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Dmitry Lebedev (drums, Ned Hoper)
On several prior occasions, we have examined the work of a St Petersburg multi-instrumentalist known - primarily - as Zmitser Von Holzman. We immediately qualify that stage name, since the same artist also employs a range of monikers... within a number of different, discrete projects. Arguably the most important among them are the Do-Re-Mi Orchestra and the ensemble Ned Hoper, upon which we'll focus here.
The figure of Ned Hoper himself insists that he's an Australian composer, "working simultaneously with musical collectives in various countries around the world." (He is not Australian...) The last time this man or band appeared on this website, it was in order to announce the publication of an album called "Mystification." That work was showcased in ways that decentered matters even more. Then, as now, the sounds on display belong neither to one person, nor to a single workplace or style.
...a sound that balances between 'retro' and something ultramodern
Previously, Von Holzman/ Hoper remarked: "Together, the musicians spend most of their time in the studio, making special sound effects for both feature films and TV series... The resulting instrumentals [emerging from those effects] are unusual and extremely varied. When on stage, the band members employ all kinds of devices: synths, guitars, vocoders, and even a theremin! Nonetheless, you wouldn't call this mere noise - it's a sound that balances between 'retro' and something ultramodern."
Linear narratives and intentions give way to wandering, wayward designs.
Zmitser Von Holzman (aka Mitya Goltsman)
Everything's balanced in between what was and what might be, between a fixed past and open-ended future. All in all, Von Holzman's statements become a consideration of potentials (both lost and sought) that are conducted in the confines of a studio, yet inspired by the silver screen. The intricacy of any resulting structures is no surprise, since what we hear is the work of "home-studio loners," as Von Holzman puts it. Fantasy grows more swiftly from within narrow confines.
At this point it's worth mentioning that the real name of Von Holzman/ Ned Hoper is actually Mitya Goltsman. As we can surmise even from these opening notes, he's a figure who values fantasy over fact - and change over stasis. The more that viewpoint is exercised or elaborated upon, the less we see a concrete individual. Activity overshadows identity.
Extending the same, snowballing outlook even further, Mr. Goltsman and his band have just a released a net-single, entitled "Aikido Op.27, N.18." Currently the track is accompanied by a lone comment at Soundcloud: "Yeah!" Upon closer inspection, it transpires that such brief, enthusiastic support has come from the band members themselves.
To be more specific, the new track appears free of hard media, paper-based artwork, or any textual support (save that one, loud syllable from the musicians). It is simply an mp3, named after the ancient Japanese martial art that uses the force of one's attacker in order to avoid injury - to both parties. Exponents of aikido find and then acquiesce to the overarching, impersonal motion of an act, thus negating the two individual figures of "attacker" and "victim." Prior to identity is energy or, to paraphrase the Japanese, life itself is a matter of joining - not manipulating - an interpersonal, perhaps ubiquitous energy.
Greater than two forceful figures is force itself.
Moving that Japanese reference from theoretical to real-life situations, we'll see that for Goltsman, Ned Hoper, and the other musicians under discussion here, a performer's (stable) identity and permanent media formats both slip - slowly - into something bigger, better, and humbling. Making generically specific recordings on hard media, these artists then ponder the greater liberty than comes from collaborative, anonymous, or simply discordant sounds. From faceless, freer noise.
Other examples of those eventful patterns are evident in the career of Aerofall, who live and work in the southern river port of Rostov-na-Donu.
Aerofall (Rostov-na-Donu)
The outfit is a foursome: Iana Komeshko (vocals, guitar); Vladimir Karpov (guitar); Valerii Kal'kutin (bass); and Oleg Chernov (drums). Together they have now released some live recordings, yet those compositions appear without any contextual support whatsoever. As with Ned Hoper, we find neither PR materials, nor interviews. Instead of a few snappy slogans, even, Aerofall's singular framework for their "Live" EP is a small biographical text, itself positioned far away on some totally unrelated website. It can only be discovered by chance.
Crystal indietronica
Here we learn that Aerofall came together in 2007 from the remnants of an electronic ensemble priding itself upon "beautiful [sonic] atmospheres, enhanced by female vocals." Any subsequent move from that impressionistic phrasing to Aerofall's shoegazing - evident in our chosen audio - would be neither great nor dramatic. That same transition, in fact, occured through a (fine) loss of individuality. Celebrating what the musicians now call "crystal indietronica," the lineup of Aerofall would come into being less through the proud accrual of a concrete discography than through collaborations. As an extension of their own "crystalline" metaphors, the performers would grow in stature through a network of joint ventures.
The band's timeline documents work with Chikiss, Everything Is Made in China, PunkTV, and Rostov neighbors Motorama. The achievements of Aerofall therefore grow through association - through growing membership in a grander process. Through active acquiesence to it.
Today's the band's websites are full of brief exchanges with audience members. Talk of live work overshadows almost all discussion of studio enterprise. Fixed identities blur as the meaning of any one performer or performance is specific only to a local event. Significance changes on the road, in each town and with each (new) audience. A strange, humbling freedom grows from the inability to fashion a large and unchanging catalog.
A related process is evident in recent material from the Siberian ensemble EnFace. For the last three years, this Omsk band has been playing what the Moscow press calls "explosive, spiky, and trenchant post-punk... with 'aggravating circumstances.'" In order to ascertain the nature of that aggravation, other publications offer the following view: "EnFace play a hysterical kind of postpunk. They sing in French - and behave themselves very emotionally on stage." The reasons for choosing that Gallic turn of phrase have been theorized elsewhere. Once more, a reference to "hysteria" appears:
A driven, even unforgiving sound
"By singing in French, EnFace have found a good way of softening the hysterical spirit of their music. That choice noticeably increases the charm of an otherwise driven, even unforgiving sound." And now the band's four "driven" members (Kirill Malyshev, Anton Aladin, Irina Kurmanova, and Maksim Vselenskii) have found even more expressive opportunities within a side-project, based primarily in St. Petersburg: Zazazone.
Almost all artwork associated with this offshoot is monochrome and slightly off-kilter. Natural harmonies and structures are viewed askew, for the following reason. Creative liberty here finds expression in the same manner that we see with Ned Hoper and Aerofall. What develops is a process of growing anonymity and surrender, in this case to noise. Prior to songs is sound; prior to structure are formless, yet enticing networks of noise - at least from an impressionistic standpoint. The Elochnye Igrushki remix of EnFace we offer begins that transition - by playing the French lyrics backwards...
Distortion runs throughout the Zazazone EP. It's a form of expression realized through capitulation: decadence in the truest sense, perhaps. And so we hear from one Russian listener: "This is lo-fi and noise - but there's still the same passion and melancholy [of EnFace]. It's beautiful, all the same..." Zeal and melancholy operate side by side. Self-assertion and self-demise.
Lo-fi and noise - but there's still the same passion and melancholy
That presumed "beauty" within these downbeat, often discordant instrumentals comes from an investigation of audible limits. It forms in realms where selfhood and (fixed) self-statement both succumb to eventful processes, widespread enterprise, and homeless clamor. Subjectivity is only fully realized, according to the same logic, in realms where it (finally) collapses in the face of something grander. Hence the "beauty" found in acquiescence to pure sonority and/or power. A form of acoustic aikido, perhaps.
Or, as some recent artwork from EnFace implies, our habits of self-assertion and "mastery," learned in childhood, may appear laughable in retrospect. Wiser - and more modest - is the recognition of nameless, grander domains - just beyond the edge of language, harmony, and flattering renown.
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