Four releases this weekend, emerging from various cities around Russia, offer multiple ways to counter dull or disappointing actuality. They include sleep, recreational drugs, fatherhood, and a stubborn optimism.
A collection of abstract hip-hop, bass, and techno recordings has just come from the Siberian webzine, "Big Echo." Compiled in honor of Counterculture Day, these tracks help to connect some very cold locations with... Santa Cruz.
Bass tunes and hip-hop instrumentals have arrived from Vladivostok, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev. Three of them imagine the emotional and mental benefits of intuitive composition. Our fourth artist is less sure.
These performers come from two locations: Moscow and the banks of the Volga. They're connected not so much by parallel or local scenes as by the sense of landscape. A single - enormous - country links isolated efforts.
Some recent instrumental recordings have invested much energy in a certain form of modesty. By toying with irony and even anonymity, four introspective performers magnify the object of their attention.
A host of excellent glitch-hop recordings has appeared this week: all the way from the Pacific Coast to rural Lithuania. Many of them share an enthusiasm for metaphors of flight, fantasy, and family.
New dancefloor material from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sochi expresses doubts about the social sphere it hopes to charm. At least two new hip-hop and house publications refer directly to anxiety and mental illness.
Today we consider three of the newest artists on our FFM compilation: Thallus, Audiosynthes, and B*tchpleaze. They live in very different, distant towns - yet share a common passion for the kind of reverie that needs no hi-tech tools.
Yesterday saw the release of our double album, "Antique/Astral," dedicated to the work of thirty young beatmakers. Here we offer a little context to their careers and current efforts.
Several instrumental and abstract hip-hop releases from both Russia and Kazakhstan consider various aspects of emotional promise. Surrounded by adult disappointment and material goals, these musicians ponder various (distant) alternatives instead.
From St Petersburg's Yellowhead (and 56Stuff) comes a wonderful, wobbly celebration of Russian fantasy. It takes place in rundown kitchens - and therefore tries even harder to escape the here and now
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