Sussan Deyhim's classical Persian vocal technique collides with Richard Horowitz's experimental sound design to create Transmigration of Soul, a ritualistic soundscape where voice dissolves into pure texture. Layered drones and processed instruments support Deyhim's range from whispered to primal, demanding active, darkened listening. Essential for those seeking genuinely transcendent sound art beyond easy categorization.
⚡ Quick Answer: Transmigration of Soul showcases Sussan Deyhim's classical Persian vocal training merged with experimental sound design by Richard Horowitz. The album creates immersive, ritualistic soundscapes through layered instruments and processed drones, with Deyhim's voice shifting between whispered intimacy and primal intensity. It demands darkness and focused listening, offering something genuinely transcendent and difficult to categorize.
There is a moment on Transmigration of Soul where Sussan Deyhim’s voice stops sounding like a voice and starts sounding like the space between two voices — an echo that arrived before the source.
This is a record that requires darkness. Not mood lighting. Actual darkness.
What She Built Here
Deyhim has always existed at the intersection of ancient Persian classical tradition and something much harder to name. Born in Tehran, trained in classical Iranian vocal technique, she arrived in New York in the late 1970s and immediately started dissolving the border between ceremony and experiment. By 2006 she had already collaborated with Richard Horowitz — her long-time creative and romantic partner — on records that mapped entirely new sonic territory. Transmigration of Soul is different from those collaborations. It is more solitary, more focused, and in many ways more radical.
The album was produced alongside composer and multi-instrumentalist Horowitz, whose fingerprints are all over the textural architecture — layers of processed acoustic instruments, electronic drones, and ambient weather that feel less composed than excavated. The sound design here owes something to the 4AD tradition, something to Xenakis, and something to a ritual no one recorded. Horowitz plays a range of instruments throughout, including keyboards and various Middle Eastern winds, constructing a sonic environment that is immersive without being decorative.
Deyhim’s voice does the rest.
The Instrument Itself
Classical Persian vocalists train the way athletes train — the ornamental techniques alone, the tahrir, the particular approach to microtonal intervals, take years to internalize until they become involuntary. Deyhim brings all of that to music that has no reverence whatsoever for tradition as constraint. She slides between a whisper that sounds like it’s coming from inside your head and a full-throated cry that has no Western equivalent. The human ear keeps trying to categorize it and keeps failing, which is precisely the point.
The album was recorded in New York, and there is something of the city at 4am in it — not noise but its absence, the particular quality of silence that a city makes after the traffic dies. Engineer work here serves the space as much as the sound. Nothing is over-produced. The reverb sounds like rooms, not plugins.
Several tracks incorporate processed percussion and hand drums that function more as texture than rhythm — they mark time without organizing it, which is a genuinely difficult thing to achieve and almost always fails in lesser hands.
“Zar” is the centerpiece, built around the North African and Middle Eastern healing ritual of the same name, where music is used to treat spirit possession. Whether you believe in that or not is beside the point. The track sounds like belief. It sounds like something is actually at stake.
I don’t think this record gets a fraction of the attention it deserves, and I say that understanding why — it is not easy to market, it is not easy to shelve, it is not easy to describe at a dinner party. But put it on in a quiet room on a good system and the question of where to shelve it stops mattering entirely.
Somewhere in the second half, the music arrives at something close to stillness without ever actually stopping. It just keeps moving, very slowly, like water that has nearly frozen.
Further Reading
🎵 Key Takeaways
- 🎙️ Deyhim's classical Persian vocal training collides with Horowitz's experimental sound design to create something that resists categorization—her voice shifts between whispered intimacy and primal intensity, at moments dissolving into pure spatial texture.
- 🔊 The album requires actual darkness and focused listening on a quality system; nothing is over-produced, with reverb behaving like physical rooms rather than plugin artifacts, and percussion functioning as texture rather than rhythm.
- 🕯️ "Zar," the centerpiece, references the North African healing ritual of the same name and sounds genuinely consequential—music that conveys belief regardless of the listener's spiritual orientation.
- ⚙️ Horowitz's fingerprints throughout the textural architecture echo 4AD aesthetics and Xenakis-adjacent composition, with processed acoustic instruments and electronic drones feeling excavated rather than arranged.
Who is Sussan Deyhim and what is her background?
Born in Tehran, Deyhim trained in classical Iranian vocal technique before moving to New York in the late 1970s, where she immediately began fusing ancient Persian musical tradition with experimental sound design. Her approach to tahrir and microtonal intervals—techniques that take years of disciplined training to internalize—now serve music with no reverence for tradition as constraint.
What is the Zar ritual and why does it matter on this album?
Zar is a North African and Middle Eastern healing ceremony where music treats spirit possession. The track "Zar" functions as the album's centerpiece, built around this concept; whether you believe in spirit possession is irrelevant—the composition conveys genuine stakes and conviction through its sonic architecture.
How does Richard Horowitz contribute to the sound design?
Horowitz produces the album and plays keyboards, Middle Eastern winds, and processed acoustic instruments, creating layered textural environments that feel excavated rather than composed. His work owes debts to 4AD, Xenakis, and ritualistic traditions, with reverb that behaves like physical spaces rather than digital effects.
Why does this album require darkness to appreciate?
The recording captures the particular quality of New York silence at 4am—not active noise, but the absence of it. Full immersion in actual darkness allows the listener to hear the spatial dimensions, the room reverb, and Deyhim's voice without visual distraction or competing sensory input.
Further Reading
Further Reading
Further Reading