Shahram - Shahram - LP

You know how record nerds are. They'll gladly tell you that a dawdling Moldovian choir of 70 year-old grandmothers is the next brick in your psych-funksplosion journey. But Shahram Shabpareh is the real thing. Colorful arrangements of blurting horns, evil bass grooves, cheesy organs, and thick strata of overlapping percussion instruments going off like microwave popcorn. As the leader of an Iranian '60s garage band, The Rebels, and later a '70s solo singer, Shabpareh was never happy just tossing a few moves from Abba in front of whatever was on the local charts already. He wrote and recorded hard rock and funky piano riffs that were built bulldozer-tough and would've stuck out in an American trailer park or a London pub just as easily as they did in Tehran. Not that he wasn't afraid to put someone else's idea to good use, as he certainly makes superb use of The Kinks' chords from "You Really Got Me." It's more that Shahram's rock cojones have caused him to make blistering music again and again over the years, with little regard for where it comes from. Here's a well-deserved compilation of his best tracks, with booklet with liner notes.

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