ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH – to escape, to breathe, to keep silence

(CD/download, nexsound)

I said it before, that I have my inhibitions towards music that is composed and structured along a pre-existing theory and has no musical idea within the very first spark of its origin. The idea of purely constructed music always makes me cringe and remember the boredom that comes with it. Maybe that prejudice has grown due to the lifelessness of most very academic approaches within this field, because if more of these works would be as exciting as Zagaykevych’s trilogy of quarter-hour concertos under the title of “to escape, to breathe, to keep silence”, then maybe I would have changed my opinion long ago. Moreover, when it comes from Nexsound I am always ready to lend an ear or two.

Zagaykevych is a classically trained composer with a remarkable biography and worklist, and maybe using Nexsound as a release is a welcomed haven of freedom and artistic liberty that gives these recordings the push that takes them the one or two steps further that makes it so interesting. I still can’t see the “process of human self-identification in an imaginary city environment”, which is the underlying idea to these three pieces, but I sense the tension and releases that make up these three pieces.

“To escape” peruses violin-sounds from a very distinctive and clear recording to highly processed noise from a computer. The effects are dense layers of sounds at one time and warbling drones and wavering washes of sounds at other times; it is also the most distorted and forced part of the whole work. The sounds at times seem to erupt from nowhere, the violin breaks into hasty and hectic short notes, a sudden spark of noise rips through the auditorium. The following “to breathe” is a relief at first, but soon its sparse and muted atmosphere starts to become just as brooding and powerful as the approach (or should we call it attack) on “to escape. Made from vocal sounds and again live computer noise, it is a dense and intense drone and since I have always liked the deep sea diving atmosphere of drones, I pronounce this my favourite part of the work.

It would be too easy to look for a thesis - antithesis – synthesis resolve within these tracks, though the trilogy-structure certainly makes the idea look appealing. “to keep silence” washes such thinking away with a simple wave of its hand. This time it is a (prepared) piano and once again the live computer as a basis for the sounds, with the latter acting either as percussion in the same dynamic as the piano or as a provider of contrapointing noise layers. In some ways, this is the most “classical” piece on here – more daring audiences in festivals for modern music have gotten accustomed to the sparse, fallen into bits piano playing, I would like to know how they react to computer noise or the two earlier pieces when this is being played live on a stage – but it is also of a striking irregularity and stubbornness combined with its own mystery. In other words, there is something the music is insisting on heavily, but it is not at all clear as to what it is.