It must be said that this is not an ideal time to be promoting five Soviet era Russian composers but music and art can and must transcend political despots and even the most tragic world events.
The six works here are performed on ANS synthesizer recorded in the 1960s and early 70s and were originally released on a 1990 LP issued by the state-run Melodiya label.
The full tracklisting is as follows:
OLEG BULOSHKIN Sacrament (3:32)
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA Vivente-Non Vivente (Alive And Dead) (10:44)
EDUARD ARTEMIEV Mosaic (4:05)
EDUARD ARTEMIEV Twelve Looks At The World Of Sound (12:53)
EDISON DENISOV Birds Singing (5:04)
ALFRED SCHNITTKE Stream (5:57)
The ANS synthesizer was invented by the Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin between 1937 and 1957 and is a method of graphical sound recording used in cinematography. It can obtain a visible image of a sound wave as well as synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound spectogram. A grand total of 720 tones can be generated in this way and - unlike a human musician – these can all be played simultaneously.
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The instrument was used by Eduard Artemiev for films directed by Andrei Tarkovsky including The Mirror, Stalker and Solaris. If you are familiar with the surreal and/or sci-fi quality of any of these astonishing movies, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect from this album.
This is uneasy listening which is highly recommended if you want to spook out friends or enemies.
Bandcamp link to the album
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