Andrey Kiritchenko – Stuffed With/Out
By now the name Andrey Kiritchenko should be a household name. Playing concerts all over the world and releasing very fine discs. Here he presents another one, on his own Nexsound label, in a very nice cover. The cover credits read ‘guitar, processing and field recordings’ and moving further into the world of glitchy ambient music. However the guitar remains a clear feature. In most of the tracks the guitar is clearly recognizable as such. Whatever computer processing Kiritchenko employs it remains an ornament to his playing. It’s been pushed towards the back of the recording, while the guitar stays clearly in the front. Field recordings might be in there too, but then they too are not easy to detect. Turning his music in favor of the guitar he plays the ambient card more than the microsound one, and the music surely benefits from that. Kiritchenko comes closer to the music of the likes of Japanese musicians on labels such as Spekk and Noble, or the German Flim. The microsound aspect is reduced, but not entirely gone, and as such it means that the music made an interesting step forward, while still staying (or perhaps more than before) inside the traditional offerings of ambient music. (FdW)