Saturday, April 30, 2011

Now playing - Сейчас на Радио, Part III

The latest broadcast is up!

...Starting out in England, we swiftly move on to Russia and then further on, to focus on Ukrainian labels and their musical experiments. Enjoy it!

And
if you due to sound issues would not enjoy it, below follows a list of references to information, online listening and downloads. All that you can wish for.






Abakus

Website: http://artistabakus.com/
On Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/artistabakus

Note: The track featured in the podcast is a collaboration with the English dubstep artist called Spirit.

Pavel Mikhailov

On Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/pavel-mikhaylov
On Myspace: http://myspace.com/3oftheapocalypse
http://myspace.com/neizvestnostlab



Kotra

Website: http://www.kotra.org.ua
On Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/kotra
Label: Kvitnu




Zavoloka

Website: http://zavoloka.com/
On Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/zavoloka




Dunaewsky69

Website: http://dunaewsky69.com/
On Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/dunaewsky69





Andrey Kiritchenko

Website: http://www.nexsound.org/
Artist info and downloads:
http://www.nexsound.org/akir/

Friday, April 8, 2011

Сейчас на радио / Now playing - Part II

This time we're taking a very quick tour through the Russian history of electronic music. I feel obliged to apologize for the poor quality of the voice recordings, but still hope that you will enjoy the music.

Playlist:

1. Eduard Artemiev - Stalker Theme
2. Alexey Borisov & Olga Nosova - Track 23
3. Biokonstruktor - Gravitator
4. Tekhnologiya - Polchasa
5. Pavlov & Computers - Kraftwerk Will Reunite
6. Spektrum - Schit I Mech

Friday, April 1, 2011

Раббота ХО / Rabbota Kho - No Glam Trash Boogie update

Friends,

Having done some further research on Rabbota Kho, I found the Ukrainian label Quasipop, who keep the album "Tanets" (Dance) for free download
here. So download, listen and like. If you like it enough, you can burn a CD and complete it with the cover sleeve.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Neizvestnost - In Space Chaos - Remember yourself

Неизвестность [nyeyztve:stnast'], unknown; obscurity; strangeness; peradventure

Unpredictable as nature itself, Neizvestnost move, sometimes on ethereal waves, sometimes in the visible. Since the start, they've kept on changing, exploring and connecting the elements of music through different stages, but even before the start, there was a beginning.

Before Neizvestnost, there was naivety, says Andrey Lesnoy, one of the members of this group who cannot be considered to be excludingly a band, but rather as a collective of artists.

"There was a long period of naive sound making, writing novels and reading poetry" says Andrey, mentioning a premature project called the ILL Band. "It was a very pure and educational period in life." The young founders of what would become Neizvestnost were simply trying out grounds. During his journey to South Korea in the late 90's, Andrey accumulated a number of old school synthesizers which he brought back to Moscow, and this lead to vivid experiments involving said synthesizers, guitars, improvised vocals, poetry, self invented sound effects and even a vinyl player from the 1950's. Since then it's only evolved.

Neizvestnost by that name, was founded in 2002, and in the beginning they were three: Andrey Lesnoy, Dmitry Pan and YuRa Inoy. Meaning "Forest", "Pan" and "One/another" their names lead the thoughts to those of spirits. You could say there's something magical about those names as they, according to Andrey Lesnoy, all came by themselves, appearing at the right times. And all the names add further expression to what they put on display.

To refer to the music of Neizvestnost as "electronic experimental" is too simple as it contains more elements than that, and to be able to grasp what it all is about, you must naturally first get into the music, but once you've done that, it's difficult to remain objective. You either love them or hate them,; like them or not, because there's enough feeling not to leave anyone untouched, whether it's about rhythmic loops accompanied by chant-like vocals; seemingly random electronic trips, or more conventional sounding melodies closer to what one could refer to as "ordinary" rock songs. What the different aspects of Neizvestnost have in common is the hypnotism and there's nothing random about that:

Together, the members of Neizvestnost gather a quite range of musical influences and taste; the selection spreads widely from EBM and industrial, to 60's psychedelic rock; from The Shamen to Nikolay Kopernik, and so on, but there are also other sources of inspiration.

