Grundik Kasyansky & Alexey Sysoev – Selene Variation
4.22.22 by Matty McPherson
Tabs Out | Grundik Kasyansky & Alexey Sysoev – Selene Variation
Grundik Kasyansky & Alexey Sysoev – Selene Variation
4.22.22 by Matty McPherson
Let’s talk about the crackly pops – not Budzo or Pop Rocks or New Coke, I mean that tacit sound that appears within your friend’s collection of worn vinyl. A few bleepsters or crate diggers like to play with the crackles and make for an atmospheric, “temporally unfrozen” type of listen. An addictively bloody sound I’ve always found to be; perhaps a reminder of my own psychology, which has been much too heightened this past month with sciatica. I cannot be 100% certain that Grundik Kasyansky & Alexey Sysoev were thinking exactly in that manner with their Selene Variation cassette for Dinzu Artefacts. What I do know though, is that those crackles are practically the foreground of their four tracks and that they are quite enticing soundscapes, giving off a vague, icy pulses.
The general dealio here is that Kasyansky is taking Sysoev’s Selene piano piece (released in 2015) and manipulating it with an unspecified “feedback synthesizer.” What was classical piano now feels like the shards of a funhouse mirror, while the minimal electronics offering a microhouse means to escape into. These four pieces are resultantly precocious compositions that evoke ghostly aberrations and ominous fog, even when there’s a chilled, libidioless BPM running through things. Variation I bobs and weaves, as the pulsing crackles contend for this music to be placed in the most austere, haunted chill out room. Meanwhile, Variation II slowly fizzles the piano to the edges of the mix, leaving that pulse and the quips of Kasyanskys electronics at the forefront. It’s a patient, deep listen that seems to be less of an experiment than a laying out of parts.
A theory which is confirmed with side B’s single longform, Variation IV. Syosecv’s snippets of the piano piece are placed for great, threatening (not frightening) effect. They jump and quiver against the jitters of Kasyansky’s electronics. Themselves on this track, there’s a real sense of direction, from the bizarre dub-pulse hiding at a tertiary level near the start, to the computer-machine sentience of the piece’s midpoint. When the two begin to meet for their final third, it’s a cyber-esque banshee beat. Yet it’s all wiggled out and white-eyed, peering dead ahead with a thousand yard stare. Ah cripes, I didn’t mean to make this one sounds so scary, but dammit! The duo really did make a nail bitter of a closer. Dinzu Artefacts ya did it again!
Edition of 100 available at the Dinzu Artefacts Bandcamp page.
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4.20.22 by Matty McPherson
Jason Hovatter – FIELD Spring/Summer 2021 Mixtape
4.14.22 by Jacob DeRaadt
Tabs Out | Jason Hovatter – FIELD Spring/Summer 2021 Mixtape
Jason Hovatter – FIELD Spring/Summer 2021 Mixtape
4.14.22 by Jacob DeRaadt
Jason Hovatter has been in projects such as Waldteufel and Gulag, as well as his ongoing project A Minority Of One. While being a departure from his precious projects, this 60 minute release has moments that conjure up the animalistic tribal sampling and looping of AMO1, but with all natural cadences and overlays. Sounds breathing in a beautiful rotting world.
Sometimes there is a sharp contrast in the overlay of field recordings between seemingly unnatural and natural sounds of birds and insects, wind being blown through tree branches, etc… Machines and insects and water rhythms come together in almost surrealist manner. The listener is treated to a hi-fidelity voyage of the aural senses. All natural world sounds being displayed in full. Some of the insect sounds are just insane on the second side of this. It makes me feel like my head is in that cloud of buzzing insects until the birds bust in and disperse out the gathering intensity of the precious sounds. Displays of call and respond techniques of the birds really had my dogs and my attention held. I’ve never gotten this many head tilts from my dog in so many listening experiences as this tape. Great fidelity puts you in the middle of the action.
There’s parts where the layering of recordings works really well with delicate natural chance interplay between takes. Rather than being a simple field recording album and also not a cut-up digital effects muddled remix of excellent live raw natural sounds, we are treated to considered pairings of field recording sessions.
The bird sounds on the opening of the second side have this contrasting mechanical drone sound that I can’t get my head around. Total head scratcher moments wondering where you are on earth hearing these sounds and immense curiosity towards the creatures emitting them. The interplay with the frog sounds is palpable tension of daylight frivolity and guttural utterance of the nocturnal amphibian. One isn’t sure if layering is employed on some parts in a collage manner, but tense moods nonetheless.
Water is also another big theme on this one. One can almost hear rain falling onto the earth as the wind howls across the meadow. Again there’s incredible detail in the sounds here that I rarely hear on tape that makes this feel like a Hands To or Yeast Culture album at some moments of the storm recording.
I write all this before looking at the extensive liner notes and seeing how wrong I was about the sounds on this tape. HA! Sort of a tribute to the transcendent nature of sound over recording and playback devices as being the thing we long for. This is discussed at length in the liner notes as well.
Cassettes and FIELD notes available.