Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award-winning composer, turntablist and performer working across experimental new music, free improvisation, mutant club music and hip-hop. Described by The Wire as “one of the most technically adept and creatively daring artists to use the turntable as a musical instrument,” Rezaei uses a digital vinyl system, allowing her to manipulate an expansive range of samples in real time. In addition to her mastery of classic turntablist skills (skratches, beat-juggles), Rezaei has pioneered several techniques of her own, including free juggling, turntable sines (controlling sine waves with the pitch slider), needle dripping (composing music specifically for needle dropping on multiple decks at once), and needle weaving (using a digital vinyl system to loop music live using two decks, with nothing predetermined).
The Anglo-Iranian virtuoso’s work has been described as “genuinely ground-breaking” (London Jazz News2022) and “high-velocity sonic surrealism” (The Guardian 2022). Praised by The Wire, Uncut and Bandcamp Daily, her latest solo release FRACTURED (Heat Crimes) was one of The Quietus’ cassette releases of 2024. In October 2025, she premieres Scholar’s Record, a major commission for the 75th Donaueschinger Musiktage that draws on the legendary festival’s audio archives. Other forthcoming projects include a new collaborative work with Ensemble Contrechamps to be premiered in Feb 2026 and solo, orchestral and band commissions for Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2026.
In addition to her solo work, Rezaei is a member of the international free music supergroup The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (with saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, trumpeter/electronics Gabriele Mitelli and drummer Lukas König) and the pioneering Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez, with whom she recently toured Canada and the USA. She has composed orchestral works with Matthew Shlomowitz (6 Scenes for Turntable and Orchestra, premiered at IMD Darmstadt 2023) and recently performed Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music with guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe. At JazzFest Berlin 2025, she will make her debut as Fire! Orchestra’s new turntablist, premiering the Words project.
Other collaborations include duos with Pat Thomas, Potente (with Gabriele Mitelli), Jennifer Walshe, Edward George, Farida Amadou, Valentina Magaletti, Robyn’s Rocket, Lasse Marhaug, Evicshen, Raymond MacDonald, Lukas König, Okkyung Lee, Dali de St Paul, Kenosist and Ali Robertson. Rezaei has also performed in a quartet with DJ Sniff, Rex Chen and DJ SlowPitchSound at Taipei Biennial 2023, and been a featured guest of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and Pat Thomas and Orphy Robinson’s Black Top.
In November 2022, Rezaei received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists in recognition of her contribution to music composition. She previously led experimental arts projects TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH. She is currently based in Newcastle, United Kingdom.
Where's she gonna be?
2025 Dates
Solo, Turntable Trio, Ensemble, The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters and more...
June
4 TSORPM - Le Conforte Moderne, Poitiers, Fr
5 TSORPM - Instants Chavires, Paris, Fr
6 TSORPM - Les Trinitaires, Metz, Fr
7 TSORPM - Moers Festival, Moers, De
9 Solo - Cafe Oto, London, UK
22 Duo Raymond McDonald - Glasgow Jazz Festival, Glasgow, UK
23-25 Ensemble Contrechamps ‘..on Transformation’ workshops, Geneva, CH
28 Duo KENOSIST - Hyper Inverter, UK
July
3 TSORPM - Südtirol Jazz Festival, Bolzano, It
4 TSORPM - Südtirol Jazz Festival, Bolzano, It
13 Duo Robyn’s Rocket, Manchester, UK
22-25 with Khabat Abas, Another Sky Festival collaboration, RNCM, UK
August
3 Solo - Jazz Em Agosto, PT
7 Solo - Cafe Oto, London, UK
8 Solo - Sanctuary of Sound, PL
16 Strangeness of Jazz with Edward George - Cafe Oto, London, UK
20 collabo with Pinquins - BLOWOUT Fest, NO
22 duo Lasse Marhaug - BLOWOUT Fest, NO
30 1984 (with Kobe van Cauwenberghe, Sakin Abdou) - Summer Bummer Fest, Antwerp, BE
Booking Contacts:
solo / orchestral / residencies - mariamrezaeibookings@googlemail.com
Turntable Trio - andrew@heavy-trip.com
The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters - danielle@oosterop.com
released on heatcrimes
FRACTURED
Recorded live in one take using various creative turntablist techniques, 'FRACTURED' is a snapshot of Mariam Rezaei's emotional state as she peers out from her studio at the "fucked up" world beyond the walls. Like its incendiary predecessor 'BOWN', the album torches genre boundaries, melting down punk, breakcore, electroacoustic music, Eurodance, avant-rock, grime, hip-hop and free noise until unprecedented contours begin to appear. This time, Rezaei's teeth are fully bared - if 'BOWN' skewered stuffy outside perceptions of her craft, 'FRACTURED' challenges and dares to confront not just the technical constraints of her process, but the meaning behind popularity, nostalgia and experimentation during a time of chaos. Blithe and refreshingly raw, it's a cracked, cacophonous soundtrack to a deafeningly broken era.
Rezaei has been developing her own style of turntablism since she was a teenager, and rethinks the formula from its base elements, contrasting samples and genre identifiers, and analyzing her own signature techniques. Using two to four turntables at a time, she employs free juggling, turntable sines (controlling sine waves using the pitch slider), turntable quartets, needle dripping and needle weaving - two new methods she debuts on 'FRACTURED'. The former involves composing music made specifically for needle dropping on multiple decks at a once ('jaw'). The latter is a way of using a digital vinyl system to loop music live using two decks, with nothing predetermined. "Once released from the loops," she explains, "the music continues to play forwards, never reversing back - ALWAYS FALLING FORWARDS." We can hear this clearly on 'cut', a blistering collaboration with European experimental trio MOPCUT, aka vocalist Audrey Chen, guitarist Julian Desprez and percussionist Lukas König. Working from a "quick recording of a soundcheck," Rezaei doesn't exactly deconstruct the band's clatter of elasticated croaks, itchy rhythms and angular guitars, but interrupts its logic, looping and multiplying each element to push everything off course.
She uses the same process on 'vengabussed', but the result is completely different. Here, inspired by Eliane Radigue electronics and Suzanne Ciani's revelatory synthesizer experiments, Rezaei contorts the melody from Vengaboys' 1998 hit 'We Like To Party!', turning it into an unrecognizably elegiac meditation on nostalgia and hedonism. The more eccentric side of the dancefloor is illuminated on 'Weirdo club musics', a "massive big up to the weirdos that go clubbing to anything" that showcases Rezaei's labyrinthine turntable drumming and an unexpected vocoded turn from Elvin Brandhi, and she tries and fails to adhere to the 4/4 template on 'going straight (and fucking it up)'. "It always bores the hell out of me and feels totally fake as fuck" she admits, shadowing Aphex Twin's iconic 'Windowlicker' with her chattering juggled beats and metallic prangs. Rezaei thinks back to a stimulating conversation with double bassist and composer Joëlle Leandre on 'the rage (for Joëlle)', using that fury to energize a gritty tonal experiment that funnels samples of Stewart Smith's guitar playing through various distortion pedals.
And Rezaei's electronically-enhanced voice materializes on the long finale 'animosity', chopped and screwed to draw out its thrumming, weightless intensity. Contrasting the rest of the album's relative bluster, it's a rare moment of tranquility that provides space to consider the over-arching themes. Rezaei's perception of genre might be fragmented, but 'Fractured' sprawls out like a mosaic, where every component part adds color, shape and physicality to an ornate whole
Turntable Trio
Mariam Rezaei, Maria Chavez, Victoria Shen
Front cover of Wire Magazine, April 2023. A power trio in New Turntablism.
