Tardast is an Iranian musician and visual artist based in Liverpool and Birmingham, mainly working within the genres of rap and grime in his native language of Farsi. Within the visual arts, he mixes both digital and physical media to create illustrations for our music releases and brand identity, but also for other artists in the form of cover art and merchandise.
As a Grime MC, Tardast’s first mixtape was released in 2015, a year before he arrived in the UK. This project led him to collaborate with producer, Yunes Abdollahpour, on a 2016 album, ‘Bikeshvar’. It wove together contemporary electronic production techniques from EDM and trap with Iranian samples and instruments such as the rud, tompak and sorna.
In 2017, Tardast was invited to play at London Southbank Centre’s ‘Meltdown Festival’, curated by British-Sri Lankan artist, M.I.A. He also supported Flohio and God Colony at Kazimier Garden in Liverpool and played at the ‘Sounds from the Other City Festival’ in Salford. Tardast’s songs also received airplay on NTS Radio, where he was later a guest at their Manchester building. In 2018, he supported Palestinan folk pop band, 47Soul in London and Brighton and supported British-Iraqi rapper, Lowkey in Liverpool the following year.
In 2020, Tardast released his third project, ‘Marwa’ which means ‘omen’. This EP came out on the label, Circadian Rhythms and he collaborated with his own Manteq Collective of artists on the music. SceneNoise named Marwa in their 100 Albums of the Year. In lockdown, Tardast also featured on a Loraine James song which was covered extremely favourably in Pitchfork. That same year, he was commissioned to create a visceral, experimental short film for Counterpoints Arts’ Refugee Week. The resulting film was entitled, ‘Mirrors’ and was also screened in conjunction with the Southbank Centre.
Tardast am currently working on his fourth studio album “Leave to Remain” which will be ready by this summer! It includes large numbers of artists from Iran and UK.