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Yesterday a new recording appeared from Moscow musician NVG, producing a discernible buzz across Russian social networks - for at least two reasons. The compositions had emerged courtesy of Hyperboloid Records, run by the capital's dancefloor heavyweights Dmitry Garin and Alexey Devyanin (aka Pixelord). The second reason, in stark contrast to that label's chic profile, was the dearth of information surrounding NVG. Hyperboloid is evidently fashionable, yet the performer has - thus far - been virtually anonymous. Over the last few days, members of the public have therefore tried to bridge that information gap with guesswork, rumors, and memory.
With a little effort, it's possible to discover that NVG's real name is Nikolay Golutvin. This small revelation then invites the assumption that we're perhaps dealing with the same Nikolay Golutvin who played an important role in Moscow's trance scene a few years ago, using the monikers Furious, Delirious Noon, and Crazy Astronaut. A handful of modest promotional texts, scattered around the Russian web, would indeed suggest that these two individuals are one and the same. Perhaps.
I'm really excited about this release!
Nonetheless, as various facts and figures slowly fall into place, levels of enthusiasm begin to overshadow any historical inquisitiveness. Audiences start losing interest in the past and focus instead upon the future. One of the comments currently visible on NVG's Soundcloud page declares: "F**k yeah! I'm really excited about this release! Please don't stop making awesome music..."
The mists of time are therefore left untouched.
This futurist zeal, endlessly rushing onwards, goes beyond any sci-fi stage-names or fanboy love for dusty computer games, so clearly embedded in the work of Pixelord. It has also been imprinted in the very DNA of Hyperboloid Records, in other words since the project's formation. When we reported on the label's early efforts in 2010, one of the house ensembles - Acid Mafia - described the romance of forward-looking, unpredictable creativity.
At that time we were told: "Acid Mafia is a striking and remarkable ensemble consisting of Dmitry Garin on 'electronic devices,' Sergei Frolov on saxophone, and Mitya Vikhornov on keyboards. Every one of their shows is different, because all kinds of guest artists join Acid Mafia on stage. Ultra-modern technology, almost antique drum machines, and other unconventional or non-musical objects all combine on an equal footing in order to produce the sounds of Acid Mafia. If any one term would suffice to describe this wild musical experience, it would be ‘braindance’, thanks to Aphex Twin."
Ultra-modern technology, almost antique drum machines, and other unconventional or non-musical objects all combine...
Suitably enough, in the spirit of Hyperboloid's name, the rhetoric grew even more frantic: “Acid Mafia are the spiritual avant-garde of music that delivers a cryptic message from beyond consciousness itself! Every gig is both a sacred ritual and lots of fun at the same time! Introduce yourself to the extreme musical powers of Acid Mafia - straight outta Moscow!”
The message was delivered loud and clear.
And what of that name itself, Hyperboloid? In mathematical terms, it refers to a surface that develops across several dimensions simultaneously - which we see celebrated in the label's logo at the top of this page. The lacework or meshed surface of that same logo then invokes the famous "Shabolovka" tower in Moscow, built according to hyperboloid principles, section upon section. Commissioned by Lenin in the 1920s, it represented the romance of a new society - together with hopes for the kind of charitable, social "networking" blocked by class divisions in Czarist Russia. Today, however, it lies in disrepair and at the mercy of various architectural charities.
Hyperboloid, with their name and branding, look back to decades when social optimism was broadcast far and wide, as shown in the Soviet stamp above. Just as the Shabolovka tower had represented lofty or hopeful forms of inclusion across classes, so several of the musicians' biographies straddle various generic constraints. NVG, if rumors are to be believed, has moved in recent years from Goa trance to what he now calls "ambient, bass, and [- once again- ] braindance" styles. The distance covered is considerable.
