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Nu Aura is a web-based endeavor and netlabel with ties to the city of St. Petersburg, shown above on an especially severe day. Perhaps in keeping with the windswept, frostbitten shores of that same locale, the staff at Nu Aura invest much effort in downplaying any connection between their publications and a concrete address. In a city with reduced visibility, the elements hold sway over evident geography, and various fantasies take shape. On a more dramatic, yet related level, many of the musicians linked to this enterprise also work hard in order to reduce the importance of (specific) language. Virtually all media emerging from Nu Aura and its related offshoots are as understated or reticent as possible.
Emotional, experimental electronic music... among other things
Nu Aura is actually a side-project of Concept Audio, which produces podcasts, online reviews, and interviews from the same northern (though well-hidden) address. In both cases, the output is minimal in quantity and hushed in nature. "CA" likes to define itself as a "project dedicated to emotional, experimental electronic music... among other things." That reference to emotion may imply that we could expect occasional pathos, but the truth is much simpler. In avoiding the wordiness of much web-based amateurism, Nu Aura and Concept aim instead to offer noiseless support for a sentimental, even elemental view of the world.
Much of what appears from these two sources maintains - if only implicitly - that a life conducted in harmony with nature's noiseless rhythms will benefit society as a whole. And so, as the new artwork below suggests, insight or revelation is slowly sought within various dimly-understood realms. Likewise, each of the tracks on Nu Aura's "One Different Compilation" is accompanied not by text, but by interpretative illustrations (see the bottom of the page). Intuition is more important than intellect.
As an introduction to this kind of wistful self-effacement, we might recall that the tiny Russian promo-text for a recent Concept podcast read as follows: "Now that the sweltering summer days are leaving, CA offers an opportunity to delve into some melodic D&B... simply in order to recall the brightest moments of a passing season." Or, elsewhere, listeners have been promised "something suggestive of bright, multicolored leaves rushing all around. [You'll feel as if] it is autumn... only in sounds."
Given this enduring love for natural, homeless vagaries, it will probably come as no surprise to learn that almost all the musicians associated with Nu Aura have little, if anything to say for themselves. The few statements that are forthcoming typically serve as warning that more utterances are not to be expected... Speech is employed merely in order that it be shunned.
Take, for example, the figure of Archos, based in Moscow. He gives the world no more than a couple of phrases, which sketch his professional credo as a sound designer. "I like sounds to be detailed, crystal clear, and transparent. They should be powerful and dark, with an evident intention and 'direction,' too." His investment in abstraction is made clear. It's a manifest commitment to nothing in particular.
Similar flights from specificity come to us via the project known as Soft Note, based in the distant Siberian city of Omsk. In somewhat didactic terms, this young musician declares that "There are two types of ignorance. The first emerges from [narrow] dualistic thought, such as: myself and others; my biological organism and the universe; body and soul, etc... A dualistic mode of thought leads only to unawareness. When that kind of thinking becomes fixed [or fossilized], it's known as religion. And that's what we're out to defeat..."
A dualistic mode of thought leads only to ignorance
Neither the second path to ignorance, nor its impending downfall are outlined for us. Nonetheless, wordy social posturing is left behind. (Once a few comments are on paper.)
Other objects of disdain include the allegedly cold or emotionless workings of sample-heavy laptop music. Also from Siberia (specifically from Krasnoyarsk) we hear that an avoidance of excessive software leads to a superior, though "rather chilly sound that's abstract in places. The kind of music to accompany you on a journey." And so, in that vagrant spirit, the two musicians responsible for enacting these ideas call themselves Echolov or "Эхолов/Eholov" which in direct translation might read "Echo-Catch[er]." It refers, apparently, to "some ancient [mystical] practice." Sounds of pre-modern consequence have been drowned out by clamorous, often commercial chatter. They can only be discerned nowadays through a rejection of pragmatic enterprise. More can be done with less noise.
