Vyacheslav Artyomov - Way (1990)

To complete the postings of Artyomov's music that I have, here's Way.  Another in the series from when the final-stage, gradually opening up Soviet Union caught the CD bug and pressed dozens of mostly classical releases, it compiles three recordings from the mid 80s.

The first of these is the eerie drift of Tristia, written in 1983 for piano, organ, trumpet and vibraphone with string group.  The sustained atmosphere it creates makes Tristia my standout track on this album.  Then there's two symphonic works: In Memoriam, completed 1984, with a sprawling solo violin part, and the first in Artyomov's Symphony Of The Way series, Way To Olympus, also finished in 1984.  This 33-minute work gives the brass a thorough workout before crashing to an end with an organ chord, having evoked the epic journey of its title.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Elegies
Invocations
Requiem

Mikhail Chekalin - Concerto Grosso No. 1 (2000 compi, rec. 1989-92)

Another instalment (see links below) in the 12-LP series from the early 90s that gave Russian symphonic-synthesist Mikhail Chekalin his breakthrough, Concerto Grosso No. 1 was recorded in 1989.  The album opens with the 14 minutes of Meditation (Russian Mystery), finding Chekalin in dark ambient mode with plenty of odd industrial sounds, wordless vocals and eerie piano over the top of the droning base.

The haunted circus atmosphere of Fascination and synth-strings of Chamber Music show Chekalin continuing to show promise in the soundtrack field that he'd move into, with his hardware updated to include Yamaha, Kurzweil and Roland keyboards.  On the second half of the orignal LP, To Appreciate The March offers some of his weirdest vocal experiments, and the 11-minute Symphony Of Lamentations is possibly the album's highlight - it's just plain odd, with more wild vocalisations and strange sound effects wafting through the ether.  Of the three early 90s bonus tracks, the 20-minute Dissonata is the definite pick, working through a similar sustained, warped atmosphere as the two long tracks on the album.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Meditative Music For A Prepared Organ, Vol. 1 & 2
The Symphony-Phonogram
Between Spring And Autumn By Stealth

Popular Mechanics - Insect Culture (1987)

Following on nicely from Popofoni last Friday, here's another insane cult item that was sparked by a TV show.  In this case, it was a BBC series aired in December 1985 called Comrades, about life in the new glasnost Soviet Union, specifically an episode called All That Jazz.  The star of the episode was avant-garde pianist Sergey Kuryokhin (1954-1996), who captured the imagination of viewer Colin Fallows, a young academic (now Professor, still at Liverpool John Moores University) who had just produced a Dada compilation in the UK, and then Pete Fulwell, who'd released the record.

The two Englishmen contacted Kuryokhin, who had already begun working with tape-collage composers Igor Verichev and Valery Alakhov, aka The New Composers.  Along with saxophonist Igor Butman, and spurred on by the encouragement of Fallows & Fulwell, the collective worked under the name Popular Mechanics to produce a jazz/electronics/tape collage album.  They plundered popular Russian radio, film and theatre for a mindbending 45-minute aural soup that was titled Insect Culture, appropriate to the image of marching ants that Fallows found for the LP label.

Insect Culture was released in 1987 on Fulwell's ARK label, and thanks to a Russian CD reissue in the late 90s, here it is, complete with an unreleased promo 12" remix entitled, in further Dada homage, The Blue Blouse.  The whole thing is a treat to listen to in its ever-shifting variety, as varispeeded tape loops of the sound sources blend with Kuryokhin's synths and Butman's sax solos.  Anyone who loves Faust, early Zappa, early Residents, etc etc knows what to do - grab this immediately.  Everyone else - grab this immediately.  It's a classic.

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Georgy Dmitriev - Chamber and Electronic Music (2000 compilation)

Equal amounts fascinating and highly listenable stuff here from Georgy Dmtiriev (b. 1942, Krasnodar, Russia), in an hour-long compilation.  No recording dates here, but all the compositions date from the 80s.  The first piece is probably my personal favourite, a 19-minute saxophone quartet, In The Spirit Of Herman Hesse (1983).  Some almost jazz-like moments give way to more complex writing, at times microtonal, towards the end.

