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The initials SLP refer to the figure of Alexey Slepuha, who lives in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar. That location has, over the last few years, proven to be one of the nation's most important centers for electronic music. Nonetheless, despite any temptation to champion the achievements of his hometown, Slepuha and his music continue to be swathed in abstract, even astral metaphors. Reverie is directed far beyond the city limits.
As we mentioned during our last visit to SLP's discography, his recent recordings have been framed by celebratory discussions of the Triola project or, more specifically, the figure of Jorg Burger. This nod in the direction of Cologne minimalism has then been extended to praise for Pass into Silence, i.e., the Japanese producer Tetsuo Sakae and video artist Mayuchi. Following that Asian impulse, SLP's music, synthesizing these points of reference, declares its intention to evoke "sound-spheres of unfathomed purity."
Less is more or, as the Russian saying has it: "Move quieter, go further."
Sound-spheres of unfathomed purity
In other words, minimal structures, through their overt use of nothing, are better suited to conjure themes of distant, even barren places. All of which are more appealing than the noisy maximalism of local enterprise. The nocturnal streets of Krasnodar evidently hold more charm than any commercial, daytime brouhaha under the southern sun. As we'll see, this relationship between sound and silence will continue to be important, as will the related disjuncture between speech and any longed-for location. The most cherished places will prove themselves hard to define.
Alexey Slepuha, aka SLP (Krasnodar)
How, though, does Slepuha go about constructing stories from sounds? Once his "pure" or essentially minimalist building-blocks have been chosen, SLP looks with admiration towards German composer Klaus Schulze for constructive principles. In other words, he looks for ways in which to turn a growing paradigm into something resembling syntagmatic development or narrative progress. Here, in the catalog of Schulze, classic electronica is combined with elements of jazz, rock, and other incongruous styles (or human noises, even), to the point where Schulze is sometimes referred to as the "godfather of [layered, lavish] trance"!
As these structures grow in size and their references spiral outwards, from minimalism to rich psytrance, some of SLP's Dutch colleagues at Sound Source have also spoken (in semi-serious tones) of our musician's centrifugal narratives. They describe how his compositions increasingly touch upon isolated ideals, far from home. "SLP is a space traveller from Krasnodar who's involved in making dubby tech-electronica... Using those same dub vibes and broken grooves, he then adds some profound ambient material."
Dub vibes and broken grooves
The resonant echo of dub speaks, as ever, to an appealing, absent emptiness. As do the three new tracks just released by SLP and entitled - suitably enough - "Open Flow." They can all be found at Bandcamp and Soundcloud, where our musician continues to employ that same Dutch text as a mission statement. "Somewhere," therefore, "between dub techno, deep house, ambient and glitchy electronica" the romance of Krasnodar's self-declared "space traveller" finds an appropriate register.
That cosmic turn of phrase, born of some ineffable idealism, leads us to Moscow's Stoned Boys. Standing behind this ramshackle endeavor are two suitably young men, Evgenii Gorbunov and his colleague known as Inspector Lee. Although Gorbunov is keen to draw a line between the Stoned Boys and his core outfit Narkotiki, a general air of drug-addled dopiness remains. Previous interviews with the duo have included quotes such as the following: "I tried acid once... just that one time. I'd like to try it again, but - over the last two years - I've just not been able to get my hands on any." Or, elsewhere: "The coolest mushroom trip I ever had was in Amsterdam..."
Previous recordings had wandered back and forth between incongruous influences such as witch house and early Genesis albums. Those patchwork enthusiasms had, until recently, also led Gorbunov and Lee to question whether they'd ever be able to muster sufficient fidelity to a single, album-length concept. Could they, in other words, tell a story over thirty minutes? "We'd like to get an album out, but we've no idea what will actually influence us on the way. Maybe we won't make any albums..."
Religious rave?