Glebich (Gleb Kuznetsov, Moscow)
If there is one artist on this compilation who turns the imprecise romance of these brief texts into something even vaguely programatic, it would be Gleb Kuznetsov, who performs under the diminutive stage-name Glebich. Born into a family of professional musicians, he spent much of his childhood traveling with his parents as they moved from city to city, according to an unforgiving touring schedule. There were, however, various benefits to this homelessness. Surrounded, if not spoiled by a wealth of creative opportunities, Gleb was unable during his school years to focus for any length of time upon a single instrument: the choices were too great. Endorsing one expressive tool over (all the) others was difficult, to say the least.
[Only] techno brought happiness and serenity. It became a new language
The same problems emerged stylistically, too, since Kuznetsov wandered between early experiments in lounge, acid jazz, hip-hip, and eventually techno. Only the sparse, even empty patterns of techno brought him both "happiness and serenity. It became his new language." Dictionaries and thesauri, begone.
Since that time he has developed various enterprises in the overlapping realms of event planning and booking. Currently those efforts take the form of an endeavor known, somewhat feistily, as "Destroy Minimal." The project hopes to both aggregate and promote the work of young sound designers. Somewhere within a minimalist style, full of silence, lies the expressive possibility of grander truths.
Echolov (Эхолов/Eholov, Krasnoyarsk). Photo Dar'ia Makarova.
Kuznetsov here draws directly upon some words from Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa (d. 1935): "My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two [halves], and both keep their distance — [like] Siamese twins that aren't attached."
I attend to everything, dreaming all the while...
This negative sense of duality - already dismissed by one of the Nu Aura contributors - is, in Pessoa's experience, again tied to speech. In search of superior expressive options, he famously adopted a series of heteronyms, in other words separate identities (and related biographies) in order to pen radically different works. The straitjacket of language could be slipped, perhaps, if one at least pretended to be different speakers...
Pessoa here likens the odd, awkward existence between speech and "full" actuality to that of two severed twins (in various senses). It's a grim image, yet that drama is certainly matched in visual forms by several of the illustrations used within the Nu Aura roster. Troubled communication creates some unnerving pictures. Take, by way of example, Daniil Belousov (below) also from Omsk and not averse to a wide range of heteronyms himself. He has published audio material as "Dym" (Smoke), "wheretheressmoke" (all lower case), and even with recourse to hieroglyphs, such as "▭▮●." None of these lead to a light or easy-going visual register. Experience and expressivity remain far apart.
Again Kuznetsov's ideas bring a little order to bear. By quoting - or paraphrasing - some notions from Wim Wenders' 1987 film "Wings of Desire," he places this widespread semantic challenge in a very romantic context. The search for ideal, non-linguistic expressiveness is implicitly close to the promising, yet risky desire of Wenders' angels to adopt the fleshy constraints of human life - in order to feel love. Semantic constraints at least allow for (some!) meaning to be shaped and transmitted: likewise in "Wings of Desire" the paltry dimensions of human form nonetheless make sensation possible.
And yet, by adopting that same confinement, Wenders' winged heroes then lose the Absolute. Neither option is perfect. These young musicians from St. Petersburg, Siberia, and beyond - despite their age - feel a similar dilemma in their own search for a "perfect" utterance. By shunning the worrying limits of language or an unfeeling laptop, they find themselves to be operating amid various appealing, yet frustratingly abstract states. They're "catching echoes," as it were - and so the sounds of Nu Aura's "One Different Compilation" end just as Wenders' film, with a single phrase upon the screen: "To Be Continued..."
At a maximum distance from urban hubbub - or indeed any form of chatter - these Russian sound artists continue their investigation of other expressive avenues, be they "merely" sonic or noiselessly chromatic. And so the gathered instrumentals, just as their accompanying artwork, hope to discern a natural, even organic structure somewhere within the vaguest of patterns.
Interpretative illustration by Anna Smolina for CJ Aist (Belgorod)
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