16P17R15O19T15O19T23Y16P & OBOZDUR ‎– Iron Swans. Spring Sessions

Monotype Series // Cd-r 2017

Location: Krasnojarsk // Kamensk-Ural'skij
Coordinates: 56°04′N 92°45′E // 56°24′N 61°56′E

With this CD-r, released by Monotype Series (another label managed by Vitaly Maklakov), we find ourselves in the Siberian town of Krasnojarsk where the alphanumeric project 16P17R15O19T15O19T23Y16P resides.
Behind this initials hides one of the most enigmatic and controversial people that we'll find in our mind trips to the Russian territory: Yevgeny Solomatin, industrial and dark-ambient scene pioneer in the Motherland since the 90s.
After stopping over to Krasnojarsk we'll move towards Kamensk-Ural'skij, city of Vitaly Maklakov, appearing here with one of his countless pseudonyms, "Obozdur".
Solomatin is one of the most obscure and well-preserved secrets you'll stumble into in this blog.
Besides from the 16P17R15O19T15O19T23Y16P project (if we cross out the numbers, only the word prototyp remains) Solomatin is also known, for example, as Dr. Feitnathoroth, Hilderend, Tchort or Gorduw - maybe this one being his most known project, when he played in the power electonics music scene.
What distinguish the concept of music of Solomatin is what merges the typical Krasnojarsk's musician theme: violence, nihilism, xenophonia, the necessity of war and, obviously, an unrestrained mysanthropy. In the past Solomatin has even been incarcerated for selling weapons.
Anyways, for whoever wanted to go deeper in this matter, we'll link some interviews where you'll get to understand better this person's philosophy.
Allow yourselves a little help from google translate:
 
http://folvorkmusic.chat.ru/philosophy.htm

The aforementioned CD-r is composed of three very intimist industrial tracks that slowly turn into long scenes of solitude and endless personal turmoil.
The ambient and field recording components are always present in the three tracks and, sometimes, they let us breath, and take time to wet our head and face with cold water to be able to bear with all this malaise.
But the best part is yet to come.
The disc lets all his power and mysanthropy out in track 2 and 3, my favourites of this CD.
You are suddenly swallowed whole by an infernal machinery emitting obsessive noise from where you can't go away.
I could spend hours and hours just to listen to this noise that have an hypnotic effect on me.
At the end of track 2, birds singing can be heard from a distance, but all this won't let you make peace with nature. In this CD, there is no hope and even nature is of course seen as our number one enemy.
It carries on in this same way in track 3, the infernal machinery is yet again ready to pitilessly waste us in an emotional crescendo, more and more intense and, at the same time, unbearable for someone.
In the end we'll have the feeling of having travelled for long amongst the Siberian ice and snow, and all that unchanging grey of the sky will stay within us for a long while.

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Arseny Litvin ‎– Tiksi

Арсений Литвин
Tiksi

Paper Moon Republic - Ostroga // Cd-r 2017

Location: Novosibirsk
Coordinates: 55°01′N 82°56′E

  

 
Some months ago I’ve had the luck to receive this CD and it struck me in a good way. The musician at issue is Arseny Litvin from Novosibirsk, but his album is a homage to the small polar town of Tiksi. The four tracks of the disc range from the more classical and well-set drone music that never gets boring, laying down to more peaceful moments of field recordings of life lived inside this port town. Sometimes you really get the feeling of being in that small town, walking at night on a ice-cold quay while the wind blows violently against your hair, trying to take refuge from the freezing water in a pair of old dull-colored galoshes that still manage to do their duty. There won’t be a lack of more dramatic and tense moments, like in the case of track no. 3 “The memory of cold earth, encased in a metal constructions”. But everything is, as always, masterfully measured so as to never exceed. Refined severity perfectly accomplished. With the closing track you’ll find yourself shut in your bedroom, forcibly barricaded against the siberian winds that won’t leave you alone for the entirety of the track. Don’t worry though, as these sounds, on the long run, will have a morphine-like effect on your body, and you’ll be able to endure even the strongest and unbearable bite of the cold. The disc I got is a re-release from 2017, published by Litvin’s label (Paper Moon Republic) and by Vitaly Maklakov’s (one of the key profiles of this new Russian noise wave) Ostroga. The release is very well done and the photo collages very evocative. You’ll have the impression of touching with your own two hands those cold buildings, and you’ll have the impression of feeling that cold coming from the wet asphalt. But in the end, the sound of the waves coming from Laptev Sea will drag you to a weird hallucination-like state, between wakefulness and sleep, and the day after you’ll wake up like nothing of this had ever truly existed.

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