Iranian artist defies regime by releasing new album, risking imprisonment

Iranian artist Mehdi Rajabian released another album on Friday, once again defying a prohibition that reportedly landed him in prison for two years.

"I just thought it was beautiful," Mason said of Rajabian's music. Mason told Fox News that when Rajabian shared his music, "I was really excited and thought the music was amazing and so artistically special and really compelling."

Rajabian's latest album serves in part as a reflection on the suffering he endured while under detention. After one of his arrests in 2015, he went on a 40-day hunger strike that inspired the first track on his new album, "Whip on a Lifeless Body."

"This piece is the narrator of a human body that no longer has a physical presence," he told Sky News. "The feeling is for the time when I was on a hunger strike, between earth and sky, between life and death, between the living and the dead ... On the 29th day of the hunger strike, I opened my eyes that morning, and I did not know whether I was alive or dead, on earth or in heaven. I was in a trance. It was a strange feeling."