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Noiselessness is a common element of the Russian web, in various senses. Take, for example, some brand-new and anonymous dub techno emanating from St Petersburg - from behind the moniker Briem. Over the course of the summer, a series of quiet, understated compositions appeared - avoiding all visual/human representation and overt forms of social contact. There they sat, doing virtually nothing to announce their presence. Instead of self-declaration, space was instead given over to different themes.
As we'll see, natural phenomena here take precedence over anything authorial - in a cold city that's perched upon the windswept Baltic shoreline and home to many a tight-lipped sphinx.
This deliberate self-erasure in Briem's small catalog is arguably most evident in the simultaneous absence of text and recourse to titles such as "Trofotropiya." In medical contexts - or in translation - that Russian term relates to the experience in sleep of both relaxation and resting, bodily rhythms. As the noise of waking existence fades, a different, calming rhythm comes into play. It begins where our day ends... and when we stop talking.
Despite Briem's preference for restraint and promotional minimalism, so to speak, there's still an inherent tension here between the uploading of any sound - as a social display - and the desire to do so unobtrusively. It's a conscious effort - not to make an effort. Briem underscores that paradoxical relationship between utterance and intention (or activity and aim) with a handful of blurred images. Free of foreign, human objects, they evoke quiet homeless patterns of movement, in and out of specificity.
One possible solution to this tricky relationship between noise and nothingness comes to us in the new recordings this week from Ukrainian dubstep and glitch-house artist, Revshark.
When we wrote recently about this young musician, we noted that the more time one spends with Revshark compositions, the more a theme of downward-looking introspection grows - together with the blips, beeps, and other "system errors" implicit in any recourse to glitch. Clicks and scratches become a soundtrack to thought, pure and simple. Eventually, they come to embody an insertion of human inconsistency into the sometimes emotionless, unwavering clarity of synth-pop.
Glitch, after all, is the result of natural imperfections - set, on this instance, against the backdrop of a digital constant. Ambient swathes are endlessly interrupted; perfection, therefore, is wantonly sullied.
Why such emphasis, though, upon those little, familiar forms of structural failure?
Revshark (Slava Zilberbaummkapf)
Since our first observations - and questions - it has become clear that the moniker Revshark hides the figure of Slava Zilberbaummkapf, shown above at home. He, thankfully, has also now given a small interview to one web-based publication in which he explains why the appeal of minimalism, restraint, and "failure" can be so great.
In describing the music scene of Kiev and beyond, Zilberbaummkapf makes it clear that today's media-driven culture and related business practices offer the loudest voice to the worst music. Increased decibels give diminishing returns.
Many talented musicians simply cannot practice their craft: it's rare enough to be paid anything for a live show
"There's no real music scene in Ukraine because music itself is unprofitable. Many talented musicians simply cannot practice their craft: it's rare enough to be paid anything for a live show. Most folks, in fact, just play for free [as a result]. We don't really have any underground labels to promote young talent. Ukraine's not the richest country in the world, so people work various jobs simply in order to make a living. All that leaves very little time to devote oneself to music..."
As one of Revshark's favorite images suggests, the distance between goals and ideals remains great. An unattainable object of noiseless desire is best contemplated in hushed introspection.
So what of loud, confident display or self-promotion? "The only widely-recognized music in Ukraine comes from the [mainstream] pop scene." Volume is synonymous with gaudy, commercial overstatement. Consolation is found elsewhere - in the natural, silent realms also celebrated by Briem. Greater comfort and happiness come from admitting one's inferiority before a noiseless form of aesthetic achievement. That of God, perhaps: "If we put music to one side for a second, then it's true that we live in a beautiful country. We're surrounded by examples of flawless architecture and the most beautiful women..."
The only widely-recognized music in Ukraine comes from the [mainstream] pop scene
These precious thoughts of indistinct, taciturn membership emerge from the smallest origins: "I record my songs in a tiny little bedroom, using nothing more than a laptop, a guitar, and some keyboards." Put differently, one's nothingness may be unavoidable in commercial or promotional domains, yet the most treasured experiences of all - those allegedly tied to awe-inspiring rural and/or feminine beauty - need a pronounced humility. Modesty and minimalism, it seems, have their advantages. The themes of "human error" or failure, even, suggested by Briem's glitch house, also promise a positive aspect.
Another of Revshark's images captures that double-entendre of "loss" rather well. A leap of faith, enacted rather than discussed, is always a troublesome marriage of majesty and mishap!
