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Not far to the north of Moscow lies the ancient town of Dmitrov, founded in the twelfth century. This relative proximity to Russia's capital, needless to say, has dragged Dmitrov in and out of political intrigue over the centuries. Graced with major monasteries approximately six hundred years ago, it would then be devastated by Polish troops, hoping to destroy any manifestations of the same faith. By chance, we spoke yesterday of Kaluga, another storied town close to Moscow: both Kaluga and Dmitrov would suffer similar damage at the hands of French and German troops over time.
Against this backdrop of imposing architecture and equally grand collapse we discover a young musician by the name of Chushi. Together with an anonymous colleague - from Yekaterinburg and known only as Flakes428 - he has published a brief, yet promising EP. Lasting just under ten minutes, it consists of eight tiny tracks - some of which run for a mere thirty seconds.
Amid a general hubbub of tape hiss, radio interference, and vinyl crackle there slowly emerges a seemingly random selection of little-known '70s soul/R&B samples. Each is quickly spliced or looped a couple of times - before falling back once more into the kind of faltering sounds that recall a sickly tape recorder.
Physical actuality suffers in the present - and precious values of the past fall silent. Love songs need a stronger medium.
That fragmented, almost kaleidoscopic aesthetic is mirrored in the artwork, too. Several illustrations have been used in which a peculiar object is shown on different-colored backgrounds. The only discernible consistency among them is that our lump of broken stone or plaster is suspended against the sky. Put differently, a broken or failed object is given some attention or dignity - as if held aloft by an archaeologist. Misshapen reality is granted brief contact with loftier realms.
Similarly, the sampled sounds on "Chushi and Flakes428" sound like forgotten soul or disco tracks that somehow made their way to Russian ears - via nighttime SW radio. Illegal snippets of MOR dance tracks became something different - and very special - to faraway listeners. Disco was always a style - because of its escapist content - that caused socialist media little concern, but nonetheless, the broken, half-heard signal of a foreign radio station was still rich in romance.
In fact, in today's digital contexts where temporal and geographic limits are erased by worldwide media accessibility, the magic of a long-sought, barely-heard snippet is greater still. At least those disco songs, fading in and out of range, spoke of a concrete place. Reverie was focused on sunny beaches and swaying palms. The ethnic and social genesis of disco in the US - its political clout - was transformed into a carefree soundtrack for aimless daydreams.
This is a form of musical, sometimes maudlin travel that's expressed in even grander terms by new recordings from St Petersburg's Astronaft. A member of several hip-hop projects in the city, such as D.U.F and JahDust, he has now released a solo album with the help of the excellent and able Pavel Dovgal: "Redshift."
That scientific term, as some of us may recall from physics lessons, refers to a visual effect caused by celestial objects as they move away from our vision on Earth. The result is a striking impression of growing redness across a planet's surface. The term "redshift," on a figurative level, therefore equates growing spectacle with increasing distance. Magic and ongoing motion work hand in hand - especially if we again attribute that color range to Russia's space race of the past.
Revolutionary potential - colored scarlet - thus realizes itself at a maximum distance from home. The biggest and best romantics show their mettle with an endless, outward trajectory. A "fragment" of society moves onwards - in the name of the whole.
Astronaft's downtempo compositions, tagged by their author as "space hip-hop," play a similar game to Chushi and Flakes428. The antique, cheesy synth-chords of Brezhnevian sci-fi now (or still!) show the importance of fantasy in an age of material torpor. Many of the sounds on display here will be associated by Russian listeners with late-'70s cartoons and "cosmic" feature films that arose in response to social stagnation. As civic improvement looked unlikely in those decades, the escapist and markedly spacey noises of otherworldly storytelling took over.
In fact, the cosmic themes of disco worldwide - full of glitter, starlight, and moondust - only strengthened the appeal of nighttime fantasy for earthbound, disenchanted dreamers. Sequined jump- and spacesuits were everywhere. Below we see Astronaft (center) working with some Russian schoolchildren to make sure they nurture the same sounds of hope.