Warsaw Fantasy, for violin and piano, was written in 1983 in response to events in Poland that year.  This one is apparently a really good example of Dmitriev's enjoyment of stylistic allusions and 'music as dialogue' - among the subtle quotations I could definitely pick out a Chopin nocturne and a waltz.  The 'Nicolo' of the title of the other violin/piano piece is Paganini, on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Stained Glass for oboe, clarinet, alto sax and bassoon (1981) was another one that really appealed to me in its instrumentation.  It's in two parts, a nicely languid one for monotone stained glass, and a more animated one for multicoloured glass.  In the latter, there's some of the staccato pulsing in similar style to early Xenakis, which was nice.  Speaking of Iannis, in 1990 Dmitriev paid him a visit in Paris following an invitation to try out the UPIC graphic-interface composing software that he'd developed.  The result was Adagio For UPIC which closes this collection in memorable style with its eerie swishes of sound.

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Galina Ustvolskaya - Compositions I - III (composed 1970-75, rec. '93, rel. '95)

We've had a lot of nice, sunny melodic music wafting through these pages of late; nothing wrong with that, and perfectly in tune with my general summer listening.  Don't want to lose sight of the harsher, more abrasive sounds that I love though, and that have always formed a core column of this blog - so here's something I've had hanging around for a while.

Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) spent her life in Petrograd/Leningrad/Saint Petersburg, and channeled all of the upheaval that went with those name changes into powerful, cathartic music.  I've still to take the plunge with her notorious Piano Sonatas, apparently physically painful to play; this is where I started, with the three 'Compositions' written during the early-mid 70s.  Each has a subtitle taken from traditional Mass liturgy, but unlike Sofia Gubaidulina Ustvolskaya never professed any faith, and her use of religious tropes was purely for artistic style.

As with much of Ustvolskaya's output, the Composition cycle uses odd instrumentation, with the three-part Composition I (Dona Nobis Pacem) being an ominous cat-and-mouse game for piano, tuba and piccolo.  Following this is the ten part, 21-minute Composition II (Dies Irae), which is the most dramatic demonstration of Ustvolskaya's 'blocks of sound' style, with its attendant extreme dynamics.  Heavily featured here is the "Ustvolskaya cube", a wooden chipboard box played with beaters, as well as piano and eight double basses.  After this exhausting listen, Composition III (Benedictus Qui Venit) for four flutes, four bassoons and piano is positively relaxing by comparison.  A hugely recommended listening experience - make sure you're sitting comfortably.

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Vyacheslav Artyomov - Invocations (1991 compi, rec. 1981-90)

Haven't posted anything in a while by Artyomov, the Russian composer (b. 1940, Moscow) who started to fascinate me a couple of years ago, so here's something I just got hold of, featuring four of his works for percussion.  These recordings were performed by Mark Pekarsky and his percussion ensemble, with a soprano part by Lidia Davydova on Invocations.  That one's a four part work, as is the Sonata Of Meditations; the Olympia disc (cover above) was pressed with these works as just one track apiece, so I've added in the proper divisions as per the Melodiya release.

All of these percussive works show Artyomov's interest in the ancient and the ritualistic, in contrast to his more religious music (e.g. Requiem, link below).  Totem (composed 1976) and Ave Atque Vale (1989) are self-contained pieces, and run the full range of percussive sounds and dynamics.  A Sonata Of Meditations (1978) is structured over the course of a day, like Indian ragas; there's a Morning Meditation, an Afternoon Meditation, a nice contemplative Evening one, and my favourite, the playful but still eerie Midnight one, with the most focus on tuned percussion.

