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Semyon Korenkovich, aka Sö (Kaluga)
In March of this year, we looked at the electroacoustic work of Semyon Korenkovich, who performs as Sö in the city of Kaluga, maybe halfway between Moscow and the Belarus border. At that time, he had only a single EP available. His minuscule discography has, thankfully, now grown with much more material being published this month for free downloading. It is all housed at his usual address, designated as "Go4Walk." That peripatetic imagery will be important elsewhere.
Another enduring aspect of Korenkovich's activity is that his page on Vkontakte, just as before, remains full of equally directionless enterprise or small-scale mobility: he remains busy borrowing instruments (and then giving them back!), promising to be less lazy, or merely expressing gratitude for his surroundings. Big plans are nowhere to be seen.
In fact Mr. Korenkovich declares his worldview to be: "Do what you should... and que sera, sera." He jokingly attributes the copyright of that phrase to "Lots of People." Private dignity is lauded by many, but practiced by few. Better to leave the stentorian, gaudy spheres of big business or public conflict behind and instead enter a realm of hushed, humble activity - to the sounds of an acoustic guitar and some ambient swathes.
Recently Korenkovich left a note on one webpage: "I just cycled through a pitch-black forest at night. There were no street lights or anything else to help me out. I've no words to explain how fascinating it was to cycle in the absolute dark!" With nobody around and no social tumult. Several of his images online speak directly to the appeal of somewhere else, as we see above; he also hosts a very large number of photographs taken at horticultural shows. Nature's slow, looping rhythms have much to offer.
I just cycled through a pitch-black forest at night...
That same sense of easy-going movement is now further developed in two ways. Firstly, Mr. Korenkovich's pages at a couple of networking venues are being populated with little more than lyrical musings - on a very wide range of songs. He uploads music, ponders a while, leaves a note - and then moves on. A few days ago he wrote: "Sometimes you remember a song and its sticks in your memory... to the point where it just won't let you go - until you both find and listen to it!" And then we discern his second, more social desire to take this gentle, trusting worldview - with its soundtrack- into the outside world...
Korenkovich is, in other words, linked to the organization of a local festival, "Byt' Dobru," which is conceived as a smaller version of the famous "Empty Hills" event that draws lovers of folk (and related) music from all corners of Western Russia. "Byt' Dobru" scales things down to an almost private level, free from commercial hubbub: "Our event is designed to let families spend some time outdoors, together with friends, so everybody can meet and socialize. In fact, many of those friends and acquaintances have almost become bona fide family members! We all converge in order to enjoy our favorite music." The preferred styles, as we might expect, are folksy and unrushed.
The Byt' Dobru Festival, 2011
The system of shared organizational duties and communal leisure at "Byt' Dobru" means that entrance is always free. Life, however, does not always operate without unexpected expense... And sure enough, a nasty debt was incurred this year - so festival goers were asked if they might possibly be able to pay (after the event). Genial, freely-willed "poverty" survives with difficulty in 2011. And so, while those funds are slowly gathered, we have the newer recordings from Sö, all dedicated to themes of noiseless, constant movement, rather than any specific goal (or material dead-end).
In the evening we decided to have tea in the street, with the stars...
Among the track titles, giving voice to themes of unimpeded passage, we have: "Lidya Goes on a Journey," "The Leaves Rustle Underfoot (Drizzle)," and - longest of all - "In the Evening We Decided to Have Tea in the Street, with the Stars." Camaraderie is held aloft and imagined in a simple, yet infrequently encountered setting. In fact another of the recent Sö EPs even combines its three track titles in order to give the entire recording a theme of happy escape: "With the City / Step by Step / Forgetting All." Present-day, urban experience is slowly erased from one's memory.
A related avoidance of "progressive" enterprise is clear in new music from Misha Salnikov, known both as MOX and part of the outfit Poostosh, of whom we've written before. (Himself from Moscow, Salnikov is unrelated to the Minsk performer Mox, who/which is an alter ego of Anton Krivulia). With professional connections in his CV to major figures of Russian electronica, such as Aleksei Borisov, Salnikov now authors what he calls "instrumentals with a tinge of humor."
