Samsaminia is a selection of tracks edited from four improvisations recorded in our home studio between the 3rd and 22nd December 2019.

The title comes Arshia Samsaminia, a very highly regarded contemporary classical composer from Tehran, whose work has been performed, recorded and published all over the world. We made contact with him last September via his Soundcloud profile to ask if he’d be up for us using his music in our improvisations. Thankfully, Arshia couldn't have been more enthusiastic and kindly gave us the freedom to use his sounds in any way we wanted. In the wee hours last December, we set about playing with a huge palette of sounds he provided over four roughly hour-long improvisations.

Nervous of what Arshia's reaction might be to our radical re-working of his material, we sent him short clips from the first three improvisations. He loved the results, so excitedly, we put the idea to him of travelling to Tehran to meet and perform some sort of collaborative concert. How lovely to get a mail from Arshia on Xmas Day to say how proud he was to be part of such a collaboration, and that it was a great idea to come to Tehran. He put us in touch with another well-established Iranian composer, Idin Samimi Mofakham, who organises the Tehran Contemporary Music Festival, suggesting we might be able to take part in May/June 2020.

Just as we made contact with Idin, the proverbial hit the fan with the assassination of General Soleimani. Coupled with the Coronavirus epidemic, the current situation has obviously wiped out any chance of us going to Tehran any time soon.

Naturally, we were gutted, but Arshia's response to hearing the final improvisation brought us to tears... not only does he love the results of all four improvisations, he wants to dedicate this album to the people who lost their lives on Flight 752, shot down in error over Tehran on the 8th January 2020.

The whole experience has been truly heart-warming and reaffirms our belief that music has no borders or boundaries, and that cross-cultural collaborations like this are so important in fostering mutual respect and understanding. It also makes us all the more determined to bring the music to as wide an audience as possible and ultimately perform in Tehran to honour those killed on Flight 752

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Thanks also to Ronald and Marco from R S Stropharia and Pantoclast in Berlin, who provided some great drones and rhythmic material that also feature in these recordings.

All the artworks featured on the individual tracks of this album are original works by Gillie and are available for purchase as high quality prints. See instagram.com/silo_portem_prints for more info.