Nexsound – experimental, ambient, noise, improv record label

Review

Alla Zagaykevych and Electroacoustic’s Ensemble

Alla Zagaykevych est une compositrice ukrainienne habituée du label Nexsound puisque c’est son troisième album sur cette structure depuis Motus publié en 2005. Après des études à la National Music Academy de Kiev elle a poursuivi son parcours à l’IRCAM, puis elle est retournée dans son pays où elle a fondé l’Electronic Music Studio. C’est en 2009 qu’elle lance l’Electroacoustic’s Ensemble qui l’accompagne sur cet album. Il s’agit d’un groupe de musiciens spécialisés dans l’interprétation de musiques électroacoustiques, mais un groupe à géométrie variable en fonction des besoins, suivant que l’accent doivent être mis sur le respect d’une partition ou sur l’improvisation.

Il s’agit donc ici du genre de musique que l’on aborde rarement en disque, mais plutôt en concert. Un album de musique électroacoustique qui ne laisse aucun doute quant à l’aspect live de son enregistrement là où l’on est habitué à ce que les éléments acoustiques aient été préalablement enregistrés puis manipulés comme n’importe quel autre source électronique.

L’album se divise en trois pistes de 15-20 minutes chacune, et très vite on se rend compte que l’on a entre les mains un disque atypique, avec une musique que l’on croirait parfois tirée d’enregistrements du GRM des années 50-60, et des improvisations un peu folles de violon que l’on pourrait avoir vu en concert la semaine dernière. L’équilibre entre électronique et acoustique est mouvant et délicat. La première piste par exemple débute par de gros glissements électroniques au second plan et improvisations de violon mises en avant. Mais petit à petit des “zigouillis” électroniques s’immiscent, un dialogue s’installe, le ton monte, et ce sont les percussions qui semblent alors mettre d’accord les deux parties.

Assez inattendue sur les deux morceaux suivants, l’apparition d’un chant, a priori un chant traditionnel ukrainien. Très dominant sur l’ouverture de II, il sert ici de fil rouge avec une connotation pop, cessant parfois pour laisser siffler flûtes et machines pour se confronter plus tard à une électronique dense, puissante, ou encore former un duo avec un violon grinçant.
Sur la dernière pièce acoustique et électroniques sont plus intimement liés, à commencer par ce même chant qui est manipulé par les machines. Textures, frétillements, ces vocalises deviennent fantomatiques et ce sentiment est renforcé par le jeu de l’électronique, entre souffles et drones. On pense ici au folklore scandinave avec une ambiance qui nous fait penser à une forêt en pleine vie, habitée, parsemée de hululement de flûtes et percussions improvisées.

Un très bel album d’une musique électroacoustique pleine de vie, une impression certainement en grande partie liée à la qualité de l’enregistrement qui sonne très “live”.

Fabrice Allard
le 31/08/2013

Dusted magazine

Alla Zagaykevych and Electroacoustic’s Ensemble – Nord/Ouest – Dusted Magazine

I don’t know much about Ukrainian arts and culture. Sad but true, even though I live in a Chicago neighborhood full of Ukrainian immigrants and their descendants, minutes away from the foremost exhibitor of Ukrainian art outside the borders of the former Soviet state. I’m a negligent interloper into a cultural enclave, perhaps, though I plead in my defense that traditional Ukrainian music has never really had its time in the sun. Plenty of people know the sound of Bulgarian vocal choirs, Tuvan throat singing, and Balinese gamelan, but Ukrainian folk styles are probably an unknown to all but the most intrepid of ethnic music explorers. For that reason, there’s a part of Nord/Ouest that’s liable to soar right over the heads of many non-Ukrainian listeners. The proclaimed “geo-political” music was inspired by the folklore and physical environment of Ukraine’s Rivne Polissya region, an amalgamation of modern electronics with traditional sounds from Ukraine’s northwest. Even if one can’t pick up on the specifics of what Alla Zagaykevych and Company are doing, the contrast at the core of Nord/Ouest is easily apparent.