Ambient, bass, and braindance
Traveling further still, Vikhornov's catalog includes earlier experiments with art- and jazz-rock ensembles. Hence his mini-manifesto on one web venue, declaring the "difficulty of staying with the limits of any one format. Every style of music has its own charm." Over and above generic propriety, therefore, we hear the conviction that "emotion matters most in music." A commitment to endlessly desirous, future enterprise becomes the sine qua non of realizable romance. It's a sober, yet enticing view of social promise - on dancefloors and/or town squares.
Inspired in the past by lo-fi games such as "Battletoads and Double Dragon," Mr. Devyanin developed an early love for retro-synths, full of tinny arpeggios and a heady, if not boyishly heroic view of the future. That antique reverie, so to speak, still reflects itself in other forms at Hyperboloid. Take, for example, the label's packaging philosophy: several recent releases have appeared not only in digital formats, but also on vinyl, together with color prints, old-school stickers, and even as limited edition cassettes.
Cheap, throwaway platforms of the past are held in high regard, as shown above.
A related love of that past - when civic romance was still valid - is something we've noticed before within the catalog of another Hyperboloid artist, Albert Damscray. He is based in the city of Orenburg, roughly 1,500km from the Russian capital - and very close to the border with Kazakhstan. The city first arose in the 18th century as Russia strode boldly towards Central Asia during a period of imperial expansion. Hopes were high for the future (even if southern neighbors viewed matters somewhat differently.)
Here, and perhaps for that reason, the appeal of old equipment is greater whenever one's thoughts turn to future enterprise. If, in other words, everyday tedium lacks (dizzying) promise, then one might at least lean upon tools from a bigger, brighter past. Listen, for example, to the way that Damscray speaks about his own instrumentation.
"We've only got a load of old cr*p equipment, including a couple of laptops, two B-Stock turntables, and a few toys like midi-controllers, samplers... even a cute vintage Casio synthesizer. Oh, we also we have a mixer that looks like a Soviet nuclear bunker. It’s a bit creepy. We call it 'Stalin.'"
We've only got a load of old cr*p equipment...
Big ideas can grow from these tiny tools. Growing too big, however, can clearly be a problem - hence the irony employed in considering the politics or timeframe when social romance collapsed. Such as the years after Shabolovka's launch - and Lenin's death. Damscray's colleague in the side-project Demokracy, Stanislav Hmot, has previously used a picture of Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky as his Facebook avatar - a man who killed himself in 1930 when the Soviet machine became precisely that: both leaden and disconcertingly dangerous. When it became inhumanly grand.
The predominance of "cr*p equipment" helps. It guarantees hard work - and is therefore a test of commitment. It likewise assures a healthy distance from unwise grandeur. Arrogance has a bad reputation, historically speaking.
And so Hyperboloid's admirers look forward - with modest hopes, yet much enthusiasm. Here, by way of example, are some of the comments already logged around the NVG release: "Amazing. I want more. Cheers mate!"; "Congratulations! I'm [already] downloading!" Other individuals, extremely keen to both download and enjoy the recordings, completely forget to type correctly in the present. Levels of zeal do damage to one's spelling once the braindance begins: "Sooo good ep. this is amaizing. you are suprise me evrytimeee dudeee."
Perhaps the most telling viewpoint, though, has transpired among some comments sent from Portugal (again with dubious syntax and spelling): "Like I've been saying to you for a whille - this is completely 'Future Music.'"
Amazing. I want more!
Inspired by a figure of Soviet architecture - itself a grand, democratic metaphor above the Moscow skyline - the staff at Hyperboloid Records continue to buff and polish a select range of recordings directed towards a promising tomorrow. Using the symbolism of local buildings, hometown history, Soviet media formats, and the joyful twitter of '90s computer games in order to reference prior decades, they craft complex instrumentals that are loudly deemed "future music" by their audience.
History - or the hope thereof - is looped one more time. And nothing says "future zeal" more than overexposure, smiling faces, and an entire range of vivid colors.
Left to right: Pixelord, Dmitry Garin, and Vikhornov.
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