Alexander Markvart (Kemerovo): The Studio of Unconscious Music
The Russian term "vovne" means "outside." For our purposes, it designates a Siberian organization, working between various towns to aggregate and then advertise the output of multiple artists. As we'll see below, Vovne.Ru keeps a strong connection to the sounds and styles of late-Soviet experimentalism, but the project's name also implies a modern variation upon old practice. Instead of the vertical metaphors used to speak of "underground" activity prior to 1991, "vovne" hints at considerable distance across a horizontal plane. In other words, the towns and cities operating under this creative umbrella view themselves at marked remove from both Moscow and the glossy centers of primetime praxis. Their address matters.
One of the key figures here, both from artistic and managerial standpoints, is Alexander Markvart from Kemerovo. That southern Siberian location, more than 1,800 miles from Moscow, is home to Markvart's experiments across various traditions and trends, all of which have been developing since 2005.
A sensation of considerable pressure, being something of a dense [sonic] flow
Most of his efforts are directed towards The Studio of Unconscious Music, which has neither a fixed line-up nor a strict aesthetic intention. Flexibility predominates, in various senses. Nonetheless, for all this happy imprecision, Markvart's enterprise over the last year or so has been defined by the man himself as follows: "Electronica with poetry, free improvisation, industrial [tracks], noise, synth-pop, minimalism, and punk elements. As a result of these various [synchronous] directions, the music can produce a feeling of considerable pressure, being something of a dense [sonic] flow."
The Studio of Unconscious Music
With colleagues Stepan Kachalin (above, vocals), Dmitrii Smirnov (clarinet), and Gleb Feshchenko (bassoon), much effort is invested in a multitude of simultaneous, snowballing potentials. Whenever, in the recent past, these audible "pressures" have been experienced and assessed by critics, the result is qualified in physical, even "corporeal" terms. Vovne hopes to challenge both intellectual and physical norms among audience members: they can hurt. "The lyrics of S.U.M. are seemingly inhabited by the spirit of indistinct figures, emerging from some 'nonexistence' or other. They impinge upon you from afar and, at the same time, from within..."
Behind or "outside" the consoling habits of conservative songwriting, an unnerving experience is brought to the fore. In other words, any distance from convention that's inherent in Vovne's growing cacophony maps itself through improvised, anxious discord. It gives voice to vanishing coordinates and, therefore, an impending physical absence. Tradition may produces a sense of home, but The Studio of Unconscious Music tries to subvert that comfort.
Free, even chaotic expression hopes to map out a frightening liberty on the edge of nowhere. The freedom of being nowhere.
Experimental, post-industrial, avant-garde, post-post...
Related tensions are also inherent in the work of Vovne colleague Gleb Uspensky. He lives in Tomsk, which is almost as far from Moscow and famous a place of czarist exiles. No great effort is required in order to introduce themes of absence and disappearance. For that reason, perhaps, we find a similarly formless collection of "homeless" styles, self-tagged as "experimental, post-industrial, avant-garde, post-post[!], minimal, free jazz, free improvisation, free punk, and techno..." Even Uspensky's name alters from time to time: he validates change and alteration over any kind of fixed statement. More specifically, he publishes material under the pseudonym Golya Mongolin.
Gleb Uspensky (Tomsk)
Mr. Uspensky has worked with a large number of Siberian bands since the late '80s. His professional inconstancy amplifies that wide range of genres. In a recent interview he declared: "I really dislike the whole idea of 'style.' It's something better suited for a supermarket, making it easier to find things... After all, I might - at any moment - grab a guitar and do something acoustic, or I might switch on a pile of electronic pedals... I've long since abandoned all stylistic limits and am genuinely surprised when people invite me to festivals! I do whatever I find interesting - and whatever I feel like bringing to fruition."
I do whatever I find interesting - and whatever I feel like bringing to fruition
Many of those plans may be best left unfinished, thus avoiding the worrying immobility that comes from completion and fixedness. "It's always more interesting to invent than to perform [a completed track]... It's more appealing to do things of which you're unaware." Activity and all related processes are more enticing - and beneficial - than inflexible plans. Uspensky likens the process of improvised creation to that of a battlefield: the challenge comes in "getting out alive." The desire for creative risk comes, it seems, with a willing and simultaneous acceptance of failure.
His more recent works have drawn upon the tradition of so-called "cruel romances" of the early twentieth century; plaintive songs in which heroes and heroines themselves battled against fate. Given the workings of Russian history, the role of "destiny" in those passionate gypsy texts is often fulfilled by the legal system... Consequently, Mr. Uspensky's tales of aesthetic escape certainly strike a chord among local audiences, for whom the history of Tomsk, as noted, is tied to more concrete forms of imprisonment.
