This Iranian group's name Shahkilid is the Farsi (Persian) for master key – by implication skeleton key – while the album's title Nedaye Asemani (‘Heavenly Murmur’) alludes to Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian student slain in June 2009. It is more than a project trading on a martyr's name. Its musicality sets it up and sets it aside. Nedaye Asemani is a remarkable piece of contemporary expatriate Iranian music-making. That judgment has nothing to do with critiquing it with political spin or side. Indeed, it is impossible to discern any Neda or political strand to this instrumental suite whatsoever, beyond the allusion to her name in the album's title. It can legitimately be asserted that Nedaye Asemani is imbued with fewer politics than, say, Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Mohammad Reza Lotfi's monumental The Abu-Ata Concert (Kereshmeh Records, 1997) in that respect. (The authorities detained Lotfi, a music professor, because of campus protests, causing him to arrive late for his duo recital that same night.) Aside from the peculiarly abrupt ending to ‘Rehaee’, Nedaye Asemani is unalloyed gold.