Meet Siavash Amini: Creating Beauty from Dissonance

Discover Siavash Amini, the Iranian experimental composer who creates haunting dark ambient soundscapes from Tehran.

The Artist Who Refuses to Be Your “Iranian Brian Eno”

In the sprawling landscape of experimental music, few artists navigate cultural complexity with the precision and defiance of Siavash Amini. Based in Tehran, this Iranian composer has spent over a decade crafting what Pitchfork describes as work that “often flits between chamber instrumentation, sumptuous dark ambient, and head-splitting noise.” But Amini himself bristles at easy categorizations, particularly the lazy comparison to Brian Eno that has followed him. His music demands more nuanced listening—and rewards it with uncomfortable beauty that speaks to both local and global experiences of displacement and transformation.

Born in 1987 and raised in the port town of Bandar Abbas, Amini’s journey began in the underground metal scene, trading tapes of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses as part of what he describes as “something really underground that we did.” This foundation in heavy music never fully left his work, even as he evolved into one of the most compelling voices in contemporary dark ambient and experimental composition.

Essential Albums: A Journey Through Amini’s Dark Cosmos

Till Human Voices Wake Us (2014) - The Breakthrough

This album of “fragile ambient sketches and gentle drones” was Amini’s breakthrough moment. After disappointing experiences with Iranian labels, he spent a year emailing international labels before Daniel Castrejón from Umor Rex responded. “This release alone started me on this path that I am on today,” Amini recalls. “If this album hadn’t been released by Umor Rex, I wouldn’t have made any other music afterwards.” The album’s delicate textures and haunting atmospheres established his signature approach of finding beauty in bleakness.

What Wind Whispered To The Trees (2014/2019) - The Turning Point

Originally a collaboration with Nima Aghiani of 9T Antiope, this album marked “a big turning point” for Amini as he moved away from guitar-heavy ambient toward string-based compositions. “I told [Aghiani] ‘I can write for strings, you can play strings, our friend has a studio where we can record it. Why not try and see what happens,’” explains Amini. Recently reissued on Room40, the album remains “heavily inspired by both literature and movies” and aims “to convey a series of images or short moments through affecting and melancholy compositions.”

A Mimesis of Nothingness (2020) - The Collaborative Vision

Created in collaboration with photographer Nooshin Shafiee, this Hallow Ground release captures “brutalist and haunting images” of water pooling on plastic sheeting, rusting chairs, and abstract textures. “We both saw something decadent or violent about all of these captured places and objects,” explains Amini, “almost approaching baroque in their violence, but never getting there. There is no resolution, just excess.” The album exemplifies his interest in discomfort as an artistic tool.

Caligo (2025) - The Historical Experiment

His most recent release takes “two of the earliest solo piano recordings in Iran’s history” and subjects them to what Amini calls “surgeries”—mutilating and reassembling the source material both through physical manipulation and digital resurrection from transcriptions. Based on the grotesque novella “Malakoot,” the album represents “things collapsing in on themselves, self-decapitating, full of cuts and sutures.”

The Sound: Where Discomfort Meets Beauty

Amini is “generally interested in discomfort in music” and “absolutely not interested in ambient music or what we might call ‘nice’ music.” Despite often being labeled an ambient musician, he’s “incensed by its lack of meaning or purpose.” His compositions exist in what The Quietus calls the space “between both buoyant and melancholy planes of noise in amicable juxtaposition.”

His approach combines field recordings, manipulated classical instruments, and digital processing to create what he describes as sanctuaries for reflection. Yet these sanctuaries are never comfortable—they demand active engagement with difficult emotions and complex cultural realities.

Beyond the Music: Art, Politics, and Cultural Resistance

Amini has written extensively about lazy journalism and “all too familiar narratives that surrounds not just Iran but the Middle East in general.” He worries about the same exploitation that affected Iran’s underground rock scene: “when the gold diggers and film festival winners are done getting their prizes for ‘finding the heart-breaking untold story,’ the only people who are left in the cold and hurt are the people who had the most difficulty creating the scene and the music.”

The growth of Iran’s experimental music scene reflects broader social changes. As Amini explains, “public spaces were taken away from artists in most cities and the only way through was experimenting in the privacy of your bedroom.” Starting around 2008-9, “people started coming together again in smaller groups, gathering to play private shows, or in cafes or galleries once again. They were reclaiming the public spaces which were rightfully theirs.”

Key Collaborations and Evolution

Amini’s collaborative approach has produced vital work with artists like Rafael Anton Irisarri (”Lardaskan”), philosopher Eugene Thacker (”Songs for Sad Poets”), and various electronic artists across multiple albums. His labels—Room40, Hallow Ground, Opal Tapes, and Umor Rex—represent some of the most forward-thinking experimental music releases of the past decade.

Why Siavash Amini Matters Now

In an era of algorithmic music discovery that often flattens cultural complexity, Amini’s work demands deeper engagement. His compositions refuse easy consumption while offering profound rewards for attentive listening. He represents a generation of artists creating genuinely international experimental music—not by abandoning their cultural specificity, but by diving deeper into it.

From his early days trading metal tapes in Bandar Abbas to his current position as one of experimental music’s most uncompromising voices, Amini has consistently used his “mostly instrumental music to help navigate treacherous landscapes that are global and local at once.”

For listeners seeking music that challenges rather than soothes, that creates space for difficult thoughts rather than easy comfort, Siavash Amini offers a masterclass in the power of uncomfortable beauty.

Where to Start

• For ambient newcomers: Till Human Voices Wake Us

• For experimental veterans: A Mimesis of Nothingness

• For the adventurous: Caligo

• For collaborative curiosity: Songs for Sad Poets (with Eugene Thacker)

Essential Streaming: Available on Bandcamp, Spotify, and major platforms Physical Releases: Vinyl and CD through Room40, Hallow Ground, and other specialty labels Website: siavashamini.com

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