|
Kirill Sergeev, aka The Saint Petersburg Disco Spin Club
Despite the increasing media focus upon music by The Saint Petersburg Disco Spin Club (SPDSC), this project's lone founder - and member - has been less than keen to promote his identity. Effort has been invested in the music, rather than the frontman. Nonetheless, it has slowly become evident that we're dealing with Kirill Sergeev, who used to play in jazz-funk outfit Uniquetunes, discussed here in the earlier days of FFM. Stepping back from any collective enterprise, Sergeev now spends his time and energy plotting the solo trajectory of SPDSC, which has just led to a new video and downtempo house EP.
Kind words are already audible from the staff at Juno, who - thankfully for Western readers - place this recording "Swing Swung Swong" in the context of Russian dance music as a whole. Everybody benefits from a little PR.
A steady stream of impressive music surfacing from the vast Russian expanses (Juno)
"There's been a steady stream of impressive music surfacing from the vast Russian expanses in recent times, and one name from the area to definitely keep an eye out for is The Saint Petersburg Disco Spin Club. Hailing naturally from St Petersburg, this producer broke through with a revelatory contribution to the 'My Friends' various artist EP, released by esteemed Moscow label Shanti Records (which is no mean feat, when the likes of Rick Wade and Anton Zap were also on the release)." Modesty obliges our hero to obscure himself briefly.
As we wrote at the time, that same EP - or its central metaphor of friendship - was a fine example of how amity was slowly bettering the nasty, counter-productive "competitiveness" of a business environment. Put differently, SPDSC's music was produced in the open, empty space where distant strangers begin to trust one another. Where time, effort, and achievements are all negotiated socially and empathetic harmonies preface concrete language or shoptalk. On a dancefloor, for example.
In a nation where 70% of companies worry that business-related laws are interpreted "unpredictably" by the state organs that create them, any desire to run open-armed and trustingly into the world will be minimal. Degrees of faith, empathy, and engagement take time.
En route to consequential patterns of trust, therefore, metaphors of friendship are a start. Remixes are a fine symbol for degrees of independence that - nonetheless - never lose all contact with an original, core text, since it provides the building blocks for collective experimentation. Freedom and fidelity thus coexist. "Swing Swung Swong" continues in the same spirit, in that it not only involves a mashup by St. Petersburg neighbor Ponty Mython; it also tags the other three tracks as "original mixes," in other words they're produced in eager anticipation of help and future remixes. They're a form of invitation.
Cream Child (left, St. Petersburg)
In that vein, we now have new remixes of a May 2011 album by St. Petersburg's Cream Child, "Parasomnia." Published by Ritmo Sportivo, these fifteen new versions involve not only Russian neighbors, but also foreign colleagues - all the way from Portugal to Japan. Slavic contributors include Bitchpleaze, Oh!Dee, Audiosynthes, Plee, Feyorz, and Thallus. As we mentioned before, the term "parasomnia" refers to a state between sleep and waking - and the perceptions thereof. These include sleepwalking, the stressful grinding of teeth, various spasms, rapid eye movements, and so forth as the body struggles against unconsciousness.
An investigation of those experiences by Cream Child leads to their collective definition as some abstract passage "from light into darkness. Parasomnia is a road leading in bizarre directions..." Collaborations now take the form of mental deviation(!): one's imagination is extended through the efforts of others, as authorial statements are remade, remixed, and reconsidered. Friends take on the burden of our dreams!
The deeper you delve into your nightmares the more you hear unique vibes…
That notion of extended - yet risky! - trust is continued here. In fact, the staff at Ritmo speaks of lessened (self-)control in rather negative terms - and yet we're still invited to experience that surrender to external forces. Disorder and discomfort are, it appears, both more desirable than mundanity. We're told, therefore, that these remixes are redolent of times "when opposites collide, when music reflects the sounds of your strange dreams, when you'll give anything to wake up…but can’t! The deeper you delve into those nightmares the more you hear unique vibes…"
Unique experience evidently comes at a cost: socialization - and the surprises thereof - are not always pleasant!
Deep Play (Sochi) and Little Nastya (Moscow): "Lofimarch EP" (2011)
As Cream Child's colleagues say: "Press 'Play' and instead of calm you'll feel your breathing accelerate..." Desire and drive start to coincide. This need for pleasure to push harder (and harder!) against intransigent actuality seems just as clear in a small, two-track EP from Sochi's Deep Play and Moscow's Little Nastya (aka Stas Uvarovskii). Blurring the line between dancefloor bass tunes and homemade idm, these two tracks are published with very low-level technology and zero PR.
Instead of any audible clarity, the EP's distortion levels speak to the difficulty of making music for an unwelcoming social realm. In fact, as one of the tracks is entitled, it seems as if composition itself has become a challenging "Lo-Fi March," a sometimes grim and demanding trudge against the opposing forces of actuality.
Мere mediocrity... stupid consumerism... and imaginary figures
If we look at the webpages of Igor' Fedoseev (the figure behind Deep Play), we discover a few well-hidden complaints that are directed against these uninviting domains. The lo-fi sounds we find on display here may be designed for society, but busy spheres look suspect. Fedoseev's criticisms read as follows: "I look closer and closer [at reality], but see no sense in things." He then rails against an unnamed reader, too: "Just like those same [senseless] 'things,' you're full of dust and noise."
Elsewhere his anger is expressed against "mere mediocrity... stupid consumerism... and imaginary figures. Everything is vanity, cr*p, and emptiness." Social experience is wonderful in theory, but often nasty in practice.
Cao Sao Vang (Moscow): "Power of Flower" (2011)
In all these releases, we find an inherent paradox: society is mocked and yet social contact is sought. Music is offered to colleagues, such that they might further authorial expression, and yet that same process is likened to the nervous (or nightmarish!) twitching of parasomnia. These opposites are especially well encapsulated in the new work from Moscow's Cao Sao Vang: "Power of Flower."
This sixty-three minute album, full of decelerated, often incomprehensible vocal samples, is accompanied by a Russian Wikipedia definition of schizophasia. If we, according to the same practice, turn to the English-language version of the site, then an equivalent text would read: "In the mental health field, schizophasia, commonly referred to as 'word salad,' is confused, and often repetitious, language that is symptomatic of various mental illnesses. It is usually associated with a manic presentation and other symptoms of serious mental illnesses, such as psychosis, including schizophrenia."
Schizophasia, commonly referred to as word salad, is confused, and often repetitious, language
Language is unable to cope with the contradictions of the outside world. It may continue to observe grammatical norms, but what transpires is still nonsense. The workings of "typical" experience lead only to absurdism. And so we're left with four excellent web-releases, each designed for the dancefloor. En route to that civic realm, however, we encounter parasomnia, schizophasia, and - in the case of Deep Play and Little Nastya - audible distortion and structural breakdown. Below we see the state to which our Russian musicians are reduced by thoughts of a busy, social, realm... Existence outside the front door lacks appeal; life in a cardboard box seems a better option.
Comments
Login / Register