Nexsound – experimental, ambient, noise, improv record label

Review

Signal To Noise

Critikal – Graphorrhea

Member Dmytro Fedorenko (better known as Kotra), sent sample food by his comrades to do with what he will, seems hellbent on chewing his curd twice, the better to masticate those sound files into disinterred mulch. Why this propensity for sonic violence when all diplomatic sonic means are seemingly nexhausted? To give the people what they want, I guess—Fedorenko is nothing if not accommodating. Base materials such as melody, harmony, or rhythm are not just jettisoned they’re nonexistent; all is random noise, power surges eclipsing red zones, caustic sharks of distortion, scattergun sound effects, hiccupping software, pilfered plug-ins. Unruly and witless digital lifeforms left in Critikal condition. Darren Bergstein

Connexion Bizarre

Critikal – Graphorrhea

“Graphorrhea” is defined as “the writing of long lists of meaningless words, as occurs in some manic disorders,” a confused and volatile state which is very much the order of the day for the forty-minute duration of this offering from Critikal, here making a one-time only appearance on the Kvitnu label. Opener “Tesseract of Distrust” sets a glitchy breakbeat pace, but this is no one trick pony. Throughout the album’s thirteen tracks, the Critikal ensemble guide you with an assured and even hand though an assortment of soundscapes ranging from the jittery insectile wail of “Scud Twitcher” to the cold shudder of “Wrath Rationale,” progressing to grinding intensity in “Mind Opacity” and the semi-tribal beat/swamp rock guitar combo of “Linear Fear.” This is a place where a track may start in one place but ends up in quite another. “Prime Seed,” for example, with its stop/start opening suddenly blossoms into a fully fledged aural assault, from which you emerge breathless into the void of “The Place Below End” before the organic chittering and oddly 50s-style advert-like melody of album closer “The Truce” decline into nothingness. You’ll likely find yourself wanting to go back and explore the album again, and you certainly should, as each listen reveals another layer of intricacies beneath the deceptively smooth surface. It would be unfair not to mention the low points, though there are few. I disliked the circus music-tinged “Rapture Periods,” and “Sine Verbiage” is possibly the only moment that feels like an intentional bridge between tracks. Otherwise there is a distinct lack of the contrived cleverness that has unfortunately become synonymous with so-called “experimental electronica.” The distortion techniques alone are cause for celebration, here deployed in a way that enhances rather than occludes the sound, but it is the ambience of the piece which is really breathtaking: a palpable menace and coldness throughout, a very real sense of utter isolation, of removal from what is happening around oneself – while at the same time being constrained by it – of insects in enclosed spaces, of being lost in a vast wilderness or trapped in an alien industrial landscape, claustrophobic yet agoraphobic, a true meeting of opposites; “Graphorrhea” is a triumph.

— Catherine C. [8/10]

Gaz-eta

Critikal – Graphorrhea

Graphorrhea is the writing of long lists of meaningless words, which occurs in some manic disorders. Critikal is a quartet from Ukraine who take this practice to heart. Made up of Dmytro Fedorenko on variety of arrangements, bass and drum programming, Andrey Kiritchenko on computers, field recordings and guitars, Tobias Astrom on effects/feedback and manipulations along with Jeff Surak who plays autoharp, micro cassettes and processing, the band strikes at their target early on in the game. Not just pure glitches or noise for the hell of it. Instead, the four musicians bring forward a variety of influences and techniques to the common table. Bits and pieces of microtonal work, along with field recordings and instruments being processed left and right is what happens on majority of these tracks. It’s scarce, it’s amplified, it’s alien but best of all, it’s filled with an element of surprise. “Graphorrhea” represents a mixed concoction of the weirdest elements imaginable, served up to go down with an element of adventure.

Tom Sekowski

Earlabs

Critikal – Graphorrhea

Sound artist and label manager Andrey Kiritchenko cajoles and browbeats with Kvitnu foreman Dmytro Fedorenko, and musicians Tobias Astrom, and Jeff Surak on this slab of enchanted sonic excrescence.

