Hiraeth by tarxun and Siavash Hakim

Featured on BBC's Late Junction for its 'dusty trumpet playing'.

"Disorienting, all-encompassing trumpet-led drones and dirges by this Iranian duo.” -- NPR's Lars Gotrich:

"Fans of post-rock chamber music orchestra, early US minimalism (deep listening) and emotional ambient incantations will find here a profound emotional experience." -- Igloo Magazine.

"Hakim’s trumpet and keys frequently drift into dusty twilight, while tarxun’s guitar and bass veer towards something approaching early ’90s post-rock. The result is a kind of haunting dark jazz, music that’s suffused with an alluring sense of mystery." Bandcamp Daily (Daryl Worthington).

A longing as deep as the winter snow infuses Hiraeth, suffocating, beautiful and haunting. Composed by Iranian musicians Farshad Xajehnassiri (tarxun) and Siavash Hakim in the cold months of 2015, this album presents longing not as a quiet and controlled mourning, or an almost pleasant nostalgia, but as deeply disorienting landscape, a salve one moment, the next overwhelming, abrasive and menacing.

The comforts of memory and nostalgia here exact a price. Winds howl, fences, windows and strings vibrate, voices echo, distort and dissolve, as Hakim's trumpet insists on a remembrance already futile and taunting. In naming this album Xajehnassiri and Hakim turned to the Welsh word 'Hiraeth' to describe a longing for a home which perhaps never was, and in its eight compositions it is to these twin qualities of memory that the pair return again and again. A vision so sweet it taunts, a longing so strong it becomes a house in which to dwell. A cocoon of sound: potent and intoxicating; familiar and strange.
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Recently featured for its ‘dusty trumpet playing’ on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010y66
Recommended by NPR’s Lars Gotrich: “Disorienting, all-encompassing trumpet-led drones and dirges by this Iranian duo.”
https://www.vikingschoice.org/archive/vikings-choice-to-bandcamp-friday-nov-2021/

Tracklist

1.	Fading Urbanity	4:44

2.	23-45	7:00

3.	The Day After	3:44

4.	Outdoor	5:00

5.	Placebo Seduction	2:30

6.	Blank Space	4:20

7.	About Humiliation	7:00

8.	Blood Role	4:00

Credits

released November 5, 2021

hiraeth
(n.) A deep, wistful, nostalgic sense of longing for a home to which you cannot return; a home that is no longer or perhaps never was.

tarxun:Guitar, Bass, Electronics, Field Recordings
Siavash Hakim: Trumpet, Piano / Organs, Synthesizer, Xylophone, Setar, Ney.
Mastered by: Nima Aghiani
Photography by Farshad Xajehnassiri and Siavash Hakim.
Design Farshad Xajehnassiri, Siavash Hakim and Kate Carr
Released November 5, 2021

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