 

Alla Zagaykevych is the founder of Electroacoustic’s Ensemble and Nord/Ouest’s core contributor. Her electronics are the album’s constant, the ocean on which the rest of the music floats. Vaporous clusters of tones swoop and swirl in colorful auroras, littered with a miscellany of other electronic emissions and occasional theremin — squiggly spurts like a foghorn amidst the sometimes murky haze. Vadim Jovich’s percussion plays at the music’s outer edges, providing textural support and arrhythmic splatters, in league with Zagaykevych’s electronics in setting the scene for Nord/Ouest’s leads. On the first and third untitled tracks, Sergiy Okhrimchuk’s violin plays at center stage, scratching and scribbling in messy tangles, arresting itself before it engages in any activity that might be construed as too melodic. There’s attention paid to an overall ambience, but Nord/Ouest isn’t an album that aims for cohesion or an overly homogenized sound. This becomes most apparent on the second track, which features vocals from Iryna Klymenko, with accompaniment from Zagaykevych, and Okhrimchuk. It’s in the singing that Nord/Ouest ’s link to Ukrainian folklore is at its most obvious. Even when it’s echoed or effected, the strident voices ring out as Electroacoustic’s Ensemble’s human element, that which keeps the album’s conceit from feeling too academic. When Klymenko duets with Zagaykevych, the effect can be chilling and I find the music fading into the background; when one or the other sings alongside Okhrimchuk’s violin, the album comes as close as it will get to conventional beauty. There are hints at what I assume to be traditional Ukrainian songs, signposts to those in the know in a language that few in America will understand. Incomprehension makes them no less arresting.

 

I probably wouldn’t make many friends jamming Nord/Ouest out on the streets of my neighborhood, but I imagine that someone from or familiar with Rivne Polissya might enjoy or understand the album in ways that I don’t. Still, the broad stroke collisions that constitute the album are easy to understand. The dichotomies between old and new, electronic and acoustic, human and inhuman, are at the crux of what Zagaykevych and her compatriots are exploring. It’s no coincidence that the segments of the album that concentrate on the electronics, well executed as they may be, pale in comparison to Nord/Ouest more heterogeneous intersections of sound. Like the inexplicable possessive in the Electroacoustic’s Ensemble’s name, this album leaves the listener with some questions, but Nord/Ouest is often at its best when it’s most mysterious.

By Adam Strohm

Le Son Du Grisli

Alla Zagaykevych & Electroacoustic’s Ensemble – Nord/Ouest

Le site internet d’Alla Zagaykevych ne mène nulle part (la preuve : nulle part). C’est sur le site de l’Ircam qu’on peut en apprendre sur cette compositrice ukrainienne. Mais on en apprendra encore plus en écoutant Nord/Ouest, CD qu’elle a enregistré avec son Electroacoustic’s Ensemble.

Zagaykevych programme, chante, joue des live electronics et du thérémine. Surtout, elle invente une musique qui emprunte à Xenakis autant qu’au folklore de son pays d’origine. Parfois, son programming sonne bien vieux d’autres fois il est très froid. Mais le voilà excusé lorsqu’arrivent les voix, les cordes et les percussions, toutes de belle qualité. Du Nord à l’Ouest, l’oreille vacille donc. Cette musique électroacoustique mi-folk mi-contemporaine nous mène nulle part, elle aussi:  je veux dire par là qu’elle est rare et déboussolante.

Alla Zagaykevych : Nord/Ouest (Nexsound)
Enregistrement : 12 juin 2010. Edition : 2011.
CD : 01-03/ Nord/Ouest
Pierre Cécile © Le son du grisli

Luna Kafe

Alla Zagaykevych & Electroacoustic’s Ensemble – Nord/Ouest

This is strange brew indeed. Nord/Ouest (which means North-East in English, I guess) is electro acoustic performance for folklore voices, violin, flute, percussion and electronics. Including Theremin. Ukrainian composer Alla Zagaykevych’s (b. 1966) works range widely across genres, from symphonic, via instrumental and vocal chamber music, to electro-acoustic compositions, then multi-media installations and performances, as well as chamber opera and music for films. Nord/Ouest holds three tracks, or rather movements, of which all three takes stomach and time to sit through. You’d better put in a break in-between the three parts.