The most recent proof of that stance - "Sistrum" - can now be downloaded. Although published only this month, it is actually a collection of older tracks from the period 2000-2004. They are described by their maker as "minimalist, ambient, melodic, and thoughtful electronica." The joint influences of Harold Budd and Brian Eno are openly admitted.
Salnikov's initial intention had been to release this material several years ago, but on two separate occasions he changed his mind. Much as that forward trajectory was curtailed, so our composer likes to view the structure of these tunes as "something akin to a sophisticated music box." Arrested and/or cyclical movement has much greater appeal that anything goal-driven, both in audible and visual forms, as we see above. The Western press has occasionally viewed things in a similar light, speaking of Salnikov's output as a melange of "cinematic electronica with earthy organic folkiness."
Glistening folk reverie
In more direct terms, another reviewer has even noticed a "glistening folk reverie" - the kind of dreamy noise that emerges from a long-forgotten, maybe imagined location, existing both in the past and in a possible future.
The recording's title refers, presumably, to the metal percussive instrument that was used in ancient Egypt for a wide range of musical, magical purposes - such as holding the gods within reasonable limits... and halting the Nile during flood season. If that is indeed the intended etymology of "Sistrum," then we once again find music in the service of avoidance, escape, and (physical) removal.
MOX Salnikov Camaraderie: "Astral Electricity Squad"
The other MOX Salnikov tracks that have now appeared online are also archival. Known as "Astral Electricity Squad" they - with their title alone - cast a doubting glance towards anything resembling "cosmic" enterprise. By way of illustration, the Stalinist building on the EP's cover plunges only into darkness, rather than asserting any magisterial claim upon the Moscow skyline. As for the matter of "camaraderie," that refers to the four colleagues with whom Salnikov wrote the music: Andrey Kovalenko, Sergey Karapetyan, Viktor Malyshev, and Petr Goriev. Just as with the modest instrumentals of Korenkovich, so MOX Salnikov here looks to filial and familial metaphors as an alternative to modern-day maximalism.
Clearest of all these escapes into kinship, kindly nature, or sheer reverie is a third publication that involves more patterns of directionless or cyclical motion. Here we turn to a net-single that has just appeared from Novosibirsk. It is accredited to a Mr. Villy Memory and his project known as "Yunost'" (or "Youth"), a term used in honor of the famous brand of Soviet synthesizers.
More specifically, we're dealing with sounds redolent of socialist pop from the mid-1980s, together with the classic hiss, buzz, and wobble that accompanied audio tapes of the time. It's fitting, therefore, that the only images published with the single look like VHS screenshots. Actuality is viewed only through an unfocused veil of nostalgia - itself recorded on lo-fi media. The single's four muffled numbers are together known as "Sny" ("Dreams").
Yunost' (Novosibirsk): "Sny"
Experiences (and their soundtrack) from almost twenty years ago are made to look more appealing than the present day. Not only is this object of distant desire rather vague in historical terms (i.e., everything is orchestrated to the general, even stereotypical sounds of an entire decade); it's also not entirely clear where these recordings were made. Depending upon the venue or website one consults, the songs are accredited to addresses in Novosibirsk, Moscow, and even Crimea. Likewise, the meaning of "Yunost'" (as a project name) and "Sny" (as the EP's title) is also reversed on a few music portals: authors and track names change places. Unexpectedly and/or whimsically.
Such is the fuzzy, imprecise context of an "electronic, psychedelic, and alternative" enterprise that - maybe - was "created in the mountains of Altai" four years ago. With their primary influences also listed as "mountains, sea, and forest," these four deliberately simple yet richly nostalgic compositions both remember and remake the dying sounds of Soviet pop. They do so using the classic syn-drums that would also syncopate the first wave of post-Soviet commercial music. As a consequence, the "dreams" on display are a tribute to songwriting just before the rude intrusion of cash.
Mr. Korenkovich and his colleagues at Byt' Dobru would no doubt approve.
A suitably imprecise image used for the Yunost' webpage
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