Graphorrhea, the albums title, can be defined as the scribbling of lengthy lists of meaningless words. Indeed, the group evince no qualms with obscenity, that is with the tearing away of sounds from their setting, in fact, even from any last morsel of sense. The field recordings and instruments exhibited here are volatized by their arbitrariness in manipulation, by their fullness that allows for a litany of quick connections to form and eventually teem like an overgrown forest.

Opener “Tesseract of Distrust” isn’t so much buoyed as it is crestfallen with a ferment of burbling, babbling, and wheezing percussive pops and splashes. With this a momentum is established that serves as the background for successive pieces, one which is either subjected or invested with a small clutch of motifs that are equally punishing and generative in their purification. Here an opaque drumming defines densities, tapping against the background, a harsh, edgy sound, in a manic manner, until like magic it dissolves into a twilight of deformed and gnawed notes. At other times, the brawling meatiness is pummeled with an electronic distortion and the sheer, ecstatic, cranky noise of rock.

Curiously, with only the odd exception, everything on the album shrivels up like a shred of skin after one or two minutes of life, as though its high-wire tension and mad movements can only be sustained for but a very short while. Oddly enough, when approached from a distance, this concision re-establishes a palpable sense of coherence and purpose in the music. When this is removed, and one is lost in its quagmire of unorthodox tunings and thrashing textures as though in a delirium, only a constant threat can be gleaned from its dark surface. As such, the album can be appreciated on both levels.

Max Schaefer

Cracked

Critikal – Graphorrhea

As far as the theoretical framework of collaborations are concerned, Critikal is one of the most intersting due to its strict logic and consequent performance. And this carries over to the music as well. Critikal is the bonding of four renowned noise-experimentalists and the main condition is, that with each release one of the four constructs music from the sound material provided by the other members. This logic makes for quite diverse array of music that always clearly shows the handwriting of the person in control, but also has heavy and clear routes in the interests of the other three. This time around it is Dmytro Federenko

Luna Kafe

Critikal – Graphorrhea

The four piece Critikal is an international gathering of sound artists, counting Andrey Kiritchenko, Jeff Surak, Dmytro Fedorenko (Kotra) and Tobias Åström (Militant Fields). For each new project one of the members are responsible transforming all the contributed material. This time the sound conductor is Dmytro Fedorenko. Graphorrhea is the extreme expression of quite challenging rhythms and a cacophony of sound. Sheer noise terror, if you say so, and quite a demanding listen. Some of the parts remind me of the more far out stuff by Andrej Nebb’s Holy Toy back in the day. And there’s even a thread somewhere inside. Others are just….unlistenable. Graphorrhea is 13 tracks at nearly 40 minutes. I dare you.

Copyright

nowamuzyka

Critikal – Graphorrhea

25 grudnia 2007, w rocznicę rozpoczęcia działalności, w katalogu ukraińskiego Kvitnu pojawił się czwarty materiał. W projekcie Critikal, oprócz prowadzącego label Kotry, udział biorą szefowie dwóch wytwórni, które są współwydawcami albumu. Są to Jeff Surak (Zeromoon), Andrey Kiritchenko (Nexsound) i Tobias A*ström (znany także jako Militant Fields). O ostatecznym kształcie “Graphorrhei” decydował Kotra, który operował materiałem dostarczonym mu przez pozostałych, przekształcał go, układał w utwory, a także dorzucił trochę od siebie (np. grę na basie).

Nie pamiętam, kiedy ostatnio chciałem włączyć płytę znów zaraz po pierwszym odsłuchu. W tym przypadku po części dlatego, że tak mi się podobała, ale też po to, by uważniej prześledzić, co dzieje się w tym gąszczu dźwięków, balansującym chwilami na granicy chaosu. Już pierwszy utwór może przyprawić o zawrót głowy