The Bedroom Witch, a dark pop project of Los Angeles-based recording and performance artist Sepehr Mashiahof, has recently released Diaspora, a story-telling concept album and the fifth LP in her discography. As a musician and as a video and performance artist, the Bedroom Witch casts herself as the misunderstood maker of the veil, lyrically chanting spells that fabricate parallel worlds through dark, synth-based songs, video projection and choreography. In the melancholy of the new album’s narrative, each song weaves together messages from ultra-dimensional entities that describe a way to overcome the core struggle in the first-generation immigrants’ experience—alienation in a new world. Recorded and mixed by Mashiahof and released by Psychic Eye Records, Diaspora investigates the Bedroom Witch’s origin story as an Iranian-American Trans Woman.
The album was long in the making. “I had been so puzzled in the past by these repeating patterns and themes in my songs that it started to become infuriating,” confesses Mashiahof. “And I wondered, if my music was meant to be a channel of healing, what are these omnipresent words and places I imagine trying to communicate to me?” She adds, “I kept seeing visions of women in veils obscured by cool lights hovering over me to a point where it really started to click that there was this other part of myself that I had abandoned through the diaspora. So, I wanted to tell an epic-style story that spoke to the immigrant experience.”
Debuted at DECAYCAST, DIaspora is available on CD, Cassette and Digital formats via Psychic Eye
Born in Iran and immigrating to the U.S. as a child, Mashiahof’s album weaves together messages from ultra-dimensional entities to overcome alienation in the new world, or what she considers the core struggle of the first-generation immigrant’s experience. In Diaspora, 80s-inspired synths meet haunting vocal harmonies that soundtrack the Bedroom Witch’s fantasy-based journey from “Exile” to “Nowhere”, where the former represents the United States, and the latter points back to her homeland, Iran. After a glitchy and catchy intro in “Sea of Insects”, the Bedroom Witch travels through a land covered in masses of insects that form a sea. She watches as the insects swarm into a shapeshifting replica of herself that mirrors her own movements.
The Bedroom Witch began in 2011 with the intention to soundtrack a seven act screenplay Mashiahof wrote.The music project took on a life of its own, and Mashiahof soon self-released two albums, Moon Bathing and Ceremonial Serenades in 2014 and 2015. In 2017 she released her third album Injury under Practical Records, followed by a fourth album, My Sacrifices, My Demands. She also created a film series, Bizarre Times with The Bedroom Witch, as a visual supplement to her musical storytelling and live choreography. Mashiahof’s imaginative and unpredictable live show recently toured the East Coast with multimedia artist Wizard Apprentice and was a featured act in the Bay Area’s renowned Multiverse is Illuminated Black & Brown Punk Festival as well as the first ever Transgress Fest in Santa Ana. Diaspora releases in October 2019.
Photo: Kristin Cofer
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