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Late in 2007, Galia Chikiss released a mini-album with the title of "Zoloto oseni" (Autumn Gold); at the time, we said: "Autumn Gold is part of an ongoing four-part project, with the remaining three sections - understandably enough - being dedicated to the other seasons. If they’re as good as the first installment, we’re in for a treat. This initial recording consists of seven tracks, ranging between two and fourteen minutes in length. Sparse in their lyrical content, they nonetheless make much use of Chikiss’ whispering vocals. She draws upon her voice not for linguistic content, but to underscore an overarching, ethereal air. Oooh, aaaah, and so forth. Vowels galore."
"Nowhere is this clearer than in the longest track, which also bears the album’s title. Halfway in, the number stutters to a halt, barely loud enough to claim its presence. Chikiss’ voice becomes a serious of wavering gasps, as if slipping back into swathes of ambient sound. With punctuated gulps and feebly stabbing chords, the music then starts grabbing at the silence and comes slowly, tentatively back to the forefront. This is a very delicate recording; it needs to be treated with the same care and attention as the swaddled child or infant-motifs that run throughout Chikiss’ drawings, since she is herself a new mother. We could, of course, extend these parental parallels further, but the dry workings of academic prose are unused to such territory. Welcome to a world of diapers, doodles, wind-chimes, and weddings."
The inspiration behind that music is now mobile.
Zoloto oseni was received with just as much enthusiasm by the Moscow press. The "Sreda Gorbacheva" website took a recent look back at Chikiss' catalog and declared: "This is perhaps her best work: a solo recording, put together by the singer and her colleague Aleksandr Dubrovin in the family apartment, located in St Petersburg. This is extremely quiet and 'autumnal' music... it sounds calm, secretive, yet somehow complete. The sounds are few and far between, forcing us to concentrate on the delicate, precise, and minimal use of strings, for example. Voices resonate, both near and far, while a DIY drum machine rattles in the background."
The article concluded: "These recordings show the kind of aesthetic that's specific to Chikiss' work; you could probably call it a kind of 'Petersburg' beauty. Each and every note both resonates and yet, at the same time, also sounds a little lost."
These recordings show the kind of aesthetic that's specific to Chikiss' work; you could probably call it a kind of 'Petersburg' beauty. Each and every note both resonates and yet, at the same time, also sounds a little lost.
Traditional notions of perspective were reconsidered.
In a manner befitting that sense of distance or disappearance, the second part of Chikiss' seasonal cycle has only just come to light. A few days ago, she and Dubrovin published "Emerald Spring" (Vesna izumrudnaia), dedicated to all things vernal. A wordless release, the new mini-album is available for free download and comes with the equally text-free image shown at the top of this post.
On her LiveJournal page, Galia said: "I spent a long time wondering what should be on the cover. Eventually, I found myself not far from our building and a took a picture of this bush, in full May bloom. It was then I realized that this should be the artwork. Photographed not long after a rainstorm, the flowers 'look' so aromatic. Once I had added the photo to the music, the album was ready."
In this seasonal spirit, Chikiss credits herself and Dubrovin (below) with various "green noises" on Vesna izumrudnaia. She had hoped, in between the fall and spring, to pen and publish the intermediary "Winter Silver" (Zimnee serebro), "but I was too late. Winter came to an end!" The music exists, but has yet to be committed to tape.
Not wishing to "miss the springtime, too," she moved quickly ahead with the compositions included here. "Take care of this music," she asks. "This is a brief album, but it manages to transmit a wide range of feelings. Even though Aleksandr isn't actually a member of our regular group, we might go on to make some other things together, for example the summer section of the cycle. At least three sections already exist. That's probably all I have to say."
Vesna izumrudnaia consists of five instrumentals, showing the same reticence as the singer; only the briefest, faintest echoes of human voices can be heard, often as wistful sighs or whispers. The album is also marked by Chikiss' trademark "domestic" sound, in which the hum of daily activity is constantly foregrounded. Against an ambient buzz or hiss, all manner of clicks and crackling can be heard, either from the troubled mechanics inside old instruments or the shuffling of nearby individuals, back and forth.
