OUC051: Arash Azadi / Ballet No. 1
“Ballet No. 1” by Arash Azadi (see ODG105 and ODG213) is not a ballet in any traditional sense, but rather a conceptual dismantling and reimagining of the form. Constructed entirely as a fixed-media electroacoustic composition, this twelve-movement cycle weaves acoustic and electronic textures into a nonlinear, psychological narrative—an abstract dramaturgy for the ears rather than the eyes. The work exists in the charged space between installation art, radio play, and symphonic storytelling, and was first premiered in an immersive 8-channel format at Vienna’s Floating Sound Gallery in May 2023, under the curation and spatialization of Anton Iakhhontov.
Composed during the politically and psychologically turbulent years of 2021–2022 while in residence at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Ballet No. 1 inhabits a world where sonic material becomes metaphor, and where traditional forms are deconstructed to interrogate the present condition of the human soul.
Each movement is a self-contained vignette, yet together they form a fractured arc of transformation across trauma, power, memory, mysticism, and eventual catharsis:
Track listing:
I. Treatment of Mental Disorders introduces the work with violently fragmented percussion, distressed orchestral gestures, and fractured voices, portraying the disorienting cycles of medical and psychological intervention.
II. Abuse of Knowledge delves into darker philosophical territory, drawing on Slavoj Žižek’s reading of how avant-garde art has been co-opted for systems of torture. The distorted choir and brass inject institutional coldness into this sonic essay.
III. Serenade for the Healed serves as a tonal balm—woodwinds and strings breathe into a space of harmonic reprieve, offering momentary serenity after violence.
IV. Faust reanimates Goethe’s timeless paradox via Bulgakov’s lens, where orchestral grandeur meets digital hauntings in a meditation on the duality of intention and consequence.
V. Damaged Memory of Tomorrow plunges into dystopian sonics with warped strings and metal percussion—a post-traumatic reverberation of the digital age.
VI. Matthew 7 reinterprets Biblical scripture through extended string techniques and dissonant piano clusters—casting spiritual promise into an ambiguous acoustic light.
VII. Heavenly Whispers is a mysterious interlude for harp and electronics, tonal but evasive, suggesting the liminal threshold between comfort and the uncanny.
VIII. Morning Rooster of Hell is a brutalist string quartet movement, its title a provocation. Sharp textures and tense harmonies claw at the listener with ritualistic intensity.
IX. Purgatory continues the descent with sustained electronic tones and spectral synthesis, evoking an eternal stasis of introspection and unrest.
X. Light Bearer’s Battle unleashes a theatrical clash of choir, electric guitar, and heavy percussion—a mythic confrontation between enlightenment and ignorance.
XI. The Young Boy in Me is Not Dead Yet steps back from abstraction, offering a nostalgic, emotionally charged arrangement. A moment of personal remembrance, perhaps redemption.
XII. Lord Has Mercy closes the cycle with a prayer-like choral fugue. Polytonal and ambiguously resolved, it suggests both loss and transcendence—a final breath of hope in the shadow of suffering.
In Ballet No. 1, the composer constructs an auditory mythology for contemporary existence—an opera without staging, a ballet without bodies—where sound alone carries the full emotional and philosophical weight of a fractured world seeking wholeness.
Digital release on the 12th of September 2025.
Itunes, Apple Music, Deezer, etc.:
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