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Although the output of Moscow's Digital Kaos remains fundamentally within the framework of drum and bass, the project's participants are keen to emphasize a few of the finer, less common aspects of that style - and thus distinguish themselves, in several senses. Given that much of the DK catalog is attributed to a certain Archie Lunatic (above), any such nuances or changes rung upon the traditional d&b format will probably lean towards hyperbole, rather than understatement.
...music on the border between breakcore, drum & bass, and tribal
These variations on a well-known and thunderous theme are declared the result of "painstaking labor. Our efforts have involved a combination of traditional factors and newer [tangential] styles, too." The resulting sound is described as "something on the border between breakcore, drum & bass, and tribal." All in all, and with admirable brevity, the upshot of this vigorous alchemy has been christened "tribe core" - as opposed to the more logical "tribalcore."
That neologism - or faux pas - simply underscores the ensemble's validation of a deeply collective social experience. This soundscape is no effete realm of delicate, drawing-room aesthetes.
Through their rather confrontational attitude towards custom, Digital Kaos promise to "leave nobody indifferent. Our songs will get stuck in your mind and transport you to another reality."
A big promise, to be sure.
These generic games are not, oddly enough, handed over to melody. One might suspect that the easiest way to subvert or dramatically alter a drum and bass composition would be through some form of finery. A lessening of volume, perhaps. Digital Kaos, however, take another route: "We offer the kind of disorder that breaks through the orderly patterns of sequential notes and finds instead a destructive force in the drum grooves themselves."
This is the music of chaos that has passed through time...
Greater noise levels and drama are promised within a style that's already notoriously feisty. "This is the music of chaos that has passed through time - since the beginning of civilization, even! We combine it with the structures of a new, mechanized millennium." Within systemization, allegedly, lies the possibility for its very collapse. Mechanization is somehow linked to - or responsible for - chaos.
Digital Kaos, therefore, emphasize and exaggerate the existing, core elements of d&b, revealing what they see as the violent modus operandi of its "law and order." What, though, might the relationship be here between law and disorder?
In examining that question, a little context is needed. The opening track of DK's new recording dramatically highlights one way in which hidebound and state-sponsored decorum, for example, can mask (or make) some awful tendencies. Sound bites are taken from US radio broadcasts, speaking matter-of-factly of how US/Russian diplomacy of the 1960s had brought the planet to within minutes of self-annihilation on the so-called Doomsday Clock. That metaphor is employed in the cover art, shown above.
There's an implied synonymy here between excessive repetition and difference. It recalls a famous Deleuzian relationship, in that a series of terms, repeated over and over, constantly change their own (prior) contexts with that same insistence and therefore change their very meaning, too. Repetition produces variety, not sameness. This is the logic behind the "straw that broke the camel's back"; in other words an act done identically over and over - to the point where change and systemic collapse ensue.
The calm, repetitive dictates sampled here from nuclear negotiators and diplomats, therefore, do not offer the calm they blandly promise. Quite the opposite.
Our music is not merely a conflict of old and new
Digital Kaos refers to these alterations, insitigated by obsessive insistence, as risky and yet enticing: "Our music is not merely a conflict of old and new. It's something different - it's another realm in which your heart beats faster. A rush of blood to the head that causes a maelstrom of varied emotions or sensations. You can forget about your problems and just surrender to the flow..."
This, put differently, is surrender to an impending breakdown once desire has lapsed into repetitious drive. It's caused by overreaching.
At this point it's instructive to compare Digital Kaos with the breakbeat catalog of Ukrainian DJ Jet Peks (Dmitrii Grishko) from the medieval town of Uzhgorod. The last time we wrote about his output, this artist was toning down his big beats. Innovation came not from bigger, bolder uses of the canon, but instead from a growing sense of estrangement. Strict rhythmic demarcation was swapped for something much vaguer.
In those recordings, "novelty" was seen in terms of gradually accrued distortion or ambient swathes, even, lingering in the background. They made muffled orchestral loops, for example, approximate the workings of dim memory than anything designed for dancefloors; clarity was sacrificed to misty imprecision. This was "idm" in the literal sense, a contemplation of dance rhythms designed for mental, not physcial enjoyment.
What transpired was a soundtrack to growing absence. And that, in turns, begged the question: why, amid such themes, produce these materials in the first place? With no financial incentive and no apparent desire to even promote one's hard work, why compose or publish anything if productivity leads increasingly to quietness?
These modest noises were especially strange, given the full-blooded breakbeats that mark a classic Jet Peks recording. His slow passage into idm and introspection seemed very much at odds with his usual crowd-pleasing style. And indeed the new album - "Rise" - continues (once more) in that older, bolder vein.
One way in which to resolve this inconstant dalliance with self-erasure is to look at other places in Grishko's work where increased membership in social spheres (such as a clamorous dancefloor) is juxtaposed with issues of modesty (expressed as distance from anywhere crowded).
Here's an example. A recent question posed by Peks/Grishko concerned the high level of inaccuracy among doctors' diagnoses in Ukraine. Why is it that they understand the internal workings of the human body so badly? "Some people are shunted from hospital to hospital for two weeks without any kind of proper diagnosis... Tons of drugs can be prescribed, too (depending upon how much cash people have)." He then proposes an solution to this problematic view of healthcare as profit.
That answer helps us to understand his stylistic shifting, too.
Rather than give any confident definitions of how social and/or physiological forces impinge upon us, Peks turns increasingly - and quietly - to the more arcane workings of holistic medicine and even spiritual texts. His LiveJournal account, for example, is increasingly populated with advice on faith and nutrition. Implicit in his posts is the idea that an acceptance of - and dependence upon - these systems will involve acquisition to their modus operandi and therefore a (voluntarily) reduced sense of agency.
Happiness, in other words, comes from humility, either amid kindred spirits on a tub-thumping dancefloor(!) or in quieter, respectful observance of some holistic practice. In both cases, selfhood is made among and by others.
Both of these recordings, consequently, fashioned either from wall-bending d&b or the jollier forms of breakbeat, are driven by a passionate desire for social amelioration. If they do express some kind of subjective or private yearning, it - apparently - can only be realized in committed social spheres. Those spheres need to be remade, we're informed: the betterment of a common habitus should take place either far from the negative influence of ideology or be guided instead by the sage teachings of the natural world.
An image recently employed by Mr. Grishko advertises the benefits of self-effacement rather well. "Red and yellow and pink and green..."
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