Russian post-industrial music from George Beloglazov, who also creates computer games with an unconventional author approach. The action takes place in March 1953 in an abandoned Soviet bunker - a place of strange experiments on the human psyche. The game explores such themes as the limits of mental possibilities, EVP, experiments with thought-transference and impact of fear on the human organism. The game soundtrack, presented on this CD, embodies the project's concept in sound. Imbued with an industrial atmosphere, leisurely soundscapes turn into states of calm estrangement and isolationism. Excursions into the unknown corners of the consciousness bring to its surface old memories and long forgotten yet vaguely familiar images... and laboratorial claustrophobia grows into light melancholia. This musical picture is performed in the trademark style of Anthesteria combining abstract dark ambient, melodic neoclassical and experimental sonic artifacts. Ltd x 500 copies in an A5 gatefold card sleeve with full-colour cards depicting game locations and fragments of a book about mental suggestions from 1962. Finished off in a nice card slipcase.
"Invisible Landscapes" is dark ambient created with a typical Russian approach, combining an homage to native traditions, deeply melancholic contemplation and powerful thirst for the beyond. Dark red embers, twilight, wind swaying over tree tops, wandering in forest labyrinths and gradually dissolving in the infinite circle of life and death. Rich sounds are created with Soviet analogue synthesizers, some field recordings, voice samples and digital processing. The music of Corvuz is inspired by the project Staruha Mha, with a cover-version of the 'Thawing In Fog' rounding up the album. Ltd x 500 copies in a digipak.
UK 11£
Europe 12£
World 13£
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CYCLOTIMIA - 'Celestis: Space Ceremonial Music' CD (Shadowplay Release / Zhelezobeton / Monopoly Records)
An album inspired by the activity of the American aerospace company Space Services Inc. which among other things dispatches human ashes in space. For more than 30 years Space Services Inc. has been a leader company in the sphere of private space missions of scientific and educational character. By agreement with Space Services Inc. a copy of "Celestis" CD will be launched in space on board of the rocket with ashes of 179 people from different countries and will be the official soundtrack for the memorial "Legacy" flight. Musically "Celestis" fundamentally differs from their previous works - real old-school atmospheres using vintage devices. File alongside Brian Eno, Klaus Schulze, Download, Coil, Bad Sector and even The Future Sound Of London or The Orb. 2010 reissue with bonus track 'Another Time Another Place'.
CYCLOTIMIA - 'Sci-Fi Music (Soundtrack To A Nonexistent Movie)' CD (Shadowplay Release / Zhelezobeton / Monopoly Records)
As the title suggests, the new work by the Russian masters of electronic soundscapes represents a score to an imaginary sci-fi movie. The musicians are admirers of old-school Sci-Fi / Cyberpunk genres and for a long time they have felt a desire to make some music inspired by soundtracks of sci-fi blockbusters from 1970-80s... Spaceship battles, alien colonies, teleportation and mysterious droid ceremonies are only part of the images created by this music. The album contains both dynamic rhythmic "hits" and disturbing space ambient as well as avant-garde neoclassical pieces. Ltd x 500 copies.
"Styx" is the most mainstream work in the Cyclotimia discography. The music is free of their usual experimental and academic explorations; here the emphasis is made on the rhythms. Eleven compositions depict the sickly technogenic reality of the planet wrapped by networks of global capital, media glamour and ideological obsessions. In ancient Greek mythology the Styx was the embodiment of primeval dread and gloom, from which the first living creatures emerged. This was a personification of the underworld river whose pestilent currents seclude life from death. Similarly to this mythic river, currents of credits, percent, funds, financial quotations, capital issues, barrels of oil and advertising spaces flow on the Cyclotimia album to the accompaniment of hard, sterile and atmospheric electronic music. Recommended for fans of Skinny Puppy, Clock DVA, Laibach, Front Line Assembly. Ltd x 500 copies.
"TimeBank" is a collection of exclusive unreleased compositions recorded by Cyclotimia from 2003-2007. A post-industrial "dish" containing cyber jazz and IDM, neoclassical and trademark technological ambient, old-school electronics and atmospheric new age, experimental and much more. Despite the seeming stylistic incompatibility the band has succeeded in creating an album with a spectacular plot similar to a good Hollywood thriller. A special jewel on the album is the track 'Nocturne' combining aerial melodies and uneasy sonic cinematography. Also worth mentioning is the "live" 10-minute prog-industrial suite "Economic Meditation", imbued with psychedelic drama. Ltd x 500 copies.
