Back From The Brink

Description

Born in Shahrood, Kourosh Yaghmaei grew up in Tehran, where he still lives today. At the age of 10, he learned to play the santour, a traditional Persian instrument. In the 60s, as a teenager, he listened to the Ventures, the Beatles and the Kinks and traded his santour for a guitar. In 1973, Kourosh released his first single, Gole Yakh, a hit that sold 5 million copies (out of a population of 25 million people!). In 1978, an album was ready for release, but things became complicated as the revolution gained momentum. Kourosh recounts that "it was a very dark and frightening period. If a musician was caught in the street [by the police] with a Western musical instrument, it was immediately destroyed, before his eyes." Kourosh himself was banned from singing for 17 years after Khomeini came to power. "Even my image was forbidden," he specifies, "I wasn't allowed to appear on television, no photo could be on an album cover." He then had to be represented by a silhouette. Seduced by his keen sense of the implicit, his unique Iranian psychedelic rock and his taste for melancholy and dark introspection, Now-Again brings Kourosh back into the light he deserves and delivers a magnificent 2CD edition with a 56-page color booklet that brings together censored singles and albums.