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Microscomos is a very young netlabel, based in St Petersburg. Aware of their youth - yet full of faith - the staff at Microscomos are already happy to announce that they're "destined to produce the most impressive and outstanding ambient music, chillout, and idm." The label is closely tied to Hive Mind Media - and therefore to northern traditions of psytrance, but Microscomos has its sights set on quieter realms, at least initially.
Their first release is a one-hour split album, shared by Alexander Daf and Aedem, also both from St Petersburg. Daf has been the subject of our attention on several prior occasions, the last of which was in December last year. At that time, we remarked: "Alexander Daf (aka Aleksandr Ivanov) is a well-established DJ from St. Petersburg’s downtempo scene. Not only is he a respected figure thanks to a number of solo releases since 2005, but he also extends those efforts - and any subsequent influence - through the channel of his label, Sun Station Records, designed to operate as a music manufacturer, online hosting service, and tour/concert organizer."
The expression below does indeed suggest a business-like worldview.
Daf's PR work for solo projects has always operated on the same confident, if not cocky level as Microscomos: “Being a devoted fan of both ambient and downtempo, he creates his own unique vision of chillout music. His compositions are famous for their infinite ambient landscapes, complex rhythmic patterns, and subtle breeze-like passages woven from Eastern ethnic strands. The music of Alexander Daf is both well-known and popular all over the world.”
We may be stretching a point somewhat; nonetheless our author continues unabashed.
“Daf’s music has been released in Italy (on the Laverna label), Latvia (Elpa), Ukraine (Sentimony), USA (System Recordings) and through other venues, too. The legendary Lithuanian internet-label Sutemos has also included one of his tracks in a compilation – together with compositions by other famous musicians such as Vladislav Delay, Lackluster, Sleepy Town Manufacture, Funckarma, etc. At the end of 2008, System Recordings, a major American recording company, released Alexander Daf’s debut album ‘A Thousands Reasons to Be.’”
The intent gaze of a busy pragmatist does not waver.
“That recording earned a lot of positive reviews – and even entered the Chillout Top 100 at Beatport’s e-store. Currently Alexander Daf plays live in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, whilst participating in all the major festivals that are dedicated to electronic music.” For the new split recording showcased here, we are told that Daf's "musical imagination now extends to beautiful backdrops and warm atmospheres."
That recording earned a lot of positive reviews – and even entered the Chillout Top 100 at Beatport’s e-store. Currently Alexander Daf plays live in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, whilst participating in all the major festivals that are dedicated to electronic music.
As for Aedem (aka Konstantin Terentev [below]), he was born in 1983 and has a conservative grounding in classical music, particularly in piano; that, in turn, would become further training in the finer points of sound production. As adulthood and facial hair both advanced, he would become a trance-based contributor to Moon Station, a subsidiary of Hive Mind; thus he grew closer to Daf's workplace.
Not only has Terentev's career been devised, like that of his colleague, between trance and ambient projects; he even uses two different stage names for differing genres, occasionally reversing the lettering of "Aedem" (for downtempo work) and becoming "Medea" (for the dancefloor).
Together these two men, the product of two styles, have now produced "Prism." Daf has contributed four tracks and Terentev five. Microscomos declares that the shared recording "has a severe sound, replete with many details. The album is full of mystical tunes - from the East - and snowy, melancholy vibes - from the North. As a whole, 'Prism' is saturated with soft, enveloping melodies spun from both electronic and improvised, live instrumentation. As a whole, the release justifies its title."
And here, once more, immodesty steps forward: "'Prism' is an expression of infinite, appealing versatility. It gives listeners good cause to press the 'Replay' button - over and over."
How to promote this CD? In relatively recent interviews, Daf has complained that the web is, despite its radical democracy, lacking in quality venues for Russian electronica. That same distrust of mass enterprise has led increasingly to studio-based work, rather than DJ-ing. Social activity morphs into private seclusion and the introspection of psy-chill. He has openly admitted that developing his related idm and/or ambient compositions is, not surprisingly, very difficult in public contexts.
This unease about human spheres is precisely what links "Prism" to the psy-chill traditions mentioned above. Although both Daf and Aedem now distance themselves from the trance-driven catalogs of Sun Station and Moon Station, there is much here to recall the ethnic (or orientalist) atmosphere of those two labels, especially in their tendencies towards "Eastern" and shamanistic motifs - as a thinly-veiled kind of drug-related vocabulary. Unimaginable, distant locations stand in for inconceivable experiences; lone figures, positioned in Russia's unending wilderness, overlap with the imagery of hallucinogens.
Both are dizzying - and find initial expression in the album's track-listings; most of the instrumentals on "Prism," by name alone, evoke issues of clear distance and vague perception: "Immersing," "Radius," "Blind Story," and so forth.
In looking for a vocabulary to handle ineffable distances or other kinds of vertiginous "trips," language will not suffice. Daf's second track, the aforementioned "Radius," includes some spoken samples, manipulated to the point of incomprehensibility. They are slurred beyond recognition and indicate nothing.
The other, much clearer use of language comes in Aedem's section of the album. The text of a small poem by Shel Silverstein is employed: "Rain In My Head." That same text, obviously through language, merely reveals the inadequacy of words when faced with nature's limitless display - such as rainstorms. The way in which that display is described, however, makes it hard to distinguish between childlike wonderment and a druggie stupor - and so we stumble back into the territory of psy-chill. Open landscapes, with indiscernible horizons, recall the sense of "immersing" (as Daf puts it) that's offered by certain illegal chemicals.
The same poem has inspired not only the kind of imagery shown above, but also various (odd) videos.
"I opened my eyes/ And looked up at the rain, / And it dripped in my head/ And flowed into my brain,/ And all that I hear as I lie in my bed/ Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head. I step very softly, I walk very slow, /I can't do a handstand - I might overflow,/ So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said -/ I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head."
These are the realms before which the folks at Microscomos stand, full of unjustified - yet admirable! - confidence. It's hard not to dovetail this stance with a cultural myth or two regarding the city in question. Built as a low-lying urban center, sitting uncomfortably on waterlogged marshlands, St Petersburg would, over the centuries, become a (self-assured) locus both of imperial decree and a sad victim of Mother Nature. It was the birthplace of the Russian navy - and the one city most threatened by seasonal flooding.
These juxtapositions resulted both from St Petersburg's location (worryingly knee-deep in the Baltic) and its necessary orientation towards the outside, seafaring world (as the confident embodiment of an imperial culture). There could be no better expression of this brinkmanship than the city's architecture: classical geometry, boldly established in the face of formless sea, rain, and constant snow.
Terentev is ready for any inclement weather (although naked wires in a rain-soaked forest may not be wise).
For these reasons, "Prism" is a very local product: a confidently produced and promoted work of idm (i.e., of rhythmic consistency) on the edge of disorientation, be it chemical, geographical, or meteorological. Placed side by side, these interfaces of conscious and unconscious experience (of firm ground and directionless waters) are a constant reference point or cultural norm in this city, no matter how hackneyed they may have become. The city's poets and politicians often draw upon St Petersburg's proud isolation - on the edge of land and logic.
Whither that pride, if nature is so destructive? Judging by our opening quote from the staff at Microscomos, it's from "destiny" itself. Only that degree of chutzpah, guided by destiny, produces the kind of architecture shown below, perched atop endless, quivering bogs. And yet, as Machiavelli once noted, destiny - or fortuna - is female in essence; therefore she prefers the confident actions of young men. If so, Daf and Terentev, bold PR materials in hand, look set to produce more music that will echo their hometown's stately demeanor.
It's written in the stars, apparently (if you can see them through the rain in your head).
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