A Mimesis of Nothingness

Siavash Amini returns to Hallow Ground with ‘A Mimesis of Nothingness’ his fourth album for the Swiss label. Following up on ‘Harmistice’ together with fellow Iranian artists 9T Antiope, the six tracks were conceived in close collaboration with another artist and see the prolific composer intensify his interdisciplinary approach. The six tracks enter a dialogue with the photographs of Nooshin Shafiee, an acclaimed artist whose work capturing their hometown Tehran becomes the starting point for one of Amini’s most visceral and haunting records.

A Mimesis of Nothingness translates the ephemeral situations and melancholic moods of Shafiee’s pictures into suspenseful soundscapes that masterfully navigate between the concrete and the abstract. ‘A Mimesis of Nothingness’ is adisquieting record precisely because it is a quiet one. Working with field recordings, Amini sculpts dynamic portraits that create an atmosphere of tangible suspense that is never fully released. Even when string-like sounds enter the picture as they do on the third track ‘Moonless Garden’ or when the abstract and glacial noise on ‘Observance (Shadow)’ demand the listener’s attention, the sixpieces take hold of the subconscious rather than trying to be direct and confrontational. It is sound conceived not as a description, but a circumscription of spatial relations and the eeriness embedded in them.