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.
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.
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.
The sounds on display here stretch all the way from Minsk to the Chinese border. Not surprisingly, themes of distance appear from time to time. The search continues for a balance between noisy cities and crippling isolation.
For all the negative stereotypes that surround many aspects of "provinciality," that same liminal positioning can be turned to significant benefit. These three projects reconsider what it means to inhabit a city's edge.
Fresh releases from Moscow and Krasnodar toy with the notion of "conceptual" songwriting. Certain stories or trajectories inform these recordings: they develop in various directions - and along different narrative arcs.
Blikmuzik is a micro-label based in Brighton (UK), but with strong connections to the Lithuanian D&B/dubstep scene. So much so, in fact, that the project's raison d'être can be traced back to a Baltic land- and seascape.
A number of recordings now available from Kaluga, Moscow, and Novosibirsk all use themes of desire or dreaming in order to evoke "somewhere else." More specifically, they are driven by the appeal of distant times and places.
A new compilation has appeared from Omsk, celebrating some rare activity among musicians in faraway Yakutia. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the levels of both aspiration and boredom can be overwhelming.
The electronic / idm projects under consideration here all admit to a long-term affection for the music and culture of the 1990s. That same nostalgia fashions a certain sound, not to mention a particular view of adult experience.
