Comfortable

Released 5 September 2026

At its centre is the tar, the long-necked lute of Persian classical music and the tradition Hamed was raised in. Around it move double bass, trumpet, saxophones, bass clarinet and two percussionists: Lloyd Swanton (The Necks), Sandy Evans, Paul Cutlan, Thomas and Michael Avgenicos, Adem Yilmaz and Sohrab Kolahdooz. This isn't the first time these players have gathered - their earlier collaboration, Empty Voices (2024), carried Hamed's writing to major stages. Here, composed lines open into improvisation and close again; eight distinct voices finding one another in real time.

Hamed's music has never sat still inside a single name. It moves between the tradition he was raised in and everything he has absorbed since, holding structure and freedom in the same hand. The record takes its bearings from the sea - its cover a photograph of a fishing boat on the Caspian Sea - and from the long, patient lines of players like Anouar Brahem and Kayhan Kalhor. It opens with "Inheritance," Hamed's reworking of a reng from the Persian Homāyoun mode, and moves outward through salt, wind and wake toward the shore.

"I wanted something that feels rooted and open at once," Hamed says - "the harmony between structure and freedom, between comfort and paradox."