Some lyrical publications from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Penza are full this week of boyish memories. All these performers hope to preserve pre-adult enthusiasm and naivety from subsequent disappointment.
Some fragile releases this week share a common interest in ailing forms of social enterprise. These sounds of breakdown and demise also hope, paradoxically, to prompt thoughts of civic improvement.
The St. Petersburg netlabel Subwise has announced four new releases from around Russia. Taken together, they are a snapshot of material difficulty - and suggest how collaborative enterprise might offer solutions.
Some recent instrumental recordings have invested much energy in a certain form of modesty. By toying with irony and even anonymity, four introspective performers magnify the object of their attention.
A number of producers from suburban Moscow and Krasnodar strive to bridge the gap between daydreams and actuality. As everyday experience refuses to play along, the scale of romantic wistfulness only grows...
Four young jazz/R&B artistes, based in Moscow, consider both their biography and chosen styles. In a realm where hard work and hope often guarantee little, this music is seen in terms of precious consolation.
Various publications from Russia and Ukraine today stress the significance of desire as a constant process. Spatial and temporal metaphors are used to describe an activity that never finds closure.
We look at the remaining attendees of Sochi's Red Bull "Bass Camp." Although these young men operate within the very public domain of sonic performance art, the role of introspection and imagination is uppermost.
Four singers from Moscow embody a particular attitude towards their catalog. In the spirit of a time-honored tradition, they view the performance or "stagecraft" of lyricism as a counterweight to grey actuality.
A host of excellent glitch-hop recordings has appeared this week: all the way from the Pacific Coast to rural Lithuania. Many of them share an enthusiasm for metaphors of flight, fantasy, and family.
