Rojin Sharafi is a musician, composer, sound artist & sound engineer well known for her music that conflates the genres noise, electronic, metal and avant-garde. She draws inspiration from her Iranian roots in using the Santur – a hammered dulcimer popular in traditional Iranian music – for her sound generation and her performances. Rojin Sharafi’s music often builds on microtonal and polyrythmic structures. In 2014 Rojin moved to Austria in order to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and has since chosen Vienna as her homebase. She is also a multi-disciplinary artist who has composed music for the silent movie from 1937 “Warschauer Zitadelle” for the international film festival Viennale, is working together with architects in order to find the intersection of music and architecture and has done the sound-design for several experimental films.
So far she has released the albums “Urns waiting to be fed” (2019) & “Zangaar” (2020) on the Iranian label Zabte Sote and cooperated with the Black Page Orchestra, Ensemble Phoenix Basel and the Ensemble Platypus.
… how & why:
Clemens Radauer had heard a lot about Rojin over the last few years and he was very much interested in her music. But it wasn’t until 2020 that he finally saw Rojin play live at the Sonic Territories Festival and I was totally flabbergasted by her performance. The way she used the Santur – an instrument he had only known in the context of traditional Iranian music – and how she combined these acoustic sounds with industrial noisy soundscapes and heavy beats surprised him. Almost two years later he asked if she would be willing to record for Wien33 and luckily she sais yes! The result are 33 one-sided vinyls each featuring a live version of one of two songs…
released April 29, 2022
WIEN33 is an ongoing series of direct to vinyl recordings. Artists are invited to record 7 inch vinyls, 33 units and each one by one, making each vinyl one of a kind.
Host is VINYLOGRAPH, a space for live recording that uses a lathe cutting machine built by Natascha Muhić & Christoph Freidhöfer in 2014. They based their design on the technology of recording booths popular in the 1940ies, but improved specific aspects and made the machine fully automatic. Since building the vinylograph a diverse range of vinyls have been cut in the multi-purpose space in the center of the 5th Viennese district – most direct to vinyl and in very limited series. Aras Seyhan is the sound- & recording engineer who is responsible for transporting the sound from the instruments/artists through the vinylograph and onto vinyl. A task that can sometimes be a bit tricky since the machine is a prototype that unfortunately may run into some minor difficulties.
Cut with a lathe-cutter from the 1940ies, the vinyls are mono and have a distinct vintage sound.
The series WIEN33 is curated by Clemens Radauer, a cultural historian and music aficionado, who has been working in the music context for almost 25 years. He invites artist from different backgrounds – from literature, to experimental music to jazz – active in Vienna or close to the Viennese scene.
The artists have full freedom in deciding how and what they want to record… some choose to record one song 33 times and leave the flip-side blank whereas some choose to record 66 different tracks on both sides. Clemens also designs the covers for each recording and decorates them each by hand, making them one of the kind just like every vinyl.
Each recording session has been an amazing, intense and a once-in-a-lifetime experience both for the recording artist and the WIEN33 team. And we are looking forward to many more.
wien33.com
all music b Rojin Sharafi
