COURTIS / THE MOGLASS / ANDREY KIRITCHENKO
(CD, Nexsound/Gold Soundz/Tibprod/1000+1tilt)
Anla Courtis provides sounds for Andrey Kiritchenko
to work on. Anla Courtis also provides sounds for The Moglass to
work on. And both provide sounds for Anla Courtis to work on. Obviously,
this three way global interchange of sounds and noises has Anla Courtis at
the centre (this time), though Kiritchenko starts off followed by the
Moglass and ended by Anla Courtis. So much for the basics of this release.
What is missing to fill the matrix are the interchanges between The Moglass
and Andrey Kiritchenko, but there are no reasons to fill a matrix aside
purely formal ones and formality is something that you should forget about
completely when confronting this release. Or any release on Nexsound for
that matter, because they are all challenging your senses, your hearing
restraints and the status of fringe music.
What combines the three artists is that they tend to
take on sound as something physical, elevating it to a tangible level that
works not only through the auditive sense but also via the skin. Even though
The Moglass are the most “song-oriented” of the lot from their history
onwards, they also step into the chaotic-dynamic lines of this animated
soundforgery. They seem to work with sound like a lion tamer works his wild
animals, teasing them and teaching them, but always on the lookout for they
might break out and wound someone. They are also very eclectic in their
work, splunging into all kinds of ambients and sounds which were neatly
divided by journalist types and collectors and with a wave of their hand
mixing them all together again. And in the end all three have long careers,
discographies and impressive biographies to show for them.
Andrey Kiritchenko’s tracks are like a wave, but no
tsunami but a slow motion wave that surrounds and embrazes you, tightly and
densely, and starts to drag you down. His processed field recordings and
noises (the notes say guitar but it is hard to believe and anyway wouldn’t
be recognizable from something else in this mix except for some parts in his
third track) are dynamic and frantically changing while remaining massive
and powerfull throughout. When they start to fade out your brain starts to
breathe again and you wonder if the crackles of fire in your head are for
real or still coming from the CD. But what did you expect from on of Eastern
Europe’s foremost proponents of noise and electroexperimental music? This
adds very nicely to his growing and recommended discography.
The Moglass start off almost atmospherically with waves
of almost new age sounds and synths. The stress lays on almost, as almost
always. The band is know to prefer being led by the sounds than to lead the
sounds, so this time the sounds first lead them to a really quiet and
peaceful place and afterwards to more rocky and rough terrain, which still
has a lot of good echo. They also add spooky and tripping vocals to great
effect and with lots of echo and sustain, though it has to be said that I
like their current release “sparrow juice” (also on Nexsound) some more
than the big walls and monumental sounds they build up on here. On the other
hand, the finely carved and worked out songs on their album wouldn’t
really fit here.
Anla Courtis has adopted many names during his long
career, which started off in Buenos Aires when he studied classical guitar,
piano and composition, then threw all of that away to play a very early form
of free rock with another guy and a third guy, one of which was a mongoloid
who sang and played the drums, under the name of The Reynols. Believe it or not, before Courtis
called it quits for The Reynols the trio released more than one hundred CDs
and vinyls worldwide almost everywhere and, which is much more important,
has connected to likeminded musicians in every town of the world possibly.
Here he connects on a completely different level. He actually flies off in
various directions during the course of his four tracks, and sometimes he
flies into different directions at the same time. A combining element of his
contribution is wild creativity and a sense for being “out there”. I
have no better words to describe it. He dares to use gentle tone and to fall
into more softer paces at times where his cooperators might have chose power
and volume in favor of subtlety or microsounds, for instance when he lays
softly swaying yet deftly distorted guitar chords over a bass-heavy basis of
crackling industrial noise.
