Ishome: Dance Music for People Who Hate Going Outside

Ishome (aka Mira Iskhome) introduces herself to the world in a unique way. She frames her music with some famous lines from a Russian story for very young readers: "Little children! Don't go walking in Africa! In Africa there are sharks, gorillas, big snakes, and crocodiles, too. They'll bite, punch, and generally offend you. Don't go walking in Africa, kids! In Africa there are robbers, villains, and the awful pirate Barmalei. He runs around Africa eating children... That nasty, evil, greedy Barmalei."

Little children! Don't go walking in Africa! In Africa there are sharks, gorillas, big snakes, and crocodiles, too. They'll bite, punch, and generally offend you. Don't go walking in Africa, kids! In Africa there are robbers, villains, and the awful pirate Barmalei. He runs around Africa eating children... That nasty, evil, greedy Barmalei.

In avoidance of such horrors, Ishome's work is based very much around a domestic context, in particular her hometown of Krasnodar in the south of Russia, where she works both as a composer and DJ of techno material. These efforts, together with occasional forays into dub techno, idm, and minimal instrumentals, are now being brought to light by the Ukrainian label Indeks Music. Ishome's debut release appeared this Spring through Indeks and goes by the name of "Princess Caraboo" (below).  Additional material can be found at Soundcloud.

Ishome has apparently been fiddling with electronic music since the age of 14, but her online presence is not designed to underscore any precocious professionalism. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her richest source of material, at least from a textual point of view, is her blog at Live Journal, full of homespun wisdom and whimsy. That latter tendency, towards fantasy, is the more pronounced. Ishome's self-presentation may contain a small number of physical locations, such as the living room and kitchen, but her imagination makes up for any geographical lack. Her flights of fancy travel far.

Take, for example, her more recent Live Journal entry. "One of my favorite figures at home, a plasticine skull by the name of Tamara, started to melt and crack from the awful stuffy heat. As a result, I was obliged to put it in the fridge. If anybody happens to pay me a visit and see the skull, don't get the wrong idea. I just felt sorry for it."

A face only a mother could love (if the child were even alive).

Other scribbles help us to visualize Ishome's general attitude to the world around her: "I woke up this morning, as usual. Not with the sun or cockerels at dawn... but at midday... I yawned, sneezed, and opened the blinds. Oops! I shouldn't have opened them... And there, on the ground, there's a gray slush. There's wet, dirty snow - on 9th March. See what I mean? I live in Krasnodar - in the south. And now we've got snow - in mid March! Today is supposed to be Disk Jockey Day - and I couldn't care less about it. I'm no DJ."  This contrariness is very well developed. Real-world locations and logic are continually sidelined in favor of bedroom daydreaming.

That mental activity is fueled with a couple of material sources: "I've lost the habit of getting up early. In fact I've lost the habit of doing anything except working with music and eating hot meals." Leaving this environment is not a happy option. "Outside there are some men discussing how such disgusting weather could possibly happen in March. The women are doing the same. On the street everything's wet and dirty. It's like one big public toilet. I soaked one of my legs when I was walking..."

Dry days meet with more approval. Less chance of crocodiles, no doubt.

These small spheres of activity are narrowed even further in Ishome's other writings - wherein she barely has the energy to do anything. "I've got nothing to write... at all. Mom is about to be released from hospital, so I'll go and pay her a final visit. I'll take a look at her broken leg and scribble at over it with felt-tip pens." After this fleeting moment of charity, Ishome lapses into an uncharacteristic period of general good will. "I love people! I also love food and music [as we know], plus my friend Masha Nikonova, who just sent me a parcel... I need to go to the post office and pick it up."

After this, we retreat into familiar territory: "There's a torchlight lying on the table in front of me. You press on the 'Open' button and it starts to open up like some kind of super-machine from the Transformers. It all happens so smoothly, confidently, and gracefully. In unpacks each and every one of its spare parts - just like a real robot. While it's all happening, you're left thinking how wonderful it all is; surely that kind of torch could light up the whole city... maybe even the entire planet!"

We're left with the sneaking suspicion that any sense of completeness will quickly pass.

And indeed, this metal representative of the outside world and its industrial potential does indeed fail to please. "What actually happens, is that the torch first unfolds, completely, like a cyborg... but then it switches on some kind of pathetic illuminated eye - that does nothing more than shed light 5cm around itself. That's just like young people today; there's no real point to what they do. You get a ton of showiness - and a tiny bit of real machinery..."

What actually happens, is that the torch first unfolds, completely, like a cyborg... but then it switches on some kind of pathetic illuminated eye - that does nothing more than shed light 5cm around itself. That's just like young people today; there's no real point to what they do. You get a ton of showiness - and a tiny bit of real machinery...

If we looking for yet more proof of why (young) people and their jungle-like world should not be trusted, we need look no further than the nearest aquarium. "There's a real horror show going in my grandmother's fish tank. There were a couple of angelfish in there - who decided to make some very pretty baby fish between them. The fish eggs were put beside the filter-tube..." Predictably enough, something would go wrong.  A catfish in the same tank ate all the eggs - "and then, at total peace with itself, it went off to its little cave - to have a rest and let the eggs work their way through his system."

Any subsequent leaning towards a gothic aesthetic would be more than understandable.

The parents tried taking feeble revenge on the catfish, "but at one point the latter he simply got tired of listening to their abuse. He struck the daddy angle fish dead. There was nowhere for him to hide the body... so he ate it, all in the hope that nobody would notice - and he wouldn't get sentenced!" As if that wasn't enough, the current state of underwater affairs is almost worse. "Nowadays, the female angel fish is all cozy in the same aquarium as that deceitful bastard of a cannibal."

Ishome's response to these sub-aquatic crime scenes? "I'm off to do some singing, just because I want to. And - what's even more interesting - I can, too!" What sounds like youthful desire is, it would seem, an increasingly grim insistence upon joy, in the face of a very nasty world outside, full of bad people and equally bad weather. The desire to leave home is minimal.

What results is dance music for agoraphobics. Big sound, big dreams, yet minimal movement.

Just in case the gorillas hear.