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 appreciated.

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