against the powers that be. Given the dystopian playbook unfolding in shocking blatancy before our eyes that statement sounds like a horribly accurate, global political weather forecast. An age of (more) oppression, murder - and thus also heroes - ahead. Yet against all odds, right amidst the epicentre of one storm raging in September 2022, composer and musician Saba Alizadeh refused to only see the dark when he began to build his Temple of Hope.

History is moving loud and fast - and seemingly into all the wrong directions. In the deafening noise of gears being yanked backwards it’s hard to even keep up with all showplaces of the current world failure. So of course I am listening to Temple of Hope in the context of what makes me personally scream inside the most right now: the imminent fates of the US, Europe, my home, fascist-infested Germany. In truth however the backdrop of this album is of course undoubtly Iran, a country whose current struggles against authoritarianism and for equality overshadow a colourful history of culture and civilization in the perception of the outside world. Yet such is the universal language of art, that it will be applied to parallel or wider contexts by the recipient, especially as it becomes more and more obvious that we’re all humans on the same Earth, fighting the same evils in different clothes.

Alizadeh’s previous works were the masterful Ambient score and love letter to the city of Tehran Scattered Memories (2019) and the more abstract internal monologue I May Never See You Again (2021). On Temple of Hope he returns to the outer world of his home country, which he is currently watching from afar, living in the Netherlands. The conception of these eleven tracks began shortly before the martyrdom of Jina Mahsa Amini and Nika Shakarami, when the Iranian regime brutally shattered the Woman Life Peace movement.

The bad news for anyone expecting a clear optimistic message on how to overcome this defeat - or at least to escape current troubles for a while -, is that Temple of Hope despite its title is a predominantly gloomy work. Beauty and brightness are there, but they appear to need a lot of darkness as their opponent to become visible. Both poles however almost constantly exist at the the time, a touching yearning is woven through all of Alizadeh’s instrumental performances.

There are some samples of historic radio broadcasts, but apart from that only four out of eleven tracks feature vocals: Austrian singer Andreas Spechtl (Ja, Panik) appears with his own lyrics on “Beauty of Politics” and “Extra Planetary Lovers”, while “Women of Fire” and “What Comes From the Sea Returns To The Sea” are wordlessly augmented by Sanam Maroufkhani and Laila Rahimi.

So obviously the album doesn’t tell the story of the protests and their suppression as a clearly formulated narration, but mainly suggests through track titles like “Drop By Drop an Ocean of Blood Forms”, “Fall of the Heroes” or “Plain of the Free” and their striking instrumental interpretation. Saba Alizadeh is solely responsible for all music and he utilizes a very specific electro-acoustic combination of three sound sources. Two of those would define him as an Experimental Electronic artists: Modular synths and no-input mixers. The latter means playing with the internal noises and feedbacks of a mixer, which you would normally try to avoid altogether, alone without any external input.

On the other hand this man also is a “real” musician, too - actually a true virtuoso. The range of expressions he elicits from the traditional Persian kamancheh (or spike fiddle) is simply stunning. Emotionally as overwhelming as an orchestra, the string instrument is the living soul and primal voice on a fascinating, immensly powerful album between captivating songwriting and puzzling stream of consciousness collage in the mantle of bold Avant-Garde, Ambient, Drone, Modern Classical and traditional Middle Eastern music.

I can sense Laibach’s theatrical works like Krst Pod Triglavom or Also Sprach Zarathustra here right beside composers like Aftab Darvishi (see my review of A Thousand Butterflies) or Eyvind Kang. And beyond those comparisons Temple of Hope evokes many other fleeting little notions of familiarity, be it with the expressive power of trumpeter Yazz Ahmed - yet by very different means - or the Art Pop appeal of Ulver at its most abstract.

But all this truly is just me desperately reaching for classification, where actually the work (un)comfortably speaks for itself. It’s not an easy, but an earnest and rewarding album. And as long as the enemies of art are not in power and we can still defy them, we should cherish every minute which great empathetic musical minds like Saba Elizadeh are granting us!