Slowly, Zondag grows almost silent, no more than an evening breeze stroking the beard of a lone stalk of wheat. The aerosol hiss returns at the hour mark, like crickets awoken by the onset of the end of the summer. This could be the beginning of a long, sweet denouement, what with a quarter hour of playing time left, but then again, a ruction of emotions can flare up in a quarter of an hour. No spoiler here, then.
As Kromeshna, Light Collapse, Obozdur, a few other pseudonyms and his given name, Vitaly Maklakov of Kamensk-Uralsky, Russia, issues a steady stream of experimental electronica, possibly somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple of hundred titles by now, and often in attractive but limited, handmade editions like this, as befits a musician moonlighting as a graphic designer (unless it is vice-versa). The present release is in big, greeting card format. No slouch himself, Frans de Waard (aka Freiband and founder of Kapotte Muziek, Beequeen, Goem) has performed yeoman service on behalf of underground electronic music in the Lowlands and beyond since 1984, also editing the essential Vital Weekly review and heading up labels like Korm Plastics.
Both can be perfunctorily characterized as noise, drone or ambient artists, though perhaps it is far more accurate to call them “texturists,” abstract expressionists. Maklakov claims that he allows his mood to dictate what comes out, but he must also be very good at sharing his feelings, since so much of his production consists of collaboration (as of course does de Waard’s).
The material for the seventy-five minute long Zondag has been sourced from cassette tapes by Maklakov and computer processed by Freiband, the grinding of those little, plastic gears smeared into something evanescent. The listener is thrown right into the middle of a virtual simoom, grains of sand crashing into one another the only geography. The raging sandstorm is drastically reduced to a fine, aerosol spray after some ten minutes. Eventually, a rumble is heard, a locomotive charging down the tracks, no, make that a huge turbine spinning. Angle changed, our perspective is widened and we hear the hall housing the massive machine and the air in it resonate in reaction.
Slowly, Zondag grows almost silent, no more than an evening breeze stroking the beard of a lone stalk of wheat. The aerosol hiss returns at the hour mark, like crickets awoken by the onset of the end of the summer. This could be the beginning of a long, sweet denouement, what with a quarter hour of playing time left, but then again, a ruction of emotions can flare up in a quarter of an hour. No spoiler here, then.
Zondag is available on Ostroga.
