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Jwush (Moscow Province): "asd" (2012)
Recent lo-fi beat- and mixtapes from the willfully anonymous figure of Jwush have toyed with issues of failure and collapse. Low-grade cassettes, wobbly samples, and stuttering rhythms all speak to the fragility of anything permanent. These instrumentals, in other words, embody DIY enterprise that's taking place on antique equipment. Everything's happening in hushed locations and maximally far from anywhere "important."
The tracks themselves, though charmingly constructed, can hardly manage the self-confidence needed to build bona fide titles. They're designated either with a single lower-case character ("a," "q," etc) or with tiny Russian words that speak of junkyard materials ("vosk" [wax] or "karton" [cardboard]). What happens, though, when today's beatmakers and young producers start penning instrumentals of moral, civic confidence? What kind of imagery will replace Jwush's broken bits and bobs?
Moscow's Moa Pillar (Fedor Pereverzev) is a young man with a growing reputation for endearingly fractured mosaics of sound, built in isolation from the pointless clamor of primetime enterprise. In a recent interview, Pereverzev spoke of how his skills have evolved piecemeal over time, as a combination of childhood whim, parental intention, and an early passion for mathematics. In transforming those vague influences into concrete designs or algorithms, Pereverzev has said he is usually struck first by a mental or visual image, which he then tries to express more overtly with a multitude of sounds, samples, and loops. Classical notation is absent.
Moa Pillar (Fedor Pereverzev)
Concepts are built from a wealth of borrowed, manipulated offcuts, frequently taken from the catalogs of others. New significance is given to old scraps. The members of Krasnodar's Modul, in loud support of this postmodernist magic, have referred to Moa Pillar as an exponent of "beat voodoo." A quiet wizardry comes slowly into view.
Beat voodoo...
What may sound like the editorial skill of an urban hipster, however, has always been colored by the romance of some absent wilderness. Hushed sounds are inspired by distant, isolated places. Since his earliest releases, Pereverzev has shown special fondness for the culture of American Native Indians. Several months ago, he published a mixtape through Guerilla, dedicated to the fate of America's Lakota tribes. He paid attention in some accompanying notes to the high child mortality rates on Lakota reservations - and the ensuing health problems among adults, too.
The representatives of nature's "timeless forces," he claimed, were being dismissed and fatally damaged by the machinations of Western culture. Superior lifestyles and inspiration were thus sought in distant years.
Moa Pillar: "About the Unskilled Worker" (2012)
This romance of fading figures is extended in some brand-new material, "About the Unskilled Worker." Its publisher speaks in positive tones of Moa Pillar's "very fresh bass music" that's free of any penchant for the so-called "lasers" of laptop technology. Instead, as we note, Pereverzev turns again to his "favorite ethnic instruments. With the help of them - and his own neon 'voodoo' -[once more!] Moa tells the timeless stories of history's ancestors and the birth of something new."
Very fresh bass music
Looping motifs, returning to erstwhile peoples, help to generate tales of novelty. The past informs, inspires, and shapes the future. But how, precisely?
Pereverzev clearly is pulling some moral substance from times gone by, and his metaphors of better ethical "structure" sometimes take architectural form. In other words, Moa Pillar's new recordings begin with the negative imagery of some "collapse within a black mine," followed by the promise of nature above ground. Those recurring themes of ascent lead us to the closing track - in which our victimized, unskilled workers are told of some future age when "mountains will rise in your hands." In between those symbols of darkness, collapse, and resurrection is a concrete reference to Dolwyddelan Tower. Where are what might that be?
Sa (Saint Petersburg): "Luna Luista" (2012)
Dolwyddelan is a Welsh castle, the remains of which date back to the 13th century - it was often used in defense against the English. In later centuries, as threats seemed to come more from overseas, Dolwyddelan fell slowly into disrepair, but it remains a romantic symbol of a small, proud nation fighting hard against the avarice of dangerous neighbors.
This use of antique, dignified structures appears elsewhere this week. New recordings have just been announced from the St. Petersburg artist known as Sa, who is publishing a collection of cracked instrumentals through the Minsk organization Foundamental - "Luna Luista." The nervous, flickering sounds on display have led Foundamental to talk of a search for stable values, as with Moa Pillar.
"On this album, Sa begins an empirical search both for himself and for his own sound. The recordings have an air both theatrical and hypnotic..." The sources of these experiments are said to be a mélange of continental European concrete, electroacoustic, and even futurist traditions.
Nonetheless, any signs of a bold, future-oriented aesthetic are countered by the damage this musician views in surrounding reality.
The recordings have an air both theatrical and hypnotic...
More specifically, he has great concern for the beautiful buildings of his hometown - and the ways in which they're mistreated. Only half of Sa's web-links lead to musical sites; the other half become invitations for us to visit St. Petersburg's architectural heritage organizations. Those sites are full of melancholy photo galleries, showing once-splendid buildings that need repair - very soon indeed. Cracked sounds emerge from the spectacle of today's ailing structures.
Some of the Saint Petersburg buildings monitored by "Living City"
Most prominent among these organizations is the charity "Living City" (Zhivoi Gorod) that "unifies people who care about Saint Petersburg and its fate." Sickly houses and palaces are proof of some moral failing in civic management; that failure continues to be a threat. "We have managed to stave off the emergence of new buildings, too: the kind that threaten the splendor of our city and quality of its residents' lives."
Particular threat has come from the proposed Okhta Tower, which would ruin the legendarily low horizon of Saint Petersburg with a skyscraper dedicated to the achievements of modern business.
Both Sa and Moa Pillar espouse a romantic view of "leveled" or horizontal equity - and view those standards in related, concrete forms, so to speak.
Somewhat surprisingly, a mere twenty-four hours after the appearance of two downtempo mini-albums from the Shufflebrain label, another has appeared. It, too, plays upon moral concerns through a series of formal or architectural metaphors. Good ideas are given solid shape. More specifically, these instrumentals come from the Belarusian town of Vitebsk, and a young man who performs under the stage-name of Raskureal.
Raskureal (Vitebsk): "Po Krugu" (2012)
That moniker would seem to be taken from the Russian verb to "light up" (a cigarette), and so a number of winding, twisting shapes are on show, all to counter the sad, linear intentions of modernity's heartless zeal.
Shufflebrain is one of several Russian netlabels that likes to accompany its publications with a small poem. That practice continues here. In English prose, the poem from Raskureal informs us that its author "floats among the sweet nectar of melodies... Moving in circles, I try to ascertain a sense of wisdom, life after life... I am not here. I am nowhere; I am but a hologram of your daydreams... There are no emotions, only peace. No ignorance, only awareness. Not passion, only calm. Not chaos, only harmony. Not death, only Strength" - written with an empathic capital letter.
Moving in circles, I try to ascertain a sense of wisdom
This karmic escapism, presumably with a little chemical assistance, comes to us from a young man who "uses his knowledge as a form of defense." Whether these musicians turn to ancient Welsh castles, the classical facades of Saint Petersburg, or even the baroque twists and turns of marijuana-tinged musings, they all hope to overcome the failings of surrounding society. Better ideas need to be built - in evident, appealing, and long-lasting forms.
The flight from social mishap begins...
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