Bekijk in het Nederlands  
Home
Agenda
News
   Music
     Bands
     CD Reviews
     Live Reviews
     Interviews
     Labels
     Genres
Articles
Movies
Links
Festival
Bookings & Promotion
About
Crew
Gallery
Guestbook
Forum
Contact
Lottery
Mailinglist
Gothic Radio
Search

Adverts

Gothic Nederland


X-tra-X Underground Fashion



Bands    CD Reviews     Live Reviews    Interviews    Labels    Genres      

Muzyka Voln


<< Back


Our friends from the Russian Zhelezobeton decided it was time to create a new sub-label. It is unknown what the speciality for this label will be, but its first release is an ambient/drone sampler presenting 12 Russian composers doing their thing. And what a mighty fine things that is.

The CD actually doesn't have a single dull moment during listing, and for a sampler covering different styles that is a very positive feature. The various styles are ranging from old-school ambient to isolationist soundscapes to minimal drones and manipulated field-recordings. Not the cheeriest of styles, but it all fits within my personal taste.

Several of the names sound or are familiar to me, and a little research shows that five projects already have had a release on Drone Records (Bardoseneticcube, Lunar Abyss Deus Organum, Cisfinitum, Hum, and Closing The Eternity). This knowledge will already give you an indication in where to place the contents and direction of this release. From the other names only Instant Movie Combinations was known to me.

Let's quickly go through the tracks: Kshatriy opens the CD with a nice flowing drone with loads of overtones. Exit In Grey shows a way more ambient approach; at moments it sounds like a huge kitty cat snoring in the front of the audio perspective. Closing The Eternity gives you manipulated field-recordings over massive bassy structures. As with extreme sounds, and a positive point I might add, sometimes they hurt. Hum created a track with weird sounds which could have been used in an old science fiction movie. It sounds like being on board S.S. Discovery while searching for the origin of the monoliths. Necropolis is the track which made me feel the most uneasy. Minimal atonal reference in a isolationist atmosphere.

Next on the CD is Cisfinitum, a well known name already and definitely a name to remember. His track is a heavy loop based drone with added field-recordings, slightly incremental towards the end. Anthesteria Feat. Kaj? is the project you might find "unfitting" in this collection, as it exists from mostly guitars and it almost sounds floky in some way. Lunar Abyss Deus Organum opens with a mouthharp, the most non-droney sound one can possibly think of maybe. The track itself becomes a collection of sounds, reminding me of some things of Ghédalia Tazartès, albeit it way less cut-up though.

Instant Movie Combinations' track 'Boiler Pipe' is a nice and minimal analog sounding drone. Compared to the CD known to me it has a clean approach to the sounds and should be labeled minimal experimentalism. Almost at the end of the CD we find Bardoseneticcube with bassy layers, nice and full sounding and very well produced. Bardoseneticcube delivers the longest track on this sampler. What to say about Polaris? Probably the one track you have to decide for yourself. For me the most ungraspable track on here... And the CD ends with Remoteband who created a nice and easy finishing of a great sampler. Maybe Remoteband doesn't deliver the best track on here, but it is a valuable addition to the 'whole' for creating an overview of Russia's best soundsculpturists from this moment.

Band: Various(nl)
Label: Zhelezobeton
Genre: ambient (ambient / soundscapes / ritual / drones)
Type: cd
Grade: 8
Review by: Bauke

0 replies
Discuss this