"Books. We prefer dark science fiction, Russian classics, Silver Age poets and modern Russian alchemists' works". says Andrey Lesnoy. "Movies, mostly supernatural dramas, science fiction, mystery, horror films about death, Italian slashers, zombie movies, and so on; Women who love music, nature, travellng (but not as tourists) space, water, mountains, ancient places, good people..." he mentions all these things, and there are probably more, should you ask every individual member of Neizvestnost.

In 2006, Andrey Lesnoy, Dmitry Pan and YuRa Inoy were
joined by two new group members; first by Pavel Svetomusica, a young musician with a studio, and later by Lena Orlova, a shaman, artist and musician, and in 2008 the line-up as we know it today was completed as vocalist, writer and musicial Olga-Rita joined with Neizvestnost. All these new members had something new to contribute with; music, art, noise or voice, and to use Andrey Lesnoy's own words: The new Neizvestnost had begun.

Since their beginning, now approximately nine years ago, Neizvestnost have recorded over 140 albums, but only a few tracks have been officially released, mostly on compilation CDs, and it's still hard for the band to get gigs.
"We get less than ten gigs a year", says Andrey. He has previously hinted that what they do doesn't always seem to be a
ppreciated.

Neizvestnost in the studio however differ from Neizvestnost as a live act. The latter means another output of dynamics and improvisation, but both of these two parts should be regarded as equally important as both is needed to make the concept complete, and there is a message:

"The most important part is the faith, the admiration, the beauty, the compassion and every time it brings something new into that message." Andrey says "We started to understand Neizvestnost thinking about the moments of passing away and beeing born and searching for the meaning of those moments.." then he speaks for himself "It is the main point in expressing what Neizvestnost is in my life. If one looks at his or her own from that direction it helps to do the right stuff, I think. At least you mean no harm to others. Something that makes oneself think altogether, not only like living and doing things, but also like something momentary. In this momentary role you can do various things, Neizvestnost' prefers to make itself by means of music. We expressed such situation as 'That is not me, who
composes music-that is Music who composes, cures, heals and loves me.' "


There's no need to dissect Neizvestnost and we don't even need to describe their music. All we need to do is to listen, feel and connect with it. Andrey gets the last word, answering the question whether he'll ever see an ending to Neizvestnost:

"Neizvestnost is more like a new philosophical monument, in my opinion. It never moves by itself - it just happens,
like a thunder or rainbow. It is more like a research experience lab for people who are really deep into various forms of sounds. We personally see and read our own music. I do not think that Neizvestnost will stop, but it's not of our decision. We work like radiosets."

Photos:
Top right: Neizvestnost live 2005
Middle left: Andrey Lesnoy
Middle right: YuRa Inoy and Pavel Svetomusica
Bottom left: Olga-Rita, Andrey Lesnoy and YuRa Inoy


Neizvestnost links:

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/neizvestnostlab
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/neizvestnostlab

vKontakte: http://vkontakte.ru/club8063866





Saturday, March 26, 2011

Сейчас на радио - Appendix

Here follows the playlist and all relevant links related to the featured bands in the podcast below [2011.03.26].

Playlist:

Utro - Neznakomaya Sila
Rabbota Kho - Nakhodka v Dyunach
PsyLoFi - Ensnared
Motherfathers - You Suck My Tongue
Utro - Dushi Stareyut Bystree Tel
Motorama - There's No Hunters Here
Neizvestnost - Krov iz Glaz
Neizvestnost - Gde Ty Tam I Ya


Utro:

Website:
http://www.ytrorty.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ytromusic




Rabbota Kho:

This band has no website and no articles found in English, but here's a review of Novaya Scena compilation CD, with some mp3:s for streaming and downloading



PsyLoFi:

Website:
http://www.psylofi.com
Music:
http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/3114527,
http://www.myspace.com/psylofi


Motherfathers:

Website:
http://motherfathers.bandcamp.com/

Writings:
h
ttp://www.farfrommoscow.com/artists/motherfathers.html




Motorama:

Website: http://www.wearemotorama.com




Neizvestnost:

Music:
http://www.myspace.com/neizvestnostlab
Free downloads:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XYZ5P5AC
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NYXRMXKL

Friday, March 25, 2011

Now Playing

Сейчас на радио - Now playing.