The strangest work of all is Invocations, composed from 1979-1981.  As mentioned above, the Perkasky Ensemble are joined by the great Russian soprano of early music and the avant-garde, Lidia Davydova (1932-2011), who could be likened to a Soviet Joan La Barbara in her championing of the most experimental and complex vocal material.  Here she adds not just a great soprano performance, but many different voice sounds that take this work into another dimension, particularly in the most ritualistic Invocation of Sounds-of Fire.  It's clear why this compilation has Invocations up front in the title - the other works are very good, but this one is essential listening.

Russian CD cover

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Artyomov previously posted at SGTG: Elegies / Requiem

Other essential posts for percussive obsessives:
Steve Reich's Drumming
Iannis Xenakis' Pléiades / Psappha
Hugues Dufourt's Erewhon 
Les Percussions De Strasbourg compilation

Sofia Gubaidulina - The Seven Last Words, Ruayat, Vivente-Non Vivente (1990 compi, rec. 1979-89)

detail from The Last Supper by Nikolai Ge, 1861

For your Easter weekend pleasure, an amazing work for cello, bayan (Russian accordion) and strings from a unique and uncompromising composer, Tatar-Russian Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931).  An envelope-pushing writer in whatever form she composes in, Gubaidulina is also an intensely spiritual individual, and this setting of the Seven Last Words of Christ (inspired by the texts used by Heinrich Schütz and Joseph Haydn) was written in 1982.  Her use of chromaticism, glissandi, microtonality and use of atmospheric open space are perfectly suited to the anguished text.

The first couple of movements establish the main instruments with a swirling drone advancing like angry hornets - or indeed like Kraftwerk via Zeitkratzer.  Melancholy pleading strings fill in the quieter moments, continuing into the third as the cello scrapes away and the bayan stabs in mortal pain (Mel Gibson, you missed a trick not using this as a Passion soundtrack!).  The longest section at the centre, the fourth movement, increases the anguish and urgency all round with chromatic spirals from the bayan and more choppy, frenzied cello and strings.  The sounds in the fifth movement are truly astounding - think it's the bayan making that buzzing drone?  Zeitkratzer have to do an interpretation of this.

The second work in this collection dates from 1969, and was recorded in '79.  Rubayat opens with unsettling percussion reminiscent of Bartok's Music For String, Percussion and Celesta, before the ensemble introduces the baritone singing ancient Persian verses.  For Gubaidulina, the choice of texts here was meant to convey the universality of spiritual longing - also apparently one of the reasons she liked all that rising and falling chromaticism, of which there's plenty in the orchestral passages.

Lastly on this collection we get to hear the composer herself operating the legendary ANS, the Russian photoelectric proto-synthesiser that reached many people's consciousness (including mine) in recent years via Coil.  Vivente-Non Vivente was composed in 1970, and the recording date given here is 1988.  The device's printed and scratched glass plates evoke an eerie, swishing and blooping dark ambience that sounds truly otherworldly, especially in Gubaidulina's hands.

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Mikhail Chekalin - The Symphony-Phonogram (2004 compi, rec 1980-89)

Some more Chekalin as promised - this one, from the circa 2004 CD reissue series, based on his 1988 work The Symphony-Phonogram.  As previously noted, the first substantial release of Chekalin's music was a series of 12 LPs in the early 90s, and Symphony-Phonogram was one of them.  As on the Prepared Organ albums, we are given the assurance that "all music is performed live, in real time... without recourse to sequencer technologies and without computer editing".

After a dramatic opening section of dark and brooding keyboard riffs and shrieks of eerie synth over the top, The Symphony-Phonogram settles down in its second and third parts to more understated dark ambience and occasional martial rhythm tracks.  Vangelis is still an obvious reference point, particularly in Part 2, but the relative absence of studio gloss definitely works in Chekalin's favour, making the minor key melodies and percussion all the more unsettling and effective.  By Part 4, Chekalin has started to add his trademark wordless vocals to the mix, with the brief Part 5 being particularly ominous and ritualistic.  All in all, The Symphony-Phonogram is a really solid electronic work, one that a lot of post-industrial listeners in the West would've lapped up in the 80s if they'd had access to it then.