Hence the statement from Zilberbaummkapf that: "Yes, I prefer working within the framework of minimalism. It's better not to have any superfluous sounds..." And, whenever he leans towards pomp, grandeur or any other "massive sound design, then those experiments often end rather badly..." Superfluity is associated with the mainstream, materialism, and simple bad state.
It's better not to have any superfluous sounds...
In that light, we turn to the Siberian town of Barnaul and The Kirbi, aka Denis Fomenko. We've written about this project on several occasions, located not far from the borders of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China. Although the distance from Barnaul to Revshark's home of Kiev is more than 4,000km, a Ukrainian connection remains. That's because Mr. Fomenko has been working with Kievan poet Elizaveta Kirizii, shown below. Her verse is used in five of the ten tracks on The Kirbi's new recording - the very title of which underscores (or celebrates, even) its modest, fractured origins: "Knick-Knackatory."
It can be downloaded from the project's site for free.
These Russian-language poems, following the same unassuming stance, advocate various experiences in which speech is soon rendered pointless. Put differently, Ms. Kirizii lauds natural, spiritual, or mythical states to which the only logical response is reticence and reserve. These are rhythmic utterances that ponder the point beyond which language is proven obsolete - and happily so. Self-confidence and self-assurance begin to will their own demise.
One of Ms. Kirizii's texts concerns an imagined seaside location, positioned so far to the edge of a map that we're dissuaded from ever "trying to find it. Don't try and hunt it down!" She continues: "Here rainstorms whip the heavens into sudden, cobalt tempests. They weep their heart out on the shoulders of crags..." She imagines a possible human presence amid this dramatic majesty: it's both small and endlessly mobile. "A wandering figure must surely have walked that hopeless path - in sunlight - and waved to a distant ship's mast." The dimensions of that same romantic figure need to be downscaled - in order that nature amplify a true depiction of his experience.
By lessening material dimensions - and radically so - room is made for other, immaterial patterns. Crude, crass materialism is hollowed out.
Elizaveta Kirizii (Kiev)
And so Elizaveta Kirizii's poetry moves from nature's "tempestuous" scale - operating free of human whim - to an ever broader canvas. "Things will not be as you wish, but as they're destined. Blue, translucent evenings will interweave, noiselessly..." Willy-nilly, fate goes about its business. And yet any awareness we gain of such matters - i.e., any loss of arrogance to destiny - is supposedly cause for joy. Put differently, the failure of haughtiness is held up as a triumph. "Look forth, smile, and know... that all will not be as you dreamed, but as fate's cloth falls upon your bed... Accept these depths: they will multiply, and each will becomes a genuine abyss. Each descent reveals its own true profundity... which none of us may measure."
Each descent reveals its own true profundity... which none of us may measure
The passage of time leads to human loss and some vague, spiritual gain. Or, at the very least, wisdom.
These purported verities, as suggested by Briem and Revshark, are resident only in self-effacement. Similarly, we hear from our Kievan poet another tale of an imagined, desired location, far from noise and vanity. "We'll reach a shoreline - and find a grey-haired storyteller. The world has never heard his tales. He speaks - and the Earth grows quieter."
A gaze moves upwards, away from earthbound, clamorous vanity.
Denis Fomenko (Barnaul, Siberia)
In that same silence Elizaveta Kirizii imagines the noiseless, "blissful" labor of massed, nameless figures upon metaphorical "bridges" of shared benefit. Those greater, grander connections are - as ever - forged in wordless enterprise. And so a poet inches towards a definition of her craft's limitations, as insurance against deafening chutzpah.
In closing, therefore, these longed-for narratives of noiselessness - published across 4,000km of steppe and forest - eventually coincide with nature. Metaphors of fate, the ecosphere, and some spiritual yearning are brought seamlessly together. "The waves sound their refrain: enchanting visions flicker before us. He says: 'Stay quiet! Stay quiet!' Does he mean us? Maybe not... and he turns aside."
The waves sound their refrain: enchanting visions flicker before us
That line sounds a fitting note on which to end an introduction to the new recordings by Briem, Revshark, and The Kirbi. They, in turn, are well summarized by a final image in which we see Mr. Fomenko's self-portrait, offered to us with diminished information: a lack of color, lo-grade media, and a surplus of ice, wind, and snow. All in all, they synthesize in a form of self-expression where the subject is made deliberately vague - in order to amplify the scale of something greater. Nature itself.
As a consequence of which Fomenko smiles - in a picture where he's barely visible.
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