Nord/Ouest was created/composed in 2009, recorded in one day (June 12th) 2010, and released last year. Alla Zagaykevych is of course head of all compositions (even though parts are clearly more results of improvisation than others, while other parts have borrowed from the traditional folk music), as well as being in charge of programming, doing live electronics, vocals and Theremin. Iryna Klymenko adds vocals, Sergiy Okhrimchuk plays violin and sings and Vadim Jovich plays percussion. I sense that I’m not among the perfect/typical audience for this type of music. I feel that most parts of the music and the folkloristic content goes way above my head. Yet, this is interesting music for ears and head, as the ensemble lays an emphasis on “…primitive mystery and ‘elusiveness’ of the folklore of North-Western region of the Ukraine…”

You don’t get exposed to music like this every day. Fair enough, but sometimes I guess it’s healthy to face something completely different. To expand your mind, to broaden your horizon.

Copyright © 2012 Håvard Oppøyen

Loop.cl

Alla Zagaykevych and Electroacoustic’s Ensemble – Nord/Ouest

This is the latest release on Nexsound, a renowned experimental label run by Ukrainian experimental artist Andrey Kiritchenko.
Alla Zagaykevych is an Ukrainian composer who has a vast experience in different musical fields, multi-media installations, performances, chamber opera and music for films.
In this album Alla Zagaykevych does the composition and programming, live electronics, vocal and Theremin and the members Electroacoustic’s Ensemble are Iryna Klymenko on vocal, Sergiy Okhrimchuk, violin and vocal, and Vadim Jovich, percussion.
‘Nord/Ouest’ consists in three tracks which have as a reference the folklore of the North-Western region of Ukraine called Rivne Polissya.
Both structure and improvisation are present in this album that comes together with harsh violin sound, faltering Theremin sound, and power drums. This it can be listened mostly in tracks one and three since in the second cut it’s more evident the folk influence through the use of vocals. These vocals give a special power to the music and maybe this is the reason why the combination of traditional folk song and modern electronics blend seamlessly.
www.nexsound.org
Guillermo Escudero
January 2012
Vital

Alla Zagaykevych and Electroacoustic’s Ensemble – Nord/Ouest

Now this is the kind of band you don’t see very often, I think, although I don’t think they would approve of my use of the word band. Alla Zagaykevych is responsible for the composition and programming (although I am not sure what it meant with programming), live electronics, vocal and theremin with Iryna Klymenko (vocal), Sergiy Okhrimchuk (violin, vocal) and Vadim Jovich (percussion). The ensemble has an interest in the ‘primitive mystery and “elusiveness” of the folklore of North-Western region of the Ukraine’. The music from this area is something we should be able to hear in the music, but that is perhaps only if you know the original version. Although Zagaykevych is credited with composition, I must say that a lot of this sounds like improvisation and just the second part sounds more folk like, with a lot of traditional singing. Throughout these three lengthy pieces there is some interesting variations to be spotted. The first part is no doubt the most improvised one, which reminded me of AMM and Morphogenesis meeting up – especially through the use of drums. The second piece is the most traditional one, as said, mainly through the use of vocals, although clashing in with the use of modern electronics and scraping of cymbals. The third part is again more improvised like, with a major role for the flute, violin, percussion and the electronics providing a more mellow backdrop – here its more Morphogenesis than AMM, I suppose. Bands of this kind, combining a band structure, along with improvisation and electronics are these days a rarity – as far as I can view such matters of course – and this ensemble plays some excellent music in that style. (FdW)