The additional tracks on this reissue start with 1984's Night Ritual For Choir And Drums, which occupies similar territory but with a stronger rhythmic element as per the title.  If someone had told me this was an outtake of early Coil jamming around, it would've at least been plausible.  Next up is Psychodelic Fresco, apparently a 1980 live recording direct to cassette "at an underground session", displaying Chekalin's atmospheric talents well on their way to maturity.  After a short fragment from the mid-80s, the CD ends with Democracy Of Noise from 1989.  It's not as strong as what's preceded it, but I've left it in anyway as it shows the variety in Chekalin's sound.

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Mikhail Chekalin - Meditative Music For A Prepared Organ, Vol. 1 & 2 (rec. 1979-1983)

Been absolutely fascinated by this guy for a while now, so time to start posting his music.  Mikhail Chekalin was born in Moscow in 1959, and since the late 70s has worked out of his basement studio carving out a prolific niche in symphonic electronica, with detours into shorter-form work, film music and even solo piano.  Chekalin had difficulty getting much music released in the Soviet 80s, even getting unwelcome KGB attention for having such sophisticated tech squirreled away.  His big break came in 1990/1 when a group of Moscow artists known as 'The Twenty' started featuring his music at their M'Ars Gallery, leading to a series of 12 LPs of his early work being released on the Melodiya label with the artists' paintings as their covers.

Three of these albums were Meditative Music For Prepared Electricorgan, Vols. 1-3, reissued in 2003 as the two 77-minute CDs in today's post.  Described as "electric organ with effects, solo vocal... all music was produced in one take, at a concert session, without recourse to multitrack technologies... no synthesisers [except for one track]", these releases felt like an ideal starting point for me.

The two 25+ minute tracks from LP 1 sit together on CD 1, with Meditation With Rhythm-Beating up first.  After about 10 minutes of just spacey organ fades out, Chekalin adds in his haunting wordless vocal, and the slow rhythm track only makes a brief appearance around the 20 minute mark.  Sounds Of Colour starts off more sparkly and melodic, but then things get much darker and more abstract for the rest of the epic journey.  A definite comparison could be pre-synth Klaus Schulze, and the vocal parts at their most austere and ritualistic even made me think of Jarman-soundtracking TG.

LP 2 started out with the two versions of Symphonietta Of The Air, which round out CD 1 here.  On CD 2, the seven tracks offer more variety, kicking off with the brief atmospheric Adagio (LP 2) and the almost Roedelius-esque chirpy classicism of Bucolic Tunes (LP 3).  By contrast, the more rhythmic Physiological Toccata and Ostinato-Asthenia (both LP 3) have a harshness closer to Asmus Tietchens, but the remaining tracks from LP 2 are back in the 'Meditative' zone.  The longest of these is the 19-minute Meditation With Little Bells, which is nice and spaced, almost Vangelis-like, as is the only synth appearance on the abstract Impromptu With Bells.

For all the comparisons I've noted, they're only really surface similarities, and Chekalin's sound world is very much his own, with these two collections for electric organ serving as an ideal introduction to his early work.  Will definitely be exploring further, and posting more albums here in the months to come.

Disc 1
Disc 2

Vyacheslav Artyomov - Requiem (rec. 1989)

Quite fancied posting more Artyomov after mentioning him the other day, so this'll do as an Easter-weekend post.  Artyomov's Requiem was written between 1985 and 1988, and recorded in 1989.  Opening with a dramatic organ blast, like a more rough-around-the-edges version of Fauré's Requiem, the various sections of the work show Artyomov's orchestral forces and use of organ and bells at their most fully realized.

The choral parts are at times stately, unsettling and mournful, as centuries of Russian Orthodoxy and other liturgical traditions are woven into something timeless.  As Artyomov himself preferred, this is "eternal music" rather than just contempoary classical.  This CD was a bit hard to digest when I first got it - all one track! - so I split it up using timings that I found, which made it more accessible.  Definitely one worth sticking with.

