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The DeepX label, based in Yekaterinburg, remains an important regional center for minimalism within Russian dance music. A key figure in the daily operations at DeepX is "Dmitrii P.," who performs under the stage name of Mr. Dee. We've written both about this young man and his label on various occasions. As the name of that project suggests, any leanings towards minimal techno - the label's primary style - are nonetheless framed in various metaphors of depth, immersion, and trusting membership. The cold, even emotionless workings of a stripped-down aesthetic are contrasted with a romantic streak.
Wariness and wishfulness occur - simultaneously.
As one local admirer declared not long ago on one of Dee's sites: “There’s a real sense of volume in your sound. Makes me feel like an ant in the middle of a crowd of people.”
These sounds make me feel like an ant in the middle of a crowd
Talk of increasing anonymity within a social gathering and hints of a spiritual loss of subjectivity, even, coincide. That same sense of growing humility amid waves of sound continues to inform Dee's PR work, since he is remarkably unwilling to decorate his online venues with any more than one image of himself. Over the last couple of years, his slim photo-dossier has not grown. It almost seems more respectful to show no pictures at all.
This impression of a (very) spartan modus operandi has now been extended by a six-track, 26-minute EP entitled "D3." Having reached the rather extreme format of mere initials and numerals, Dee implies that the distance between any kind of expression and complete silence occasionally seems small. The new tracks, toying with that same audible absence, so to speak, are tagged merely as "D3-1," D3-2," and so forth.
Just as we've seen before, this artist's titles - like building blocks - speak more of an initial/possible connection with the surrounding world, rather than a blissful dissolving into some faceless universality. Any romance of grand membership - at least on this occasion - loses ground. Recent recordings from the same artist had given us equally "constructive" titles such as "Fuse," "Trap," and "Between." The imagery of union(s) was combined with that of obstruction. Desired linkages almost happen - and utterances almost become a dialog.
The "D3" recordings, tiptoeing with wariness into the world, come to us courtesy not of DeepX, but from the Ukrainian Picpack label, based in the industrial city of Donetsk. Now home to just over a million people, Donetsk's links to the world of heavy industry have bound the region both to the triumphs and tragedies of the twentieth century. Actions here have spoken louder than words for decades - in both positive and negative senses.
...idm, pure noise, and abstract work
Picpack, proud residents of the city, maintain a rhetorical style that makes DeepX look positively verbose. One pithy sentence in Russian defines the entire site: "The direction we've chosen is that of experimental music: idm, pure noise, and abstract work." With that, the Picpack resource - visually designed to resemble a cardboard packing case - starts to adopt the general air of a warehouse, i.e., a space that's intended for goal-oriented storage and output, not for chitchat.
It's an industrial center, so to speak.
One fitting example of Picpack's recent roster would be the new and fractured compositions from local artist Sun-Inside, more specifically the "Nagual" EP. Devoid of all promotional text, these recordings come only with the single photograph shown above, composed from the regimented use of a bollard, a lamppost, and some urban metal hoarding. Amid that monochrome severity, however, is a small, red reflector.
This same attention to little chromatic changes - to a fleeting vivacity - (re)appears in the EP's title, "Nagual." Used elsewhere in the world of Slavic music, that noun actually comes from Central American mythology and refers to ancient shamanistic figures who had the ability to adopt animal shapes - at will.
And, in a similar vein, we hear within the Sun-Inside recordings some growing elements of glitch that suggest a flickering of life - or at least of liveliness. Within the ancient figure of a nagual there lay a feral, fecund spirit; these instrumentals give voice to an equally wayward blossoming that threatens to swamp any regimentation. Sun-Inside's web resources contain a multitude of abstract paintings that nudge us towards a similar conclusion, with or without the audio.
If we wanted to extend or amplify this formal nervousness, we might look to some equally new recordings from Moscow's Tim Ballista. Here is a solo artist unlikely to indulge in wordy PR, who's explicitly framed by his label - Illphabetik - as an exponent of "dark atmospheres and related sound design. Ballista tells stories about form[al changes] and spatiotemporal journeys; he describes all that he sees with speed and sound."
In a word, these are compositions dedicated to swift and lively alteration(s). Glitch morphs into grander forms of rapid evolution. As the folks at Illphabetik explain, this leads to a related shift from idm to some frenzied aspects of breakcore. Ballista's newest compositions, called "Flux," thus further the abstract imagery of "Naugal" - beginning with the artwork we see below. Small, initial quivering become a tectonic shift.
More explicitly, the instrumentals on "Flux" "show us the relationship between one person and the glitchy world around him." And what might those lively, flickering noises represent? "A world full of unseen creatures - and unknown forces." From within strict, regimented structures, animal life emerges.
One Western review has placed these recordings within the same framework of transformation. Glitch becomes wholesale, productive disorder; it becomes freedom from convention. And so we read: "Ballista's release 'Flux' blasts and clashes... with anger and power, breaking and twisting the music… [What transpires is] an impossible balance between antithetical dimensions, like those moments of extreme lucidity when you're in total panic…"
...like those moments of extreme lucidity when you're in total panic
Such is the sensation of being within a bona fide event, when all opportunities are equally likely, both positive and negative. The line between anxiety, apprehension, and opportunity can seem non-existent. Lest we fall to complete "panic" and chaotic atonality, however, are there any kinds of semantic anchoring here? Where might these musicians look for a sense of time-tested order in the midst of contemporary worry?
If we turn to Ballista's resources elsewhere online, it's interesting to note that the animal imagery reappears. Which bestial forms, however, does he imagine adopting within a panic-inducing network? Which animal looks best suited to handle the world's disorienting multiplicity? Ballista opts for a fox, the classic trickster of Slavic folklore. And so a timeless stance suggests itself - a very old answer to some recent dilemmas.
As we, therefore, move from the regimented structures of habit into the modern world, from the soundtrack of techno to breakcore, one skill is apparently needed more than any other: guile. Tim Ballista shows a special fondness for the image below and the photograph we use in our article index: in neither instance do we see signs of stress. As the Russian expression has it, "A fox lives better than a wolf." Panic, therefore, is not an option.
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