Hers is not yet a well known name but I would stake what remains of my reputation on the fact that this time next year Sepedeh Raissadet will have found an audience well beyond her native Iran origins. She has contributed to three albums distributed in Iran but, not surprisingly, these are not the kind of releases that would be scrobbled on Last.FM.
Her website tells me that she was born in Tehran in 1980 and is currently studying musicology at Bologna University.
Her link with Italy explains how she comes to feature on Franco Battiato’s excellent new album Fleurs 2. On the track ‘Il venait d’avoir 18 ans‘ she can be heard singing in Farsi (Persian) for just 45 seconds but this is enough to make an impact.
To say that it gives an equivalent level of goose bumps effect as hearing Antony Hegarty singing in Italian on ‘Del suo veloce volo‘ from the same album will give some measure of the impact. As with Antony, it’s a voice that carries an emotional weight which is both fragile yet instantly mesmerising.
On her website you can download three tracks and see a you tube video featuring her but hopefully it will not be too long before a wider selection of her work is made available.
