Four slow releases from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ulan-Ude turn their decelerated tempo into a consideration of weighty issues. Slowness becomes a vehicle for some musings on destiny in particular.
Music Kollektiv is a Moscow-based organization, often dedicated to minimal and deep/dub techno. We look at some of the St. Petersburg members in MK and their search for grand significance within spartan structures.
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.
Russia's branch of the Red Bull Music Academy has just just chosen ten young musicians to join its "Bass Camp" in Sochi. We take a look at some of the newer names, especially among the house and juke exponents.
Four ambient and dub releases from Siberia and Lithuania consider the appeal of escape, either to endless forest or further still. The "revolutionary" appeal of that nothingness, however, invites some negative examples from history.
The understated, ambient sounds on display from these young composers are tied - overtly - to the romance of a northern landscape. Upon closer investigation, though, spirituality and science fiction come to the fore.
A handful of new EPs from Krasnodar, Izhevsk, and Moscow all speak in quiet praise of a decelerated aesthetic. Surrounded by the heady clamor of primetime enterprise, these artists vote in favor of slowing down. And saying little.
Toying with aspects of dub techno, glitch-hop, and other forms of understatement, these artists from Siberia, St Petersburg, and Kiev all speak in praise of humility. That validation of smallness and silence helps to amplify other, grander issues...
The netlabels Sgustok and DeepLimit continue building a hushed and discerning catalog of downtempo electronica. The reasons for doing so are tied to universal matters of rest and relaxation, rather than anything specifically local.
The Lithuanian label Cold Tear is based in a small industrial town, Mažeikiai. Much of Cold Tear's dub techno and ambient output is designed to look beyond local steel and concrete... to the older, quieter forests that designate Mažeikiai's limit.