Those doubts, thankfully, have been cast aside, since Stoned Boys today published an album in Moscow called "Dangerous Skies." According to some materials uploaded at Look at Me, the band had trouble deciding upon a suitable generic tag for the new works. One of the options, seemingly, was "religious rave." Zhenya Gorbunov has provided a little more context:
Stoned Boys (Zhenya Gorbunov [left] and "Inspector Lee")
"'Dangerous Skies' is an album with a narrative, even if it's pretty surreal and has no pretense towards any moralizing. The story here is kinda like a strange dream or some nighttime fairy tale... inflated to the scale of prog rock! We've never done anything like this before, but I always wanted to - in fact ever since I was a kid. I've always liked it when music tells a story. It's a fine old tradition [in songwriting] that reappears from time to time. It doesn't really matter what kind of story we're talking about, either..."
The story is kinda like a strange dream or some nighttime fairy tale...
Just like SLP, Gorbunov views compositional success in terms of metaphorical travel. His achievements grow in terms of narrative ground that's covered - in various senses. As an album's story or concept unfolds, "you [as author or reader] travel across various landscapes and witness all kinds of events. I won't be surprised if somebody says we've produced a prog album!" The CD's artwork certainly harks back to the boyish, naive Russian sci-fi of the 1980s.
There are, however, some other forms of audible romance this week that strive neither towards future fantasy nor the mythical past, even. One such example would be the remarkable musician Sergei Galunenko, who performs under the abbreviated stage-name Galun. Originally from the town of Kubinka, maybe forty miles west of Moscow, Galun has developed an impressive CV, primarily by collaborating with a wide range of Russian ensembles. These have included Monokle, Pakava It', Elochnye Igrushki, and others.
Stoned Boys: "Dangerous Skies" (2011)
Galunenko currently has a super new album on display, produced by Moremoney's Ivan Kalashnikov and published by FUSELab, which brings us back once more to Krasnodar.
As the staff at FUSELab point out, the Galun recording - as most of his work - is made completely with his voice. "This could easily be described as abstract beatbox or something similar, but everything is taken a lot further thanks to Galun's sonic ability. You'll find elements of ambient, glo-fi, beats, boogie... but the most important thing is that everything has a natural origin. This music is made with one man's tongue, his teeth, and everything you'd find in your own mouth!"
This music is made with one man's tongue, his teeth, and everything you'd find in your own mouth!
In various interviews Galun has said that his DIY music began in the 1990s, just before the explosion of home-based recording tools and laptop software, as a result of which he started to compose in the simplest, cheapest, and most portable manner possible. When writing those earliest numbers, he apparently had never even heard of beatbox. Likewise, he has been very keen to divorce his instrumentals (if that term is appropriate) from US hip-hop traditions, preferring instead to namecheck influences such as Boards of Canada. These, in other words, are no hip-hop celebrations of an urban district or zip-code: their object of desire, as with SLP and Stoned Boys, lies far away.
Beyond the range of city lights.
Galun (Sergei Galunenko, Moscow)
When asked by the Russian press to define the raison d'etre of his work and its relationship to concrete lyrics or overt storytelling, both of which are absent, Galun admits his passion for the catalog of Leonid Fedorov and Auktsyon, grounded in the traditions of 1920s' absurdist verse. That widely respected ensemble and its almost legendary frontman are both tied to a form of homespun linguistic expression that operates on the very edge of logic.
What, therefore, are the values towards which these and other tracks by Galun strive? If he views his wordless craft as the evocation of some distant, rural domain (a la Boards of Canada), then what exactly do those quiet, faraway places represent? Instead of SLP's science fiction or Stoned Boys' mythical past, Galun simply lists some benchmarks rarely attained by modern music - or its audience. They exist in the real world, but are almost never encountered. He speaks in praise of "Love, morality, truth, decent behavior... and the traditions of one's own people."
Love, morality, truth, decent behavior...
The simplest musical tool of all (one man's busy mouth) continues to work in celebration - and in search - of some very elusive notions. Sergei Galunenko's oral acrobatics are conducted in the name of values that would serve any storyteller well. The problem, however, is that they remain frustratingly abstract and absent: they are best conjured, perhaps, with fantasy and beautiful absurdisms. These musicians all position life's "better" stories in distant domains: outer space, the countryside, childhood, one's imagination, and so forth.
All of which keep slipping out of view.
Galun: "Meltwith Myvoice" ([sic] 2011. Artwork by Vika Prokopaviciute)
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