Sheida Gharachedaghi & Mohammad Reza Aslani
Chess of the Wind
Mississippi Records
/
2024
LP
28.99
MRI-207LP
8-page insert
LP (clear amber)
30.99
MRI-207LPC1
8-page insert
Incl. VAT plus shipping / Orders from outside the EU are exempt from VAT
Tracklist
1Prelude
2Dance Of The Spirit
3The Dream Of Death
4Purgatory
5The Truth Of Death
6Moribund
7Awareness Of The Dying
8Darkness Enters
9The Funeral/Revolt
10The Illusion Of Serenity/Arrest & Detention
11Golliwog/Masculine Conquest
12Hope Arises From Despair
13Ending Parade

The lost soundtrack to “Chess of the Wind”, Iran’s banned 1976 queer-gothic-class-horror masterpiece, restored by the director and released for the first time.

A masterpiece of world cinema, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s “Chess of the Wind” was banned in Iran and thought to be lost until a complete print of the film re-emerged in an antique shop in 2014. Restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and released to rapturous reviews in 2020, “Chess of the Wind” has taken its rightful place as one of the most visionary and daring films of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema.

The film’s soundtrack, by one of the nation’s most revered female composers, Sheida Gharachedaghi, is just as daring - a combination of Persian classical instrumentation and atonal dissonance drawn from her Western conservatory background. Woodwinds, traditional Persian percussion, and the eerie moan of the ancient sheypour horn reflect the film’s battle between feudalism and modernity. As one scholar said, it sounds like “Ornette Coleman visiting a holy shrine in Iran.”

For this release, the director and composer worked with film scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani to reimagine and restore the music, combining it with work from another (as yet unreleased) Aslani/Gharachedaghi project “Therefore Hangs A Tale.” The result is two side-length sound collages, a new sonic work that Aslani had long dreamt of creating. The work is a legible sonic journey that speaks to the film’s feminist themes, tracing a long battle for freedom in Iran from the early 20th century through today’s Women Life Freedom Movement.

Mississippi is proud to release a major work by two of Iran’s most visionary artists. The release comes with 8 full-size pages of liner notes and stills from the film, including song translations and an in-depth history by film scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani.