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Revoltmeter single (with EU and SBPCh, 2011)
Revoltmeter is/are a very young duo from Moscow or, more specifically, from the capital's periphery. These musicians identify themselves only as Sergei and Andrei; were it not for their willingness to at least namecheck a prior project, the amount of background information here would essentially be zero. Thankfully, though, we're told that both men used to be in Adler, a band celebrated in the earliest days of FFM.
That single fact allows us to give these musicians surnames, and so we have before us Sergei Kiselev and Andrei Orlov. Together they have just released a witty single with St. Petersburg's Elochnye Igrushki and SBPCh.
Despite that sense of continuity from an erstwhile band, though, Revoltmeter are a very different endeavor to Adler (who took their name from an airport close to Sochi). Adler's songs in the past had been likened by the Russian press to the early albums of Beck, Morrissey's solo work, and - perhaps most intriguingly - Roxy Music before Eno's departure. Those connections were invited, on the whole, by Adler's commitment to classic songwriting, grounded in a fine knowledge of English. On one occasion, the duo had promised "Proper songs. Just songs. Nothing but songs."
Revoltmeter recording home-based vocals, 2011
The 2011 collaboration with Elochnye Igrushki and SBPCh moves Revoltmeter to another "periphery," in that irony and kitschy wit take the place of serious, even conservative craftsmanship. In some of their other, kindred recordings as Revoltmeter, Kiselev and Orlov have manipulated and subverted examples of Soviet folk rock with a dry sense of humor.
Likewise, the artwork for their new single - shown above - draws upon some almost timeless aspects of Soviet transport and provincial architecture found on the periphery of many Russian cities, even today. After all, modishness often fades where cities end and asphalt becomes grass. Although Revoltmeter tag their output as "epic electronica," we shouldn't take them too seriously. They're teetering on the edge of seriousness.
Epic electronica...
The one other piece of relevant information offered by these young men is the name and location of their hometowns. "Sergei was born in the Moscow neighborhood where Kapitsa, Landau, and Theremin all lived and worked. Andrey was born in Chernogolovka, a suburban ‘science town,’ where the rocket fuel for ballistic SS-20 missiles was developed." The physicists and inventors listed in that first sentence suggest we're dealing with the Moscow suburb of Dolgoprudnyi, home to the Institute of Physics and Technology. Both locations flourished parallel to the boom in Soviet science from the 1950s onwards, yet despite twenty years of post-Soviet democracy, a romantic air of "stately" secrecy endures.
Some of the research conducted in those two towns is directly referenced by Revoltmeter, especially the low-temperature physics for which Kapitsa won the Nobel Prize. There are also some occasional nods in the direction of Yuri Gagarin. These may be instrumentals that celebrate something "epic," but it lies in the distant past.
Just as Gagarin's name was used in the early 1990s to brand some post-Soviet raves, so Revoltmeter make that same connection between "dreamy" sound and outer space: “We both grew up in the shadow of research labs - quite literally. We have an immense respect for science. Unlike any religion, science actually touches God - and so does music. Every party is a liturgy and our aim is to add power to the ritual."
We both grew up in the shadow of research labs - quite literally
Once again, this is a little tongue-in-cheek, especially when the the performers combine talk of Soviet grandeur with a quote from the grammatically idiosyncratic Genesis P-Orridge: "The interconnecting of two minds will produce as its sum a 'third mind' that, by avoiding singular, individuated solo strategies and agendas, preconceptions and blind-spots, is far greater in total (and more relevant in effect) in our era than any solitary brain can achieve, no matter how visionary."
On a more serious note, that appeal of "connectivity" can be understood in professional, emotional, intellectual, or even political terms, given recent events in Russia. In fact, Kiselev and Orlov just posted a telling comment on Facebook: "The reading on our Revoltmeter today is 8/10. Anger is an energy. Let's use it to create an alternative."
Man Gillian: Eponymous debut, 2011
A similar process is at work with another retiring duo, Man Gillian. Were one to look through the Russian press in search of some context, the following remark would pop up. "Absolutely nothing is known about the Moscow duo Man Gillian, save the fact they like M83. It also sounds like they wouldn't turn their nose up at Air's catalog, either. In fact, their debut recordings are a real homage to the light, almost floating electronica of those same French groups from the 2000s."
Absolutely nothing is known about the Moscow duo Man Gillian
Simultaneously promoting and hiding themselves, Man Gillian turn to the grand - and unrealizable - scale of social "connectivity" we see from Revoltmeter, operating in between yearning and fantasy. The debut recordings from MG come to us, for example, with a single sentence: "We hope you’ll find something of your own [in our compositions]: we hope you'll find a missing piece of your life’s puzzle." The realm in which that "missing piece" might be discovered is implied by a video for one of MG's tracks: "Stars." The video is a time-lapse sequence of our entire planet, shot from space...
Both Man Gillian and Revoltmeter use cosmic metaphors of completion or "wholeness." They do so, however, with slight irony - or in complete silence - knowing that any talk of sweeping, harmonious inclusion is fundamentally useless. Nature achieves what human society cannot: in other words, it functions - and does so with impressive, even daunting silence. There's little point in discussing noiseless diligence.
Mikrokristal (Vilnius): "526" (2011)
This greater level of faith in silent nature also comes to the forefront of new recordings from Mikrokristal, who is currently connected to the Lithuanian dub-tech/ambient netlabel Dumblys. In the past we've looked at Mikrokristal's professional links to another Lithuanian outlet, Cold Tear. Just as Revoltmeter, so Mikrokristal gives us no more than a Christian name - Adomas. Shying away from any additional personal or geographic specificity - since he also hides his address - this musician has used a recent web-chat to admit a constant striving towards "beat-less soundscape paintings." Activity is more important than identity.
Beat-less soundscape paintings
Only across similarly ambient swathes, free of rhythmic markers, is Mikrokristal able to entertain romantic notions such as true "self-expression or the flight of one's soul," as he puts it. What sounds to us, perhaps, like borderline pathos is in fact designed by this composer as defense against the mainstream's "disharmonious and destructive music" encountered each day - by most people.
Put differently, primetime musical fashions, often grounded in sexual or violent desire, are potentially countered by a "flight" from that "location," be it a fixed style, singular body, or zealously guarded domain. Self-expression, if it hopes to escape any such posturing, is a process of constant departure - away from avarice, arrogance and other greedy relations to actuality. Stating one's location on the edge of Moscow is a first and happy step in that direction. Peripheries, we're told, have access to what lies "outside" or "beyond." In the world's biggest country, that's a lot... Revoltmeter associate the edge of Moscow with groundbreaking, iconoclastic research - and space travel. Man Gillian take the same metaphors of (self-)realization and develop them with more references to silent, centrifugal passage, away from the noisy status quo.
In a word, discovery involves departure. Living on the edge of urban custom is a good start: it allows for a longer, loftier vista.
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