This sense of movement and constant change is captured in the titles: "Spring Is Coming," "The First Thunderstorm," "Streamlets," "Oxygen," and "I See."
The opening track begins with the aforementioned clicking, positioned far back in the mix. It evokes a sense of depth, rather than demarcating any constant, progressive rhythm. And, in fact, the entire composition fades away almost as soon as it begins; we're clearly placed in the middle of some ongoing metamorphosis.
Track Two, offered above and opening with sounds befitting a small chapel, will already be familiar to listeners as the second, instrumental half to an earlier Chikiss number, the beautiful "Springtime Song" (Vesenniaia) that has become a classic in her discography. It, too, starts turning into hushed, sparkling silence almost 30 seconds before the track properly ends.
"Streamlets," as an evocation of thawing waters, begins with the squeak and miniature chimes of some infant's toys; this synonymy between nature and domestic nurturing is another classic theme of Chikiss. The track, just like its predecessors, tails off very early, making even more room for noiselessness in an already quiet recording.
All of these issues and techniques are mere preparation for the album's longest work (by far), the fourteen-minute "Oxygen" (below). Made of snowballing, increasingly baroque loops, it brings the springtime concerns of Vesna into a long, repetitious network that expresses both the cyclical, intuitive nature of breathing and the various patterns of growth made possible by oxygen. Bushes and babies all benefit!
Eventually reaching a choral, vaguely spiritual climax in its closing minutes, "Oxygen" then dips into the distance - prior to a brief, closing instrumental: "I See." The saddest of all the compositions, it ends a celebration of springtime with a tearful recognition of its passing. All in all, this is what Aleksandr Gorbachev recently called "resonant, overflowing, yet indistinct music." It offers a strong sense of increasing remoteness, only to surrender most of those dimensions to both reticence and reserve. The album operates within grand dimensions, yet makes no claim to them.
Since Vesna is so new, there are virtually no observations online; there are certainly no reviews at the time of writing. Nonetheless, a few comments have popped up on Galia's blog. One listener, making an early remark, was a little disconcerted by the length and repetitious structure of "Oxygen." The singer replied: "It's the main piece on the album. I deliberately didn't shorten it. It's not the kind of music you should expect anything from. You just have to get into it and not think about the passage of time..."
It evokes a sense of being somewhere, rather than any kind of advancement.
Precisely because "Emerald Spring" is designed to summon that sense of position within a natural process, pure and simple, one could argue that it would be best performed or appreciated outdoors, amid the very things it celebrates. One listener came to the same conclusion and/or realization recently, thanking Chikiss in the same breath.
"I really liked the album. Last Wednesday I was leaving a children's hospital; I was pretty depressed at the time, and it was raining, too. I went through a park, in the middle of which there was a lilac bush. There were fir trees all around... perhaps they were some other kind... the sort of trees you'd see in any park, really. The rainwater was dripping from their branches. Suddenly I realized what a beautiful bush this was, with its pink flowers. My heart was really heavy, but the world looked so beautiful, all the same. I started to feel a bit better. I've been listening to you music a lot for the last few days. It makes things better."
A discreet, tranquil sense of being comes to the fore; an calming awareness of one's position within nature's repetitious, baroque flourishing. As we slip dangerously towards romantic excess, it is worth posing a final question as to the origins of the album's title. It's a reasonably common phrase in Russian, but it does seem fixed within various translations of a poem by Heine - in which case all inclinations towards romantic hyperbole are both deliberate and justified. In English, the lines in question read: "Dazzlingly shines down upon me/ The emerald spring, the sunshine-awakened spring,/ And the white-blossomed trees are rustling;/ And the young flowers look at me,/ With their many-colored, fragrant eyes./ And there is an aroma, and a murmuring, and a breathing and a laughter."
Precisely the sounds we hear in "Emerald Spring"- and good reason to echo Chikiss' final words: "That's probably all we have to say."
That's probably all we have to say.
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