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A few months ago, the Petrozavodsk sound artist Aleksandr Velikosel'skii published some material that had originally been the soundtrack to a short French film. More specifically, the Marseille choreographer Sabine de Vivies had used Velikosel'skii's music in an elegant interface of dance and digital visuals with the title of "Under." The film can currently be seen at Vimeo.
Translating the raison d'etre of her movie into verbal form, de Vivies drew heavily upon the metaphor of water - and concomitant issues of fluidity or freedom. Underneath our feet, in other words, lie priceless networks of which we're painfully unaware.
Water constantly alternates in the contexts of drought, rain drops, storms, rivers, lakes, fountains, ice, and steam...
"The film 'Under' is a show for all ages..." Already in that opening phrase there's a promising ambiguity, making it unclear whether de Vivies wishes her film to have broad appeal (now) or enduring relevance (subsequently). Either option remains valid as her text continues: "The film suggests a need to return to the roots and magic of water. In all of its forms, water constantly alternates in the contexts of drought, raindrops, storms, rivers, lakes, fountains, ice, and steam... All of them are alive with surprises."
Nature's patterns remain a mystery - and are therefore full of possibility.
The flow of liquid through these quiet metamorphoses is then linked to de Vivies' choreography as she speaks of water's "dancing journey. It's a return to the source - from chaotic to crystal forms."
This idea that water - through its baroque movement - has a unifying social value is echoed in Velikosel'skii's own catalog. Performing on most occasions behind the moniker of Cycle Hiccups, he is also busy with a sideproject called Peresheek. It involves Cycle Hiccups and the lo-fi ambient textures of Bedroom Bear (aka Sergei Dmitriev in St Petersburg). Peresheek promotes itself in ways that invoke the endless Russian forest just as de Vivies does water.
Our space is forest
The two Russian musicians say of their collaboration: "We exist in different landscapes or spaces and sometimes we share them. Our space is forest." That first-person plurality can only be realized far away from urban centers.
In fact, away from all notions of centrality - in the general direction of burgeoning greenness.
In a huge industrial nation, suffering endlessly from faulty infrastructures, the one constant, self-generating network is pre-industrial, if not older. Ambient textures hope to evoke and/or advocate the ecologically balanced systems of amorphous fluidity and a directionless taiga.
Going nowhere is a good idea after decades of goal-driven fanaticism.
Music's claim to these natural, unpeopled spaces appears elsewhere this week. Specifically, these same ideas have popped up in Riga, where Latvian artist Kriipis Tulo has been working in sound design and ambient textures since the mid-90s; at that time he left a flourishing dance-punk scene and moved into quieter electroacoustic genres. Thanks to prior collaborations with the Latvian National Library, Tulo has striven to express both solid forms (i.e., architecture) and movement through solidity (such as swimming) in audible patterns.
A similar ebb and flow is recalled in his newest graphic output. Wrinkles and ripples predominate.
His album "Audiot," produced together with fellow townsman Space Contour, comes from the Moldovan netlabel Silent Flow. It is based upon a live improvisation, recorded in a Riga bomb-shelter that was used in the 1990s for some of the earliest post-Soviet raves. Those shelters, as in other towns around the ex-USSR, were employed for grand, disorderly expressions of democratic affect.
Social aspirations were enacted to the sounds of music, at least until local gangs insisted that such functions be monetized ASAP.
...the soundtrack to an empire's dissolution
Tulo and Space Contour liken these ambient tracks to another joint recording of 2010 called "Trip in the Mushroom Forest" (below). The same imagery of directionless forest reappears here, albeit with a little chemical assistance. In any case, Western observers soon referred to the recording as the "soundtrack to an empire's dissolution." Beyond obsessive linear "progress" lay the promise of directionless networks, taking their cue from nature.
Or that, at least, was the plan.
Because that romantic aim remains frustrated to this day, it's interesting to note that "Audiot" was actually recorded in 2002. It revisits the spirit of the early '90s, is committed to tape in 2002, and published in 2011. The ideals remain the same; they also remain unrealized. "Audiot" expresses the same desire for an ecological habitus that we see from Cycle Hiccups and Sabine de Vivies. It remains both cherished and sadly unfinished.
One Tulo quote (used on FFM before) outlines this constant looking - or longing gaze - towards the biosphere: "We try to listen to the world around us; we try to listen closely. That world is really alive! It's 100,000 times more interesting than most of the electronic stuff today with all its super programming, software, digital signal processing, etc."
We try to listen to the world around us; we try to listen closely
An extension of these linkages between audible harmony and ostensible ecology is noticeable in brand new work from the Moscow solo project M.F.N., operating through Datenbits. Those three initials stand for "Music from Nowhere" and are emblazoned on the cover to the February 2011 recording "Frequency."
It appears with the following text in Russian: "When the time finally comes for mankind to leave the Earth, people will fly aboard a space shuttle to [the dwarf star] Proxima Centauri. Passing by Beta Centauri en route, they may well hear these [musical] motifs. In fact, those motifs may already be audible there! But if that's the case, then a question arises. How could a Moscow musician called Oskar get amplitudes to work so far away - in outer space?"
Passing by Beta Centauri, people may well hear these musical motifs
The instrumentals on display, with an element of humor, are even said to "outstrip time. When mankind's exodus takes place, people will recognize these sounds, high above the atmosphere... We can only hope that when it all happens, the shuttle's control panel will have a 'Record' button... since it might even save mankind!.."
A natural, even "cosmic" harmony is supposedly audible in deepest space. Velikosel'skii gets a foretaste of that bone-chilling vacuum in the Far North. The difference is minimal.
According to the logic of this semi-serious narrative, mankind once knew such sounds - and they operated as a guarantor of wellbeing, too. In order to "save itself," people must now find them once more.
The soundtrack to a better, kinder social network is an ideal that informs all of these recordings. Or, more accurately, there's a romantic assumption that such perfection exists somewhere. A search for civic consonance began for these artists on the dancefloors of the 1990s. Abandoned warehouses and bomb-shelters hoped to amplify the muted, yet timeless polyphony of open waterways and forests, winding their way across an endless landscape.
As earthbound experience continues to fall short, though, hopes turn to outer space (for the hardcore or desperate dreamers).
Sabine de Vivies, rather than look to the stars, assumes that the natural melodies of social betterment can be found "under" us. The artwork below, chosen by Aleksandr Velikosel'skii, also implies that the ecological patterns at work beneath our feet are worthy of admiration, if not more. The most pressing issue, therefore, is to shut up and listen.
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