British-Iranian producer Hiatus is back after a short break and has just released the title track from his upcoming album, Is, via Lucky Thunder. Having been channelling his Iranian heritage through electronic music since 2005, after rediscovering his father’s record collection while working as a journalist in Tehran, he's now ready to share new music with his audience. Melding two of his biggest influences, the music of Iran and film scores, the artist reconnects with his roots and begins the countdown to the release of his fifth album, his most joyful record to date.
Cyrus Shahrad, better known as Hiatus, has been proving for years that music can take us to unknown places beyond the earthly level. His music is charged with sensitivity, and through it, he reconnects with his heritage. His songs might be well termed sonic landscapes, as he takes us to other universes in which the spirit is freed, inviting us to stop thinking and just feeling. His new release, Is, fuses Western classical forms and the microtonal Persian music system known as the Dastgāh. The artwork that accompanies this new track, shot by photographer Spencer Murphy, features the Dorset coast where his mother grew up, and where he spent so much of his childhood.
This element is added to the equation with which the artist reconnects with his origins through a project constructed on sound that includes many other components. After announcing in mid-June that his fifth album was already finished and that we could hear some new music very soon, his new project is getting closer. “It is characterized 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,” he explains.
