British-Iranian producer Hiatus is back from a short, um…break, with a new single in ‘Is’ via Lucky Thunder.
Both the album opener and title track ‘Is’ is a slow burning instrumental that perfectly encapsulates the record’s sense of wonder. In a nod to Hiatus’s origins, ‘Is’ melds two of the artist’s biggest influences: the music of Iran, and film scores. The isolated piano at the beginning bears an eerie resemblance to John Carpenter’s theme for ‘Halloween’, but once interwoven with collaborator Faraz Eshghi Sahraei’s calligraphic melody on the kamancheh (an Iranian string instrument), it opens up into a beautiful sonic landscape; one that fuses western classical forms and the microtonal Persian music system known as the Dastgāh. As soft drum patterns and swirling synths become part of the refrain – as well as a cheeky Iranian sample of the sort that has become a hallmark of Hiatus’ work – ‘Is’ transforms into something that recalls the softer side of Massive Attack’s magnum opus Mezzanine.
Is will be the fifth album from Hiatus, who lives and works in South London. It’s his most joyful record to date, something he attributes in part to a recent flurry of live performances, his first in ten years, which reminded him of the power of music to connect us to something timeless. He says of the album: “In some ways it’s a natural follow-up to the previous record, Distancer, in that it features collaborations with the Iranian singer Malahat Haddad, while Faraz’s kamancheh weaves throughout on every track. But while Distancer was eerie and occasionally mournful – written during the pandemic, and reflecting the grief and isolation of that period – Is is characterised by a sense of euphoria, a celebration of the cosmic joy that can be found only in the present moment, when rumination on the past and anxieties over the future fall away.”
Hiatus – “IS”
release Date – 8th November 2024
Tracklist:
1. Is
2. Flood
3. Creature
4. Living
5. Door (feat. Malahat Haddad)
6. Matriarch
7. Delta
8. Lo (feat. Malahat Haddad)
9. Cease (feat. Dad)
TRACK-BY-TRACK QUOTES
Is
This is the first single. An instrumental and a slow burner, but also the track that I think best encapsulates the sense of wonder that informs the album as a whole. The first half builds around a piano loop through which Faraz’s kamancheh weaves calligraphically, with a gentle drum pattern and swirling synthesizers, before opening out into a kind of cosmic elegy in the second half. There’s also a cheeky Iranian sample in the first half. Oriana Nguyen Van is currently putting the finishing touches to a video that intersperses shots of me walking through a rainy London evening with drone footage of the Iranian mountains.
Flood
I think this is a great second track, an upward gear shift into something more pulsing and driven. This track was inspired by my five-year-old niece, Daphne, and it’s an attempt to capture her restless energy, her excitement for life and love of dance. I play the bass guitar on this one, which gives it a sort of throbbing energy that feels somehow live. Second half features a loop of me playing a jazzy piano line, and has me singing a sort of mantra, albeit very quietly: “All a dream, there’s nothing in the way, all a dream about nothing at all”. A track about letting go of the past and immersing ourselves in the moment, which will forever be the most useful cliché of all. Hoping to release this as single three (though currently a toss-up between this and Delta). Video being made by award winning American director Sinclair Rankin.
Creature
One of the more subdued moments on the record. Flood was written for my niece; this track is for Elias, my seven-year-old nephew, and it’s an attempt to evoke both his wonder for the world and his sensitivity to the pain contained within it. It’s also a reflection of my many long walks around London in recent years, when I have observed the movements of so many human creatures moving effortlessly around each other, lost in the stories of their little lives, unaware of the bigger system of which they are a part. Also has me singing at the end, another repeated mantra: “You’ll never fall away from love”.
Living
Another unusually (for me) upbeat and pulsing track, this one came out of those gigs in Albania, when I made a few demos to add some more dynamic moments to my set. This one seemed to work well with the crowd, so I kept chipping away at it, and ended up with something that I wanted to include on the album. Pumping bassline, piano shattered by delays, lots of jagged synths, plus a friend of mine, Emily Craig, singing a few largely meaningless lines. The whole thing builds to a climax that is possibly a bit ridiculous, but I like it. Certainly it’s a shift in the pace of the album.
Door (feat. Malahat Haddad)
The first of two collaborations with Malahat, this track marks another change in mood. Door is a darker track, introspective and mournful, with a melancholic piano loop complemented by eerie synth patterns and a heavy bassline. The whole thing builds to a dramatic climax, with Mal launching into a traditional Iranian vocal flourish called a tahrir, the sort of ululation that I used to marvel at from the backseat of my dad’s car when he played his driving tapes as a kid. I’ve got this pegged as a second single, and have a suitably moody black and white video by Karim Kassem, a Lebanese filmmaker with whom I’ve collaborated more than once in the past.
Matriarch
I like this track a lot. It’s a tribute to my Iranian grandmother, Aalam, whose house in Tehran I stayed at so many times until her death, in 2020, at the age of 109 (estimates vary, but she was well over 100). The instrumental break of the track features a recording of her infectious laughter, made by her live-in carer Setareh, who was like a sister to her despite being in her 30s (she can be heard laughing alongside her). It’s a joyful track, a celebration of life, and it also features my friend Matt Falloon playing lapsteel guitar, which weaves wonderfully around Faraz’s kamancheh part.
Delta
Another track that came out of those Albania shows, a sort of dramatic house track, at least when it gets going. More piano loops, more synths, plus the second half has a chopped up sample of a singer called Bo Bruce, which gives the whole thing an ethereal quality that I love. There’s a hand drawn animated video being made for this by an incredible animator called Isabella Barszcz, who also made a video for a track of mine called Nightjar many years ago. Not sure at this point whether this or Flood should be the third single – whichever doesn’t get used can be the focus track when the album comes out.
Lo (feat. Malahat Haddad)
The second collaboration with Malahat, and possibly my favourite track on the record – a growling DnB number with an emotional and cinematic undercurrent. Heavy from the moment it drops, and builds to something really special. Forms a dramatic climax to the record before the more ethereal resolution of the final track.
Cease (feat. Dad)
My third and (probably) final collaboration with my father. We started making these tracks back in 2015, when I was renting a studio in Soho and invited my dad to come and read some of his beloved Persian poetry over a piano and string thing I was working on. The resulting track, Delam, closed my third album, and we made a follow up (Human) that was the last track on Distancer. My dad has dementia (though I don’t talk about this publicly), and making these tracks has been a way of documenting his voice and preserving his memories as they deteriorate. I wrote a piece for the Guardian back in 2017 about the process: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/18/how-iranian-poetry-brought-me-closer-to-my-father-cyrus-shahrad-hiatus. It’s a fitting finale to the record.
Hiatus is the moniker of British-Iranian producer Cyrus Shahrad, who has been channelling his Iranian heritage through electronic music since 2005, after rediscovering his father’s record collection while working as a journalist in Tehran. Since then, his releases have featured samples from old Iranian records, an Iranian nursery rhyme re-scored for a choir, even his father reciting ancient Persian poetry. Kicking things off in 2010 with his debut album Ghost Notes, Hiatus’ records have been consistently met with critical acclaim. Tracks like ‘River’ and ‘Insurrection’ have received mainstream radio play, the latter voted single of the week on Steve Lamacq’s Roundtable on BBC Radio 6 Music; he has been profiled by the New York Times, written articles about his creative process for the Guardian, and We Can Be Ghosts Now won Best Animation at the 2013 UK Music Video Awards. With more than 30 million Spotify streams, Cyrus has grown a devoted following through his ability to reflect on disparate pasts and create messages that feel both foreign and familiar.
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