A new EP is now available from the Krasnoyarsk outfit Psychedelic Rain (aka Aleksei Shapovalov), of whom we wrote last December. At the top of his listed influences we find Newcastle's Ochre and St Albans' Chris Clark; Shapovalov's work does indeed seem an offshoot of that intricate, fractured...
KLUtCh, as we've reported before, is the nom de plume of St Petersburg musician and designer, Denis Popyrin. The reason for returning to his excellent work is twofold: the release of a new album and the appearance of his older material in a British documentary film, "Petroapocalypse Now."...
A free EP/split has just been released by Betacut and Psychedelic Rain, entitled - rather strangely - "Glitch Vegetarians." The logic behind the title remains something of a mystery, though the EP is subtitled "Volume One," indicating that further material and/or clues might be forthcoming at...
Electronic music is often accused of sameness, of reducing national differences. Here's an exception. The sounds of Russian 8-bit or chiptune recordings, taken from old Dendy or Sega computer games, underscore the cultural differences between East and West during the Soviet Union's slow demi...
It would be reasonable to say that Sochi is Russia's most famous summer resort. Made popular by Stalin and his own holiday preferences, the town was recently given a major boost when it won the right to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. This victory came hand in hand with then-President Puti...
Mamanet are from Ukraine, specifically from the town of Kramatorsk in the eastern part of the country. The band has only been in existence for four years, but is already widely respected for its live displays of electronic jazz. The band members pride themselves on those shows: across Mama...
This new release reached the web two days ago from Odessa, Ukraine; it can be downloaded here. Although a very impressive and catchy collection of four new instrumentals, it comes with virtually no information that allows us to contextualize the work.
What we do know is that Lawyer, s...
The culture of mixtapes, celebrated most famously in Nick Hornby's novel "High Fidelity," endures in Russia. Even when there are no tapes involved. At which point it becomes a mix. Evidently this post will end sooner than anticipated.
Take two. The attraction of mixtapes, profitab...
There's little to say about Ocean Shiver, especially in the face of virtually no textual support. A wordless MySpace page, a line or two at LastFM, and one small paragraph on the artist's own site. It can at least be confirmed that Ocean Shiver is the moniker of Vlad Orlov from Moscow.
A...
The Russian Association of Independent Genres has just offered for free download the album "Dante/Moscow" by Won James Won. This net-release comes as part of RAIG's new online venture, "Accessory Takes."
The album consists of a single 30-minute composition originally designed to accompany...