DMT - 'Selected Funbient Works 1-4' 2 x CD (Zhelezobeton / Aquarellist / Monochrome Vision / KultFront)
Dmitriy Tolmatskiy (1970-2009) - a journalist and musician from the city of Saratov, one of the first promoters of alternative intellectual culture and particularly industrial music in post-Soviet Russia. He was the creator of the RWCDAX website, which had certain influence on the mindset of many modern personalities of Russian post-industrial art. The compositions included on "Selected Funbient Works 1-4" were recorded by the Dmitriy in the first half of 00s. Initially it was planned to release four parts of "Funbient" on four separate CDs. However later Dmitriy selected the best for a double album release. The album vividly displays the complex music world of DMT, which, like everything innovative, exists on the crossing of several musical styles and directions: from dark-ambient and industrial noise sketches to technoid rhythms and pure sonic experiments. Ltd x 500 copies in a gatefold digisleeve.
Hypnoz is a project of Dmitry Zubov, a Moscow musician, who endowed lovers of post-industrial music with such names as Hum and Staruha Mha. Since 1993 Hypnoz has released one CD on Russian label Insofar Vapour Bulk, which gathered tracks from different periods and a couple of very limited editions. The basis of most of the tracks for "Breath of Earth" was recorded by Dmitry together with Evgeny Voronovsky (Cisfinitum) during their joint night psychedelic sessions, and this is evidently felt in their mood. Stylistically this can be called tranquil electronic ambient with a remarkable experimental touch. Slowly twisting sound helixes, drawing inside the astral subspaces, pulsating rhythms, cosmic sounds of old analogue synths. Outsize package. Ltd x 500 copies.
UK 10£
Europe 11£
World 12£
QUANTITY
MAEROR TRI - 'The A.V.E. - Tapes / Live In Nevers' CD (Zhelezobeton)
Maeror Tri existed from 1988-1996 (members now recording as Troum and 1000schoen). Over those nine years they made a serious contribution to the development of the European post-industrial scene, focusing on the transcendental quality of sound, its ability to expand consciousness and to awaken timeless and non-personal spiritual experiences. They recorded their industrial drone ambient music with the use of guitars, percussion, tape loops, various objects and effects, turning everything in a coherent flux of unconscious drones. This CD contains the last unreleased recordings by Maeror Tri. Four tracks are fragments of the band's 12-hour concert at the Audio-Visual-Experimental festival in Arnhem, Netherlands in November 1995; the fifth track is a part of their performance at the Musique Ultimes festival in Nevers, France in May 1995. The material was remastered from the original DAT tapes by Sergey Uak-Kib (Kshatriy). Ltd x 500 hand-numbered copies in a digifile with artwork by Vresnit.
MAJDANEK WALTZ & SAL SOLARIS - 'Tenebrae' CD (Zhelezobeton / Shadowplay Release)
A collaboration album by two prominent Russian post-industrial projects. The conceptual core of the record is the poetry of Paul Celan, one of the major German-language poets of the post-World War II era. His cryptic fractured lyrics spoken in a specific estranged way by Pavel Blumkin is enchased by a weird fusion of avant-garde neoclassic and dark ambient music. Decadent sounds of violin, cello, clarinet, piano and bayan from Majdanek Waltz blend with shimmering electronic drones and uneasy soundscapes of Sal Solaris in paradoxical unity making your heart throb painfully. The last track features the haunting voice of Rada Anchevskaya (Rada & Ternovnik). The depth of this dream lures and makes you return and experience it again and again.
NOISES OF RUSSIA - 'Humility' 2 x CD Enhanced (Zhelezobeton)
Under the cover of the 3rd studio album of Noises Of Russia - a project which has chosen Tanatos to be their perpetual muse - there are two post-modern mysteries at once, two doors to the viscous and twilight space over-saturated with the symbols of death of various traditions. The final countdown turns into a long immersion in a cold cerebral-sonic abyss where it's impossible to find out for sure if you are calmed or frightened, comforted or sneered at... if they mourn for you, a mortal, or are they glad for you, an immortal. The album also contains a ritual video for the track "Spirit", not however making the issue more clear. Ltd x 500 copies in a very nice gatefold digisleeve.
Debut release from Zhelezobeton's sublabel Muzyka Voln. This compilation of the same name contains compositions from 12 Russian projects playing ambient / drone music. Each project introduces the listener to its own sound world: mystical stories, isolationism, altered states of consciousness, space landscapes, monotonous technogenic rumble, guitar passages and much more. Exclusive tracks from: Anthesteria feat. Kaj?, Cisfinitum, Bardoseneticcube, Closing The Eternity, Exit In Grey, Hum, Instant Movie Combinations, Kshatriy, Lunar Abyss Deus Organum, Necropolis, Polaris and RemoteBand. A great comp for those interested in the Russian experimental scene and for lovers of beautiful contemplative music. Ltd x 500 copies in a six-panel digipak, decorated with photos of the Baltic Sea.
