Mount Analog w/ Discotchari: TEHRANGELES VICE

Tehrangeles Vice is a groundbreaking exposé into the vibrant world of Tehrangeles pop music, produced in Los Angeles by the same legendary innovators and artists who realized the “golden age” of entertainment in pre-revolution Iran. This mix includes some tracks featured on Tehrangeles Vice, plus additional selections from the catalog of the Taraneh Enterprises label released between 1983-1993. For more than 40 years, Tehrangeles media has engaged in what the Iranian government calls a “cultural war” against the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the center of this conflict is an unlikely yet highly accountable culprit: cassette tapes: Cost-effective and easy to duplicate, cassette tapes have proven to be a mighty medium capable of toppling industry via piracy and fomenting ideology through diffusion. It is a historical reality that the Iranian Revolution was fueled by cassette tapes containing speeches of Ayatollah Khomeini that were recorded in exile from France and then distributed by his followers within Iran. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, cassette tapes (and eventually CDs) became a means for Tehrangeles producers and artists to realize a successive alternative of Iranian identity that maintained pre-revolutionary values while catering to the visceral appetites of Iranian diasporas around the world and in the home nation, where Tehrangeles music was both banned by the government yet embraced by the public. The album title Tehrangeles Vice underscores the illicit nature and daring circumstances from which Tehrangeles pop music was born and compares its legacy within Persian media to one of the most significant crime–drama TV shows of all time. In the same manner that Miami Vice and its aesthetics had a dynamic impact on sonic, visual and cultural trends in the United States and around the world, Tehrangeles media was a shock to the systems of Islamic Republic ideology and Iranian expatriate communities. Listening to these songs in hindsight, the contribution of Tehrangeles can be better understood as a triumphant effort to preserve Iranian identity by realizing it in conjunction with prevailing music genres of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and to rebel against the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran through the most seductive of means: dance music.