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.
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.
Four new recordings from bass and hip-hop producers touch upon the issue of standards. Worried by the growing popularity - and falling quality - of much bass music, these artists ponder a need for new values or virtues.
Three beatmakers from St. Petersburg, Omsk, and Odessa all look to their soundscapes as a way of creating an audible sense of "home." As those compositions develop, they take on a social life of their own, we're told.
Several new darkwave and glitch-hop recordings share some related concerns. They ponder the decline and demise inherent in material existence. Fatalism and decadence go head-to-head in response.
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.
A snapshot of new electronic work from St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk shows some enduring problems. Artists move from one city to another, only to encounter indifference or haughtiness en route.
56 Stuff and Subwise are St. Petersburg netlabels. They share a common outlook in that both projects use irony and unpredictability in order to counter the goal-driven pragmatism of commercial music.
Three Baltic instrumentalists look back upon audio-visual phenomena of their childhood. What results is a new respect for simplicity in adult experience - set to an equally simple, occasionally nostalgic soundtrack.
Aesthetically, there might seem little in common between these recordings. Geographically, they are also far apart. yet when it comes to considerations of urban and rural existence, we find a considerable overlap.