With an odd noise filter and a Swedish accent, I present to you good sounds from Russia and Ukraine. Enjoy!




Come here.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Motherfathers - From Moscow with attitude



You were looking for the rock ’n’ roll myth of modern day, not convinced to find it at all, because rock is dead, isn’t it? As a matter of fact, it’s alive and well, currently residing in Moscow, Russia, going by the pseudonym of Motherfathers – a four man piece inspired by pretty much everything. Everything except music.

Vocalist Dmitiy Peitch had been probing into the mysteries of music for years, making his own records and participating in various student bands before meeting up with Maxim Elizarov, a friend who offered to help Dmitriy with recording some songs at his home studio. For Dmitriy, this initially meant compiling a musical CV, something that he’d use for future collaborations. Maxim didn’t utter any ideas of forming a band or even playing live, but later in that year of 2005 they stood on stage together, and that much was established, that Dmitriy and Maxim were the two founding members of the band that would become known as Motherfathers.

They hired the first drummer to audition; Olga Nosova, with her roots in jazz fusion. Finding a bass player would show to be slightly more difficult and Dmitriy mentioned having auditioned “hundreds of them” before finally deciding on the man called Misha. “We played out first gig in June 2006, under the name ‘Kill Georgia Bitch’” says Dmitriy. The name had been used for several studio recordings through 2005 and meant nothing more than three randomly chosen words, but Dmitriy explains why this became a problem: “There were misunderstandings related to the conflict between Russia and Georgia. Many believed that it was an anti Georgian statement” In October 2006 the band’s name was officially changed and Motherfathers were a fact.

This far we’ve became slightly acquainted with Dmitriy’s pre-Motherfathers experiences, but of course also his colleagues had a past of musical activities; Maxim, who is currently the band’s guitarist/keyboardist, had a project with another keyboardist, making recordings in his home studio, and Olga was in a group called ‘Syncopated Silence’, who are still active. This is the very same Olga Nosova who since 2009 has collaborated with Russian industrial legend Alexey Borisov, and Borisov and Motherfathers go way back… “After Misha had left, we started to experiment with the line up” Dmitriy tells. [Misha left the group in autumn 2007 and was replaced by different bass players, Natasha Gutartseva being the most recent of them.]
“Alexey Borisov was invited as a guitar player. I had heard him performing with the band Rivushie Sturny on guitar and decided that he could take over my guitar duties. His heavy noise/japanoise/chaos style was very close to what we needed.“ Borisov didn’t hesitate to join with Motherfathers but Dmitriy was still not relieved from his guitar duties. “Borisov’s part was to create noise-scapes; additional extra-noisy sounds with his ‘non-musical’ setup of various samplers, guitar pedals and other objects.” Eventually they also started looking further into electronics, and for example sequensers would become an important part of the musical core. Dmitriy continues: “Later we decided to somehow clean up the sound- towards something more direct and elaborate, and somehow more song-oriented” referring to something more structured and this leads us to the crucial question; what do the Motherfathers really sound like?
They can rip you apart with nails on a black board and put you back together with surgical tape, lifting you up and make you follow them above the clouds before dropping you to the ground without any notice whatsoever. The sound of Motherfathers has varied through the years, and even though already taken shape, it’s still forming. A red line is however to be followed through their published works this far, to be summed up by either the deep voice of Dmitriy Peitch or the noise; if you’re a lazy listener. If paying attention you may very well discover the layers and become aware of that sometimes one song are two, and sometimes maybe more, and you may ask yourselves whence the inspiration comes.

“People. Girls. Cars” and Dmitriy quotes an entire list “relations, sports, outdoor activities, boys, dogs, alcohol, drugs, our president, poverty, human rights, our city, other cities, overall craziness, good food and so on” he smiles. But where’s the music? Where are the other groups supposed to have brought him and his colleagues audial inspiration? “People want to hear names like Depeche Modes, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground, Can, Throbbing Gristle, Nine Inch Nails, King Crimson (!), Stooges, Einsturzende Neubauten and so on” Dmitriy explains. They may be fooled by the vocalist’s voice that sometimes leads the thoughts to the likes of Nick Cave and Jim Morrisson, but the truth is that Dmitriy doesn’t listen to music, and when being asked if there’s _anything_ he used to listen to for liking, he finds the question difficult to answer.