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Vyacheslav Artyomov - Elegies (1990 compi, rec. 1983/1987)

Been getting into Artyomov (b. 1940, Moscow) lately, so time to share.  This 1990 compilation brings together three complementary works for strings and percussion, and feels like an ideal entry point.  A rough comparison might be the Arvo Pärt of Cantus & Tabula Rasa; Artyomov definitely has a spiritual-mystic bent that he fuses perfectly with an interest in the music of Eurasian liturgy and folklore.

Both of the self-contained shorter works on this disc, Lamentations for strings, percussion, piano and organ (1985) and Gurian Hymn for three solo violins, strings and percussion (1986) are beautiful icy blasts of melancholy that are starting to sink in much more for me at this time of year than when I got the CD in high summer.  Long, mournful string lines and twinkling, eerie percussion giving way to solemn bell-tones are the order of the day for these two bewitching pieces.

Taking up the rest of the disc is the three-movement Symphony of Elegies (1977), inspired, according to Artyomov, by some time spent in the Armenian mountains.  The writing for strings here approaches the kind of dense, chromatic clusters you'll find in Ligeti's most unsettling work, and the 20-minute third movement is a thing of otherworldy wonder, giving the chiming bells an austere, mystical centre-stage.

All in all, just the kind of wonderful, haunting music to get its composer blacklisted by the Soviet musical establishment, along with a handful of equally fascinating composers - I'm already starting to like the sound of Denisov's first symphony.  But for today, enjoy this handy Artyomov primer.

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Boris Murashkin - Bio-Energetic Music (composed 1980s, rel. 1991)

A fascinating slab of Russian electroacoustic/choral/prog/krautesque weirdness, this CD should probably by rights be called "This Is Us, O Lord!" after the work that takes up 44 of its 53 minutes; "Bio-energetic Music" is really a genre descriptor, of the composer's own invention.  But anyway, some background (with many, many thanks to Google Translate):

Boris Murashkin was born in Siberia in 1949, and from 1980 worked as a music editor, sound engineer and composer in a film production studio called Novosibirsk Telefilm.  During the 80s he developed what he called "Bio-energetic music", which does sound like some sort of wooly new-age therapeutic proposition, and by all accounts that's what he ended up devoting himself to from about 1993 onwards - there's a couple of 1995 releases out there that don't bode well from their track titles and liner notes - but before that there was this eerie masterpiece.

This Is Us, O Lord! (I also found "It's Us, O Lord!" as an alternate translation, which makes a bit more sense) appears to have been conceived as a film soundtrack. The film, entitled The Transfiguration, is credited (I think) in the CD notes to a director named Yuri Malashkin, and was a 1988 documentary marking the millenial anniversary of The Baptism Of Rus', an event that led to the foundation of the Russian Orthodox Church.  Short of learning Russian and a ton of Cyrillic unicode, I haven't been able find a trace of either film or director online.  The music, however, is more than interesting enough in its own right.

The main sonic backdrop for the work sounds like a cross between the desolate mid-section of Pink Floyd's Echoes and a somewhat less ominous version of Can's Aumgn.  After about ten minutes of this, the first recurring choral fragment is introduced.  Gradually, more incantatory liturgical voices are introduced, along with twanging zither and synth sequences, all echoing around in the ether.  The introduction of an organ and some flutes bring to mind Tangerine Dream's Alpha Centauri, with a hint of Saucerful-era Floyd.  Just after the halfway point there's also a crying baby in the mix, which will come back to haunt us in the final minute, and some bird sounds (assuming the latter are real and not synthesised). 

The second track on the disc, Kama Sutra, sounds at first like a continuation of the main piece, picking up the same flute sounds that have just died away, then the combination of Indian instruments with some electronic burbling make this epilogue sound as if pre-Hosianna Popol Vuh had discovered the sitar early.  All in all, a truly bizarre listening experience not to be missed.

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