"Getting out alive" can involve a rifle or a shovel.
Sine Seawave (Tomsk)
One of the other Vovne groups - Sine Seawave - has been spoken of Mr. Markvart in ways that help further still to define a common purpose among these kindred spirits. Founded in 2005 by Tomsk guitarist Yury Turov, Sine Seawave have been endorsed by Markvart as follows: "One Sine Seawave composition might begin in an ambient vein and then flow [unexpectedly] into experimental noise variations - after which, it'll all end in a flurry of avant-garde or progressive gestures. This sort of music is 'interwoven,'" rather than purely "written" in a linear manner.
Intersecting, undulating lines are more surprising - and therefore productive - than unidirectional progress.
A constant innovation of musical language
That continued celebration of willful unpredictability leads us to the Moscow-based PSVSV, who also find philosophical common ground with Vovne and appear on the project's pages. The reason for that degree of concord and empathy is quite simple: the band's members were born and raised in Tomsk. Playing together since 2003, they have now taken their Siberian worldview to the Big City. Once more, the offensively narrow limits of standard genres are dismissed as soon as possible: "The group plays everything from noise-rock to electro-pop, but the overarching idea remains a widening and [constant] innovation of musical language."
No matter the length or heritage of these experiments, a final conclusive word is never found. Thankfully.
PSVSV (Tomsk/Moscow)
The abbreviation PSVSV comes from a Russian translation of Ovid's phrase: "Non Bene Junctarum Discordia Semina Rerum" (i.e., "The Discordant Seeds of Things Ill-Joined"). In short, it refers to a condition of primordial chaos. Such, feel the musicians, is the nature of some "pre-musical state, inherent in every person." Put differently, the creation of music must itself extract formal expression from formlessness. Sound should resonate from within silence and/or nothing; preexisting norms must in no way dictate future potentials.
An interest in early twentieth-century surrealism is evident in writings surrounding PSVSV. Hence, no doubt, the wide range of names in the band's history - designations both serious and strange. Previous members have included "Serpent," "Rdnie," "NoYus," plus several others.
The sound of some pre-musical state, inherent in every person
As the views of these collectives turn increasingly to the subconscious and vital spontaneity, themselves operating in support of creative "fluidity," one might argue that drone compositions would appear at some point. Sure enough, within the team-sheet at Vovne we find the monotonal, potentially endless soundscapes of Inorganic Blossoming, founded by Kemerovo electronic musician Egor Miroshnik. Since his first recordings in 1997, Miroshnik's emphasis has been upon the slow construction of lo-fi, yet increasingly insistent mantras. In fact, the debut release by I.B. was recorded on a dictaphone during walks around Kemerovo's chemical plants. Somewhere outside the pragmatic goals of local industry lies the soundtrack to other natural or productively wayward "machinery."
A timeless verity, insisted Miroshnik, could be heard beyond (or prior to) modern praxis - as an ambient, directionless noise that simply endures, come what may.
Inorganic Blossoming (Kemerovo)
Recent recordings by Egor Miroshnik and his colleagues have been described as "variations of dense, slow ambient and abstract techno." Many of these generic mash-ups are constructed with the help of old Soviet synthesizers, together with a host of DIY tools. "The music of I.B. is fairly abstract in nature. It reflects acts of pure temporal extension: pollination and blossoming, growth and fluidity, fading and collapse..."
Those rhizomatic and endlessly fecund processes echo what Miroshnik sees as contemporary society's experience of "post-humanity." He quotes that academic notion in order to associate nature's networked, decentered fruitfulness both with the generic run-around practiced by all Vovne artists and the fact they operate without an evident home base. Constituent elements converge, form stable shapes, and then return to their fractured, fluid origins. "Stability" is but an illusion, maintain these far-flung - and therefore freer! - musicians.
Acts of pure temporal extension
In short, Vovne may be designed to celebrate the work of artists "outside" of mainstream practice, but the organization also places great emphasis on a related escape from stylistic or formal norms. Consequently, there are creative benefits to one's (physical) isolation from conservatism. And then, pushing that analogy further, we can say that the constantly morphing sounds on display are also viewed in terms of botanical fruitfulness, in which fixedness is only a passing state amid countless networks of "interwoven" metamorphoses. Qualitative changes will hopefully emerge from quantitative ones.
There are philosophical advantages to living on the periphery of a very large nation. At a maximum distance from all things "capital."
Alexander Markvart (right)
February 3, 2012 |
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