It's a style that already meets with approval from older listeners. A brief wander through various comments, conversations, and chat-room quips gives us ample evidence. One fan, following a string of happy expletives and exclamation marks, tells Astronaft: "If you can keep going like this, the public will tear you to bits!" (In a good way.)
Another admirer wonders which software Astronaft used in his earliest experiments - and how much he paid for his Polivox synth. This is an old Soviet instrument developed in the late 1970s to help Russian musicians match the skills - and intergalactic aesthetic - of Western disco or late prog rock. Our musician responds to the question by saying he started with Fruity Loops and paid 7,000 rubles for the Polivox - equivalent to maybe $250. The tools of his grand imagination have been cheap indeed: from the smallest, most unimpressive origins come the tales - and harmonies - of entire planets moving apart...
That wide purview leads us to some equally recent instrumental hip-hop from Naive Diver, aka Alexander Perkov. Once a resident of distant Kurgan, near the border with Kazakhstan, he now lives in St Petersburg, too. His compositional efforts have been carefully buffed and polished since 2001 - and today reach a similar conclusion to the raison d'etre of Astronaft's catalog.
Perkov's description of his new music attributes dreams, fantasy, and fairytale potentials to a reasonably mundane situation. Earthbound tedium and tribulation have led to a vivid imagination, constantly yearning for somewhere else.
"The inspiration for this music started around the time I met... her. There were arguments and break-ups. It all found its way into the music. My hands transformed all of our words, feelings, and emotions into sonic images... I don't even remember writing those tracks that came to me in the most emotional moments. Recently I've started wondering whether I'm even mentally fit. All sorts of f***ing nonsense gets into my head..."
The sounds of other worlds
He even suggests it might be worth visiting a mental hospital, not only in order to get well, but also to record "the sounds of other worlds." Mental and literal travels - across the map - become one and the same. In a social realm where physical movement is limited, flights of fancy are priceless.
The results of combining illusions and illness, he says, would "not be anything in a noise-driven or ambient style [as we might expect], but instead the sort of sound that'd chill your heart." The need for social connection(s) - for stable, long-term relationships - has grown to the point where they seem as elusive as interplanetary flight. The yellowed hue of our musician's photos likewise implies a slow retreat into the kind of melancholy that this music is designed to escape.
The sampled songs of '70 romance we hear from Chushi and Flakes428 stumble amid the crackle and creaking of physical demise; Naive Diver's recordings express similar worries about the stability of his immediate surroundings. And that anxiety brings us to his stage name.
If we look at the second small text appended by Mr. Perkov to his new material, his moniker begins to make sense. Translated into English, the text reads: "It's so great to make friends. It makes your heart sing; everything seems peaceful when that happens. Music merges with your life - and sends you in the right direction. [In those moments] I feel as if everything becomes more profound - and I join a single 'flow' of some sort. After all, we're all one and the same; we're all one family..."
This is a degree of "naive" immersion in a social domain made conceivable - maybe possible - by the music. Perkov even equates that transition from nervous actuality to trusting, distant realms with a religious sensation of liberty.
I close my eyes and plunge into the world with childlike naivety
As a result, the objects of his faith and fantasy are sought with great (if not grim) effort. His key to an emotional, naive view of the world - perhaps the universe! - lies through a single connection to a single girl. And, as we hear, that connection has failed. There's a good reason, it seems, why these romantic, stubbornly hopeful recordings are nonetheless downtempo in form.
As Perkov concludes: "I close my eyes and plunge into the surrounding world with childlike naivety." The world, as we already sense, may not respond in kind. And so, in anticipation of a longterm struggle with suffocating tedium, he declares: "Love and peace are my oxygen tanks in a sea of emotion."
One of the snapshots saved online by this musician shows us that the hope for love - and other "distant planets" - endures amid the rubble of quotidian trivia. Come what may.
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