DOWNLOAD: Ewan Limb - Ewan Limb

When I posted about this Russian bedroom producer's first tracks I got rained on with emails from people wanting to know more - but at the time there was no more to give.  Now Ewan Limb has put up a full album's worth of material; Nine tracks of dreamy bass heavy electronica that take in all kinds of influences but have the overarching feel of consistency and the artistry of someone finding their own way, all those dubstep squiggles and bottom end drops hooked up to shimmery chillwave heat-haze melodies, shivery cold IDM and jump cuts and glitches.  It's a wonderful album that can get filed alongside the Robel Synthesia releases I have been championing, though this has a much wider range of sounds involved.

There are several tracks here that have been getting a huge amount of deserved attention over on on his Soundcloud - the super chilled layers of Eye and the hypnotically deep Doppler Effect, the unfeasibly dense vibrating Origin, Train Station with its disorienting lurch and icy two-step percussion and the luxurious string embellished Mleko. All the tracks in between have their place in creating an overarching atmosphere, tying all the elements together into an evocatively cohesive whole that should be destined to soundtrack some epic comedowns and daybreaks across the world. Lovely stuff.

Download for free from his Bandcamp now.

DOWNLOAD: Vagina Vangi - Locked Forever

Vagina Vangi
Locked Forever
DOWNLOAD

New four track EP from this Russian witch house oriented outfit following their Benighted United ep from December that develops their genrefied themes and expands their sound onto a wider plane. The track titles elude to an end times of occult darkness, Biblical prophecies, of damnation fire and brimstone, the wastelands and castigations of Milton's Lost Paradise, Satanic themes wrought in cold electronics.

The four tracks of Vagina Vangi's new release almost run straight into each other, barely missing a beat before seguing your attention through smoky fade onto the next budding tendrils of euphoria. That is certainly what the music in the EP hopes to achieve, through a mix of chest bursting throat choking euphoric trance and a dissonant yet equally complementary and enhancing use of noise, distortion and disintegrative effects. The sounds draw comparisons to, if not direct influence from, the feral trance of Salem and White Ring and the more studied bleakness of Vortex Rikers and Porn Antler. There is a fullness to the construction of these tracks which enhances their designs to lift the listener up on to a higher plane.

The first track Black Coils sets this landscape out in as epic proportions as an opening gambit will allow; charred beats imposing themselves across a smoothly twisting rhythm, a disembodied vocal slowly coalescing into a liltingly delicate refrain suddenly solidifies into full throated flight along with a soaring megaton blast of fiery synths. Europop and dirty noise drone balled up into an explosive comet of momentum.

Second track Goatghosts brings a haunted male vocal straight in over a thick cable of electro throb, the melody line sputtering and shorting like the most delirious Justice tracks. A distinctly European sound of French filter house and chart trance. Behind the fizzing live electrical lightshow are layers of rising key major chord synth stabs that get overloaded even more on the title track Locked Forever which almost roars out of the speakers where it not for that drive-time smoothness it's been finished with – it works, it sucks you in then hits you with a slamming beat straight in the solar plexus doubling the density of the track instantly with the kind of shocking elation that a good drop should feed you, and the effect keeps running through the rest of its' five minutes.

Final track, of Chaos and Hell is a slow burner, holding down an overarching atmosphere of doomy intensity, employing oppressive minor chord progressions that move with studied intent, building itself up over the spine of a martial tattoo slowly reappearing from some dirty and distant skirmish accompanied by clouds of ominous synth tone. As this seething mass of darkness draws nearer the cavorting shadows of the the former tracks can be made out, yet in its' final moments this release never quite opens out into a fully unleashed four to the floor onslaught that it might have set you up for leaving you on the edge of a climax that is yours to interpret as satisfying or otherwise. For me, it's all the better for the restraint.

Download from Bandcamp, stream and follow on Soundcloud.

If you like the sound of this keep your eyes on the blog, later today I've got an
interview with band leader Ilya Arhipov for you.

LIVE VIDEO: Khmury @ Avant Club, Moscow

Here's some live action from Khmury playing at the Avant Club in Moscow, 24th November 2010.  The video was shot and edited by Evgeny Rodin and Vadim Crasnitsky who both deserve massive props for this, it looks beautiful and sounds great too - not your usual shaky hand cam disrto-sound you tube clip at all. Well, not accidentally distorted anyway, this set descends into hyperblast cosmic carnage, taking in some classic rock riffs, fills and some bad-ass basslines, all captured crystal clear off the desk and synched to perfection.

DOWNLOAD: Khmury - Live

More new Russian-based mayhem for you in the form of Khmury's new release; a two track, twenty minute live gig taped in nice and deep hi-fidelity.  The band includes Fedya, of Twilight Owls' fame, an artist who is getting some wider attention through his releases on Amdiscs, and deservedly so as I've said before. On his own he works in shades of drone, but this band is an entirely different beast and they start off this set with Youth Against Youth a song that stamps the rock throttle on full and drops some squealing leads closer to Guns N' Roses than Barn Owl. It's an awesome start to the instrumental set than soon yields to a decelerating passage than recalls the Twin Peaks theme, deliberately or not, lightly enough that it owns the musical passage but also with enough atmosphere to put you straight into the surreal headspace of Lynch's pine forests complete with a chilly tension.  From there the thirteen minutes swirl, pummel, soar and pound past in a pretty triumphant mix of post-rock and a range of harder stuff that feels good to bang your head into.   The second track, a brief four minute roar called Broken Bass Jam is the sound of an overdriven  amp and the most guttural Sabbath worshipping punishment capable of being dealt out by the band, with more of that savage lead guitar work crawling and scrawling across it's face.

