This is the second mp3 release by this member of the Moglass on the Kharkov imprint, Nexsound. The ep is no doubt dedicated to the label boss Andrey Kiritchenko. It opens with a short prelude for loop and harmonic, which has the strange feel of something that Mark Twain might have heard going down the Mississippi on a steamboat. The second untitled track is based on a loop phasing loop with a synth melody on top. Too short i think, as the basic material could have been developed further. The third piece is a happy little melodic loop that repeats and goes through different variations moving from a synth to xylophone type sound all the while being destroyed by various effects with a good dose of electronic noises thrown in the mix. The final track is again based on a swirling loop, with the addition of drum machine. In a strange way it recalls the old S.F. band Breather with the distant droning vocals and a hit of piano. There are alot of ideas crammed into this 10 minute ep giving so there is plenty to enjoy despite the short length. Very different from the first ok_01 release and a lot of fun. (JS)
Review
Nole Plastique – Escaperhead
Wordplay all around: Escaperhead, Nexsound PQP: these are the edges of popmusic and experimental music. Nole Plastique are from Russia and consist of Roman Kutnov and Alexei Belousov and ‘Escaperhead’ is their first album. It’s quite a curious affair. Nole Plastique likes their popmusic, of a very special area. Sixties psychedelic music, with guitars, weird sound effects, vocals and keyboards, with little bits of drums here and there. The vocals reminded me of a local band, The Use Of Ashes (formerly known as Mekanik Kommando): the same somewhat far away sound, held back singing and very english. It’s music that I would hardly play for fun, not because I don’t like it, but because I own so very little of it. It’s nice for a CD, which is deliberately recorded in a way that is not very good, but which could have been better I think. Nice enough, this twenty-first century stab at sixties psychedelics. (FdW)
Kotra – Stir Mesh
Another release on Nexsound is by Kotra, aka Dmytro Fedorenko from the Ukraine. His sound is definetly more noise and electronic oriented. Using elements from techno, industrial music and clicks and cuts, he creates his own thing. In general the pieces are quite slow and overall there is no 4/4 to be recognized. Harsher edged sounds make this much more into an industrial version of Oval and a less swinging Pan Sonic. Although 14 (untitled) tracks are listed, they flow into each other. Unfortunally some pieces are too static to hold the full attention, even when it comes to a few minutes per track. The limitness of the sounds used overall is what makes this product into a too long thing. The 3″ size would have worked well here. (FdW)
Kotra – Live Session
Kotra is the moniker for one Dmytro Fedorenko from Kiev. This release is a collection of pieces from various live performances made at Clubtransmediale Festival in Berlin, Garage Festival in Stralsund and miscellaneous shows in Kiev. Kotra works in the field of digital noise-sharp textures and frequencies that are akin to scraping your eardrum with a razor. Kotra takes such sounds and beats them into shape creating loops and repeating motifs. The first 12 tracks here are all around a minute or less which depending on your pain threshold might be a good thing. The last 2 tracks are longer pieces and i think here is were Kotra starts to really develop his ideas into what sounds like binary heavy metal-riffs formed from digital errors with enough testosterone to get your fist pumping into the air. These 2 tracks would make an impressive single. (JS)
Kotra – Dissilient
The man behind Kotra is one Dmytro Fedorenko, who played bass in a jazz-noise band, had a noise duo called Zet and has worked with the likes of Kim Cascone, Andreas Berthling and Andrey Kiritchenko. Here he plays twenty-one tracks in just over thirty-four minutes. When I started this CD, I thought my opinion would be ready after 2 minutes: noise, generated through feedback and processed digitally. But as this CD progressed, and the sound remained almost similar throughout, I realized that I was not listening to twenty-one tracks, but to one work broken up in twenty-one different pieces. As the piece evolves more sounds are added, even a guitar can be heard, and the whole thing is broken up with smaller sound particles. Although noise is in general the thing I am no longer concerned for, the conceptual approach is something that I like very much. Given the concise and precise dealings with Kotra, I am all for it. That’s the way to do it. (FdW)
I/DEX – Seqsextend
I/DEX is one Vitaly Harmash operating out of Belarus and here he offers up a collection of different styles of contemporary electronica from clicks n cuts, dub & idm. His goal here is one of creating mood music for your home or work, a little something to brighten your mood. As background music it works really well, as Harmash displays adroitness in arranging hiss, static, beats into pleasant compositions. The opening track is one of my favorites, a walking bass line coupled with static noise textures. The fourth track entitle .DOC is a droning loop that I wish was longer than just three minutes. While listening to this cd I lost my sense of time, to the point that I felt the cd was going on for way too long. Perhaps its because there are no silences between tracks and Harmash succeeds in transporting the listener into a different time. (JS)
Courtis/Moglass/Kiritchenko – s/t
The Moglass are also present on a three way compilation, together with Andrey Kiritchenko and Anla Courtis (of former Reynols fame). A release by Nexsound, but also on Gold Soundz, Tib Prod and 1000+1 Tilt. This compilation presents various works by each artist/band, but each of them uses sounds from the others. The Moglass pieces are a bit heavier than on ‘Sparrow Juice’, dwelling more distortion and psychedelic sound effects. The result is nice, but doesn’t match up with their own full length CD. Anla Courtis has three tracks in which he works with the sounds of The Moglass, but fails to set a difference with the group’s own sound. Quite spacey and cosmic sound. In the two pieces using Kiritchenko’s material, things are also spacious, but less closed. The best pieces are by Kiritchenko, who takes the various sources from Courtis and The Moglass into the world of the computer treatments and processing, creating with their sounds, a music that bears similar markings, but then entirely in the digital domain. Ambient and glitch related, but both at it’s very best. (FdW)
Bluermutt – Decivilize after consumption
The person behind Bluermutt is from Barcelona, but also lives in Amsterdam, and he is part of Mickey Eats Plastic and sometimes works as Crashbonsai. He likes creating music using computers. That is perhaps the thing that I learned from his website. He has a bunch of free tracks on Nexsound, who now release a CD of his work. I must admit I played this CD twice in a row. Not because I thought it was so great, but rather because it was early morning. I was getting up, looked at the ‘today’s pile of Vital Weekly’, and I scanned this briefly before, so it seemed like an appropriate thing to hear, starting the day. The bass I cut down a bit, but the eleven tracks rolled on, with IDM styled rhythms, glitchy sounds, female vocalists, guitars. I picked up the newspaper, ate a bit, drank some coffee, and then this was over. Damn. I think I didn’t get it quite right. So I played it again, made more coffee, finished the newspaper, checked e-mail. Its seems over again. Twice in a row, didn’t notice it that well, but on a third, more concentrating listening (making notes now), I thought it was quite a nice, if not ordinary release of home listening rhythmic music. Not great, not bad, positively in the way it uses various guestplayers, especially the various vocal bits. Certainly a great way of starting the day anyway.
(FdW)
Andrey Kiritchenko – Misterrious
Kiritchenko returns here to Spekk, following ‘True Delusion’ (see Vital Weekly 476), although of course Kiritchenko has released various other releases in the meantime. He set himself at work with the idea of creating something that was more acoustic than electronic, with the vague notion of jazz, in the Kiritchenko way that is. The album is built from various elements. First there is the piano playing of Kiritchenko, with some guitar parts. To add he added some percussion of his own, mainly a snare and a cymbals, but also he asked Martin Brandlmayer and Jason Kahn to play some real drums. Last but not least he added some insect field recordings from the Crimea area. Maybe the drumming is a bit jazz like, but throughout I didn’t perceive this as a jazz album. But then perhaps also I didn’t hear this to be a microsound album, or glitch or, well fill in whatever you think is appropriate. Its one of those albums that avoids any tags. Postrock, ambient rock, may come close, but then its hardly rock what is going on here. Very mellow music, with an excellent mixture of instruments and field recordings, and indeed to a very minimal extent an album of electronics. That perhaps is the greatest achievement of this disc, to move away so strongly from the old territory and so finely moving into a new one, or rather: expanding on the old one, and create something that may sound like the old one, but achieved with new means. Fine album indeed.
FdW
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
Of course the name Andrey Kiritchenko is familiar to you. Apart from his own music and his own Nexsound label, he also plays with Critikal, Sidharta and Nex and is at the forefront of experimental music in the Ukraine. His previous releases on Ad Noiseam displayed an interest in glitch, ambient and rhythm, but that seems all far away when playing ‘True Delusion’. The record falls apart in two parts, each of them having four tracks (and noted as ‘side a’ and ‘side b’ on the cover, very odd for a CD). In the first four tracks environmental sounds and guitar play the leading part and on the second four the piano plays the same role. Playing around with overtones is what Kiritchenko had in mind when he started working on this record. Despite the computer-processing that no doubt went into making this record, both guitar and piano are clearly to be recognized. They play a set of simple tune and the overtones of both instruments are clearly worked out. Rhythm and techno influences are no longer there. Unlike Boca Raton’s new CD on Spekk, this new Kiritchenko certainly qualifies as ambient glitch music, although it’s less minimal than some of the outings on say the Line label. Kiritchenko keeps his own tunes together, plays around with them in his own way and at that he does he very fine job. A fresh start, perhaps? (FdW)