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Kotra is Dmytro Fedorenko, the founder of Ukraine's Kvitnu Records and a man whose aesthetic can be summed up in two words: "Ear Needles." That pithy, dramatic phrase appears in several of his online venues and expresses quite clearly the kind of insistent scratching or screeching that brands his experimental portraits.
The ways in which these unique noises have been described - both at home and abroad - says a lot about the public perception of Ukrainian electronica as a whole. "Ear needles" are unlikely to be an appealing notion to most people; consequently, the degree to which this complex, often confrontational music has found willing listeners will mirror the likelihood that challenging - rather than consoling - CDs might find a broader appeal. The words written in support of Kotra now show whether we can expect greater renown in the future.
In outlining some reasons for voluntarily embracing these raspy skirmishes, we should first make it clear that all the distortion, glitch, stuttering, dropout, and occasional silence in these sound files is wholly deliberate.
Fedorenko defines his daily activities as those of a "radical artist and experimental music promoter. He has [in the third person] been constructing, recording, and performing both sharp sounds and violent abstract music for the last thirteen years." Is it easy finding an audience for this kind of sonic violence? Of course not. It has a loyal following among colleagues at Kvitnu, but when the activities of Fedorenko and friends moves outdoors, into the realm of Ukrainian summer festivals, say, the authorities get nervous.
Artistic clamor starts sounding like the soundtrack to a social equivalent.
Fedorenko/Kotra runs several of Ukraine's biggest music events dedicated to electronica, one of which is the Kvitnu Fest. A couple of years ago, when the city of Lvov was approached regarding the possibility of municipal support for some live shows, things did not go well. "The city proposed that we arrange a large event with top-notch artists. We were naive enough to believe that at least one Ukrainian location could produce state support for a festival of experimental music..."
The city proposed that we arrange a large event with top-notch artists. We were naive enough to believe that at least one Ukrainian location could produce state support for a festival of experimental music...
Any romance, prior to the appearance of bureaucratic obstacles, soon turned to indecision, if not outright cynicism: "We have absolutely no idea when working with the authorities on a festival will ever be possible"
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The reasons for doubt and despair were multiple. Advertising, tech riders, and artists' travel plans all caused problems of their own. The entire event was canceled and moved back, in a rather modest, impromptu fashion, to Kiev. Fedorenko and colleagues announced: "We will never participate in any event that involves the city logo of Lvov. In fact, we will never deal with Ukrainian government agencies again."
In this same spirit of industrious contrariness, Kotra has just released a remarkable new LP with the (appropriate) name of "Revolt"; the artwork can be seen at the top of the post. Consisting of almost 50 minutes of prickly, pointed commotion, it comes with a couple of supporting sentences.
"This is a major explosion of sprightly elements from different times - in combination with various bizarre oscillations, all made possible by friendly alchemists. It's something from the past, together with something from the present. Independence in variety, light within." Deep inside this baroque phrasing is the idea that we're dealing with some form of "alchemical" production or the remaking of a timeless tumult. Put differently, within the daily grind lie "independent, varied" noises, which are full of "light" - yet still in need of transformational wizardry. Dormant, they need to be awoken.
These, in the simplest terms possible, are the sounds of potential.
The most efficient way to pull greater meaning from that same terminology is to look at how Kotra has framed his other Kvitnu tracks in the past. Together, these little paragraphs form something of a mini-manifesto.
Earlier albums published through the same organization have claimed to "clear [or erase?] errors, events, people, experience and concepts." What, though, results from that process of purging? If we polish the English a tad, what comes to the fore is Fedorenko's intention to brings a sonic "energy close to the conditions of some incipient state. The goal is to refine a process of transformation. To reset everything to 'Inner.' To set [listeners] free."
Our musician's initial desire to evoke timeless sounds is here spoken of as a pre-adult, pre-linguistic state, something initial or nascent. Amid countless commercial and long-fossilized genres, this electronic fracas is designed to shake things up and re-instigate a musical/aural potential that's long forgotten, perhaps never used.
What we hear, therefore, is the sound of growth, stumbling forward and the very embodiment of what might be.
These sounds, however, do not only reflect that shaky process of loose-limbed motion; the same audio files, in Kotra's mind, are full not only of noises that mirror evolution and becoming. They, through their wordless emphasis on "inner" or subjective stages of maturation, supposedly shape the listener's personal development, too. These ear needles are so intrusive that they have concrete, hopefully liberating effects on their audience. Such is Fedorenko's view of aural "revolt" - and good reason for the pen-pushers in Lvov to worry about a large, disorderly festival orchestrated to such an unpredictable hubbub.
These claims may sound a little grand, especially when we read Kotra's rabble-rousing assertion that he "burns speakers around the world." Such boasts, though, are not metaphorical. They are to be understood quite literally.
Take this review from a show he recently played in Washington, DC. (We're quoting the original text in English). "High-pitched to the point of absolutely devastating your eardrums, Kotra's music might hardly be considered music at all if it wasn't for how amazingly well-arranged and sonically-diverse it is. Take amusement in the fact that the works of this Ukrainian electronic artist, also known as Dmytro Fedorenko, melted three speaker parts and possibly temporarily incapacitated my digital camera (seriously; the camera operated completely fine again twenty minutes after its technological meltdown)."
Turntables glow and switchboards liquefy.
"Despite [the audience's] potential skepticism, what Kotra makes is music - cutting-edge experimental electronic that might sound like a hyperactive robot coming to life, with a mouth full of screeching metal. His music is piercing, and the insanely high-pitched sounds associated with it are probably the only reason it's kind of difficult to swallow. And frankly, one has to wonder how Fedorenko isn't just completely deaf by now, so intense are the sounds that he uses. Even I, who never wears ear plugs, was completely driven to stuff my fingers in my ears like a madwoman. For me, it was simply literally intolerable without them, but with them, Kotra's music was a perfect soundscape."
The music, as promised, "erased" any prior assumptions of what might be suitable sounds for a social location and - to everybody's surprise - remade them "perfectly."
"He put a distorted, techy face onto fairly typical song structures, creating an experimental amalgam that was noisy, sure, but still clearly recognizable as songs. There was no need to stretch the imagination to find the meaning of it all, as one might have to do with structureless noise experimentation; it was controlled chaos in a most impressive way. It simply melted the speakers as it melted my mind, and I found myself grasping onto every note - wide-eyed, intent, content."
That somewhat rambling, yet admirably enthusiastic description still might lead some individuals to dismiss Kotra's work as mere improvisational showiness. As, however, our American reviewer suggests, there is indeed a sense of something "amazingly well-arranged." The journalist's assumptions are correct: Fedorenko has a mathematical background and was once a big enthusiast of free jazz.
Suddenly we gain a little more insight into what he means when speaking of "sounds from the past." Not only is Kotra evoking, as noted, some pre-verbal - if not pre-industrial! - primitive racket; he is also using the aesthetics of (stunningly complex) "free" jazz within a tricky sociopolitical context. Surrounded by incompetent local authorities, he looks beyond the concerns of civic "management" to the bigger, better - and infinitely older - networks of nature itself.
Likewise, Soviet exponents of free jazz, knee-deep in arcane musical theory, would strive to express the intricate, forgotten, yet obvious harmonies of life and learning, of the heart and head, that had been so mismanaged by their social "representatives." The wordy, feeble displays of concord from official sources led to a search for superior alternatives beyond the dictionary. One failed harmony was replaced with the potential for another; the former was expiring, the later aspiring.
This erasure of long-winded stasis in favor of an audible, often painful coming into being is what Fedorenko has referred to as "a jazzy approach, rather than jazz itself.... It's an ability to improvise together with the [positive] weight of one's ability, knowledge, and feelings. It's probably something like a rebirth." It is not, however, a simple lapse into wordless sentiment alone: "I'm not a big fan of emotional art... I find it much more interesting to work with pure forms and impulses."
I'm not a big fan of emotional art... I find it much more interesting to work with pure forms and impulses.
As the image below suggests, reflecting Kotra's work at Kvitnu and beyond, those impulses (of new, hopeful activity) are enacted between friends and colleagues. These people, it becomes clear, are the "alchemists" to whom he refers in the PR work for the new CD. The recording contains a number of remixes from Kvitnu labelmates. By ringing endless changes upon the (potentially fossilized) sounds of existing compositions, they turn something that is into something that might be, since any piece of audio can be remodeled endlessly.
By replacing fixedness with (happy) fantasy, Fedorenko is able to find - as promised - "independence in variety and light within." That's unlikely to be an election slogan at the next Lvov elections; it promises more than any prolix legislature can deliver.
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