Codex (2013)
5 tracks, 45 minutes
Spotify · iTunes
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is one man with a drum, although you wouldn’t know it. Born in Iran and a long-time resident of Berlin, Germany, he has mastered the tombak goblet drum and the large daf frame drum. Actually, not just mastered, he’s completely changed how the drums can be played. Mortazavi has created at least 30 new ways in which to coax different sounds out of them with just his nimble fingers. This is beyond virtuosic – this is revolutionary.
Codex is a 45-minute unbroken performance created entirely with the tombak. It’s recorded without loops, without overdubs, and without any sort of studio trickery save the smallest hint of reverb. One man with a drum. The sounds he gets out of it are unreal. It can be trickling water one moment, and cellos or xylophones the next. Sometimes there’s even a dubstep thing going on, wobbly bass and all, all without breaking the beat. And it’s never one thing at a time – he gets all of these sounds and rhythms going on top of each other. It really makes you wonder how many fingers that guy actually has, let alone the brainspace to hold it all in.
It puts me in mind a little bit of the Laraaji album I covered, in the way that it is made up of endless changing patterns that draw you in, get all the way inside your head and leave you completely mesmerised. At one point, my brain was even telling me there were voices coming out of the reverb, but it’s all a trick being played by the overtones of the tombak’s single goatskin.
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi’s skills have to be seen to be believed, and even then, you’ll probably not. This album is a good place to start wrapping your head around it, though.
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