Ata Ebtekar (aka Sote) composes music with a deeply-held conviction that rules and formulas should be deconstructed and rethought. A pivotal figure of the electronic music scene in the Middle East, he alters musical modal codes from their original tonality and rhythmic tradition to achieve vivid synthetic soundscapes. His fourth full-length album “Parallel Persia” (Diagonal Records) deals – in Sote’s own words – “with the illusion and creation of an artificial hyperreal culture manipulated and controlled by an imperious agency somewhere within all galaxies.” Together with Arash Bolouri and Pouya Damadi, playing the traditional Iranian instruments santoor and tar, Sote merges the traditional with the futuristic into an ambitious techno apocalypse. Sote performed an overwhelming show at Jazzhouse in 2017, and we’re looking forward to welcome him back this Autumn at ALICE.