Another lavish 2CD collection on the Honest Jon's Label this time concentrating on early rare music from Iran.The two CDs are sumptuously presented in a hard-back gatefold sleeve, with a 26-page booklet containing full notes and marvellous photos, on fine-art papers, stitched not stapled. The music was restored from 78s at Abbey Road studio in London. Ravishingly beautiful, achingly precious songs and instrumentals, ranging from two performances by the Royal Court Orchestra in 1906 - with futuristic, overlapping trumpets and exquisite clarinet improvisation - through to a hauntingly soulful Hafez setting by Moluk Zarrabi of Kashan from 1933. There are eight selections from more than three hundred recordings made in 1909 above the Gramophone Company offices in City Road, London EC1, by the Persian Concert Party. Unrest at home had compelled the group to travel in order to record, paying its way with shows in Baku, Constantinople, Vienna and Paris. Its music is a striking, experimental combination of European and Iranian elements, impressionistic and exotic, with chimes, castanets and rattles. There is an arrangement of traditional Persian music for pipe-organ; and rueful, imploring, besotted love-songs. 'I am crazy with envy of the dress asleep in your arms and the oils rubbed into your skin.' A setting of Raheb's poetry by Moluk Zarrabi is drawn from 136 titles recorded at 1925 sessions in Tehran, when Iranian women were for the first time concertedly accepted as serious professional musicians, without the connotation of prostitution. Such was the social stigma borne by musicians, especially female, several of our singers hid their identities behind partial or assumed names. 'Parvaneh', for example, 'Butterfly' - represented by her interpretations of Sa'di and Hafez, with self-accompaniment on setar, a three-stringed lute ('seh', three; 'tar', string), Iranian ancestor of the Indian sitar: 'I am the slave of love?' And Helen, with some boozy Hafez wisdom: 'Keep your cards close to your chest. Kiss nothing except the lips of your beloved and the rim of a cup of wine. Let no one judge you.'