“I don't listen to lots of music now - but if it's needed I'll name N.W.A., Marvin Gaye, Fela Kuti, Public Enemy, Mainliner, Michael Jackson, Wu-Tang Clan, Pussy Galore, Napalm Death, some of Mike Patton's work, Bjork, Rage Against The Machin
e, Stravinsky, lots of pop and new academics. It is not just naming everything in a stupid order but in fact I can actually listen to these artists at the moment.” But this still doesn’t have anything to do with the sound of Motherfathers. For them, others’ music as an inspirational source does not occur; at least other people’s music was not the reason why they started the band. “There are two ways for a group of people that want to make something in music while not being heavily influenced. The first way is to know nothing at all, and the second way is to know everything. We fall into both of these categories and try to use it somehow to be free in our creative work.” However, it's none of their intention to deliberately be influenced by someone else. Motherfathers’ audience, their fans, is a very mixed group. “I still don’t know who they really are.” says Dmitriy “Those who attend most of our shows have become our friends. They are all from a completely different background both culturally and musically. I think that's the result of the heavy eclecticism of our music.”

Still there are certain difficulties with determining what kind of music the band really makes, which sometimes leads to ambivalenc
e within the audience who at times have no idea of how to grasp what they’re hearing, but just like Motherfathers is a multi facetted band, their audience’s reactions tend to vary:

“Sometimes they are dancing, and sometimes falling in some kind of a trance, and sometimes standing with some kind of intellectual life happening look on their faces.” Dmitry points out that there are many factors involved “But mostly when everything is right the sense of overall destruction and craziness transfers to the audience.” Destruction and violence is ever present in the music of Motherfathers and in their performances. There was a time when this manifested in a highly concrete way, leading to that the group was even banned from performing at some venues, but Dmitriy explains that this was just a phase. Nowadays this violence and destruction is expressed through their music, and the energy is focused to this point.

“I believe it helps to deliver more than ever. And the real destruction is always around the corner because we are still preaching anarchism and even became much stronger in that kind of beliefs.” Dmitriy wouldn’t say that Motherfathers have a direct message they want to preach to the masses but he prefers to describe it as they’re trying to get in touch with some wild power that comes through sound. “There is lot of freedom in our music, so we want to somehow send the kind of ecstatic energy it has to the audience. It's not all so simple though, as we are deeply interested in melody, harmony, composition while being at the same time seriously involved in free-improvisation. So the music itself becomes a message.” Dmitriy smiles and adds “And of course some wild leftist meanings that are delivered through the left-field music. We want to spread love somehow but we didn't find any better way then to do it with our disturbing volume, vulgarity and noise!”

“The best thing is when you get high, ecstatic and the audience gets high too” says Dmitriy about performing live, and he doesn’t refer to drugs. “The joy and love that’s what it’s all about. The worst thing is when you perform in front of the unprepared bunch of people, or snubs, or some extremely loyal fans of "their" band (when it's not a solo gig). Poor sound at the venue is also one of the worst aspects. Poor sound always spoils all the joy” and unfortunately such a thing is a pretty common occurrence at Moscow clubs.

All of t
he members of Motherfathers, Olga being the exception, have other hobbies, assignments and doings at the side, but music remains the most important thing for them and their only real ambition is to be heard.

“We want a large, really large, and let’s say huge audience.” says Dmitriy “That doesn't mean ticket selling - we can easily do it all for free, just because music is what we are all about. We'll be okay if we can earn some money from music cause we don't want to do anything else and because our financial situation is not good but we don't measure musical career in that criteria. We want to develop it all, to seek something new and that's the most joyous thing!”

It’s been three years since the latest Motherfathers release, the full length album “Kolchak!” [2007], but currently they’re working on a follow-up. Dmitriy explains the long process with the fact that the band during this time changed directions so many times and they as time passed became less satisfied with their recorded demo material. “But now some proper record sessions are going on and we hope to release something as soon as possible.” Dmitriy reveals “And some even newer ideas are going on so I suppose everyone should be ready for a new shift and for some real surprises!”

We’re standing by, waiting for how time will let this band evolve.

Listen and download to Motherfathers here: http://motherfathers.bandcamp.com/