Love this band, even more so for the fact thy keep giving it out for free:

Cut out and keep:  DOWNLOAD

Stream:

  Khmury - 01 - Youth Against Youth by twilightowls

DOWNLOAD: Mpala Garoo / Sunbells Fenimore

Mpala Garoo is another of my top finds from Russia's underground - actually, this one was given to me by Twilight Owls - and is one of the better artists I've come across. Just one man - Ivan - plays a similar kind of summery tropical heat-haze as Ducktails. There's a fifteen minute, four track album available to download from Last.fm track by track, which I've reposted here.

The first track Open Way Up High's reverb soaked chillwave swing feels very much in thrall to Landscapes, which is no complaint at all. It is a beautifully languid shimmer of a track that lasts for an all too short 2.24 - I could easily leave this on repeat for twenty minutes and not tire of it.  The second tracks wheezy little organ flourish adds a wonderful background tone to the similar lithe guitar work shaking it's hips around the foreground while a shuffling conga beat gently harries it. Magic Fiesta has a bit of the spooky jungle groove of High Wolf about it - gurgling drums and a slightly warped focus make it a progression and deviation from the previous two tracks to signify something worthwhile going on out there.

01. Open Way Up High
02. Primitiittii
03. Magic Fiesta
04. Kid Island


Ivan also plays in Sunbells Fenimore; a project that features the same island guitar tone and pace from Mpala, but it's fattened out with some deeper oceanic riffs; thick trancy tendrils of tone that weave around the bubbles of guitar notes, and pushes things that much further away from the safety of the shoreline - things gets pretty turbulent in Paradising, but no less hypnotic as the chaotic crashing and fizzing carries the metaphor of the sea, blistering heat, salty spray and boiling breakers into sonic realisation. I guess there's a Nu-Age flotation element to it, despite the more caustic nature it retains a sense of centred focus that the more musically kinetic Mpala doesn't have. It's a natural deviation; recalling the fiery return to Earth of Oneohtrix Point Never or the tranquility of Dolphins Into The Future, a lucid sky-gazing treatise on sun-soaked mystical spirituality.  Go to his BANDCAMP for three tracks of meditational serenity.

DOWNLOAD: Velvet Breasts - Ancient Dream

DOWNLOAD - Ancient Dream LP


DOWNLOAD - How Does It Feel EP

Here's another good find from my recent forays into Russia - Two releases from Saint Petersburg's murky post rock duo Velvet Breasts - a band who wear Velvet Underground influences out on their sleeves and inside some of the tracks too - they even have a song called White Light. They have a sparse drum kit that is used to punctuate, and beat into strict direction, a guitarist who plays the same needling lines as Lou Reed, searching for a gap in the percussion to spike down hard on and let rip with some howling feeback and free running riffing. There's a variety of styles chopped out and jammed from the amps, a combination of teasing post-rockisms and harder body jerking aggression; of open duelling interplay, improvisations that sway woozily between determined coherence and able texture heavy ambience - leaning heavily on delay and reverb pedals they fill up the space with an engaging horizon on which distant shapes are scratched out, emerging warily from clouds of feedback and static; slowly pulling focus before crescendoing into stark clarity.  When their tracks open out they really pull.

There's plenty good moments across these two releases, so if noisy lo-fi post rock is your thing this should suit you well; and if you fancy showing your appreciation you can also buy their Ancient Dream LP from Ukranian label Taqueot.

Asian Women on the Telephone

Eastern Europe seems to be producing some pretty fine guitar music of late - not including various kinds of metal, which this wide area consistently excels at - but recently there has been a lot of shoegaze, drone, post rock, witch house; bands like The Moglass, Arabian Horses, Love Cult, PinkShinyUltraBlast, Twilight Owls, and of course Prague's AMDISCS label who I have a pathalogical need to mention at least once a week.  Add to that, this band.

Asian Women on the Telephone is a Moscow-based junkyard art punk improv noise outfit whose self-styled 'purist Dada' experimentalism is very Throbbing Gristle in feel, if not exactly sound - a shifting clanking, urban dronescape, channelled thorugh multiple pedal manipulation with all sorts of bizarre vocals shreiked, hissed, and cackled at intervals through some of the tracks. Their Bandcamp site has three albums up for free download; two from earlier this year and one from last year.  All excellent, involving single minded entities that have a sense of multi-minded purpose:

Chelsea Grandpa
Holotropic Break
AWOTT III




They also have a split casette out on Full of Nothing records with Arabian Horses, available to order HERE

Beginning as a duo in 2007 AWOTT is now a five-piece incarnation, donning constumes, masks and involving all sorts of industrial and psychedelic paraphelia in their stage shows, which in this video makes for a menacing, unpredictable and unclassifiable experience: