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Рецензия от Vital Weekly на альбом «Queer Reminiscence»

 

Рецензия от Vital Weekly на альбом «Queer Reminiscence»

Размещено 23 Мая 2017
review, english

MOLJEBKA PVLSE - DISCOURSE ON LIGHTNESS (CD by Reverse Alignment)
SIJ & ITEM CALIGO - QUEER REMINISCENCE (CD by Reverse Alignment)
AJNA & DRONNY DARKO - BLACK MONOLITH (2CD by Reverse Alignment)

Mathias Josefson's project Moljebka Pvlse has been around for quite some years now and there have been quite a few releases so far. With this new album Josefson wants to explore the "semantics of light" and that calls for a somewhat different approach then. In the 'old' days, the sound of Moljebka Pvlse seemed very much dictated by the use of field recordings and the electronic treatments thereof. On this new release I am not so sure if that is still the case. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there has been a shift from field recordings to instruments and in that respect especially the guitar. In the twenty-four minute opening piece, 'The History Of Levitation', we could easily belief to hear a whole bunch of guitars lovingly playing together. And with a whole bunch I could easily think 50 or 100 different layers, close together, and yet all a bit different. There is a refined sense of microtonalism going on, but also something that we could lightness. Before landing on a piece of equal length we have the six minutes shorter 'Between Lightness And Luminance' in between, which is less of a drone affair, and guitars might have been replaced by violin sounds (or others from the orchestral bin), which scrap around, a bit far away and a bit remote, which gives the whole thing a spooky character. In 'A Field Guide Ro Sunrise', Moljebka Pvlse uses drones along with percussion instruments played sparsely but adding a new element to the music, something freer and improvised even. This is indeed a break from the old Moljebka Pvlse sound and yet still something that fits what he does. Not a shocking move but a carefully planned one and hopefully a road to explore further.

The next one is the collaborative work of Vladislav Sikach's project SiJ, whose first album, 'The Lost World' was also released by Reverse Alignment, who teams up with one Item Caligo, the musical project of Sergey Epifanov. The cover shows us landscapes in twilight sceneries and that is an indication for the flickering ambient music played by these projects. A vast open sound engulfs here, played on a variety of synthesizers and digital means (although perhaps the synthesizers are also digital; I am not sure) and it is somewhere between light (Moljebka Pvlse) and dark (spoiler alert; the next one I'm reviewing from this label), and some of these synthesizers are scarily close to the world of new age music, such as in 'Her Soul Involuntarily Yearned For Rest', or the piano of 'If Our Hope Not Fades' (and yes, I think that these are tacky titles too); when the two go down for some serious darkness however, such in 'So Terrible To Contemplate' or 'Tranquillity of Mind', then the balance is in their favour again. Field recordings are employed here too, but only very sparsely I think; maybe a seagull in 'Life Loves Your Pain'. Despite some of the sugar sweet approaches to the sound of the synthesizer in certain places, I thought this was all in all quite an enjoyable release; perhaps a bit too regular; not a lot of their own perhaps.

This time around we kept the darkest of the lot as something for the last hour of the day. It is long distance collaboration between Chris F and Oleg Puzan, who have been working together for some time and have had releases on Petroglyph Music in 2013 and 2014. These works are now part of 'Black Monolyth', a double CD, with also new music. The cover is a bit sparse when it comes to telling us the provenance of these pieces, but it might be that the first disc is the old work, and the second disc is all new. There aren’t a whole lot of different approaches between these two, I would think. The title of the album is the musical program here. Whatever the input is, and I suspect this to be field recordings of whatever nature, are transformed into a pitch black monolith of drone sounds, which in the older pieces are perhaps a little bit monolithic in approach, smeared as they are with the use of sound effects and in the newer pieces it has the illusion of being a bit lighter and opener, but in fact are as hermetically closed as the other works. On the second disc each of the seven pieces lasts eight minutes and two seconds, so perhaps there is some conceptual edge to it; they do seem to be different pieces though, and not one long piece cut into seven equal bits. This music has the heavy weight of the universe as well as the colour of the endless journey through space; pitch black and top heavy. Quite a journey this is, not into terra incognita, as the deep space is a crowded place.

(FdW)

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