Making Russia safe for underground electronica, Music Kollektiv is a burgeoning Moscow – and web-based powerhouse dedicated to “finding unconventional rhythms and telling their stories.”
[Release page] Making Russia safe for underground electronica, Music Kollektiv is a burgeoning Moscow – and web-based powerhouse dedicated to “finding unconventional rhythms and telling their stories.” All albums and extended players—and they are already legion—can be downloaded for free. The Kollektiv’s international profile is already high—artists from twenty nations swell its ranks—and it wishes to reach a million more plateaux and utterly abnegate any kind of central control before it’s done. The website is a virtual Oz of brightly-coloured. right-brained minimal and dubbed techno. As soon as you enter the web portal, a random track is cued and as you scroll down, a cornucopia of music, art, biography and video spills it contents.
Every now and then, a generous handful of tunes are set aside and immortalized in a physical, “various artist” compilation, also free, distributed by leaving copies in appropriate locations throughout Moscow (and now, automatically sent to anyone who “likes” its Facebook page). The sixth and latest edition of Kollektiv Artists is the first double-disc set, with tracks selected by MK regular Bobo Lo. At first glance, I don’t recognize a single name; most of them have barely even issued music on netlabels. They’re from Argentina, Colombia, Greece, Malta, the UK, Switzerland, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Ecuador, Canada and more. Even Russia. It is both difficult and ultimately pointless to go into any more critical detail—though they already had me with the cello sample on Ehn’s ten-minute opus “Shalw”—since the play and the browsing’s the thing.
One of the most likeable things to emerge from the Internet in the past few years.
Kollektiv Artists Volume Six is available on Music Kollektiv. [Release page]
