Label
IME009pt1 / IME009pt2
- St. Petersburg's Stanislav Sevostyanikhin might not yet be a household name, but he will certainly leave something of a mark with this pair of 12-inches on Bristol's Immerse label. The four tracks on offer here are forged somewhere between the fallout glitch of early Pole and the creeping and skeletal percussive scaffolds of Cyrus. There's none of the blossoming dub techno meets dubstep school to be found here: Instead, the restless dubstep genre mates itself with glitch to give rise to the possibility of another new hybrid form.
Three of the four tracks are built around weightless sparks of repetitive and scratchy step beats and little else. Only "Blinkende Stjerne" breaks with the trend, being almost deep house, but more anorexic and IDM. Despite the overall lightness of rhythmic touch, the music creates an airless, shadowy space even in the absence of heavy bass lines, especially "Plumes" and "Falling to Weightlessness." "Aeromonarchs Attacks" is an exception to the rule when it eventually buckles and throws up a classic warbling bottom end. Like Cyrus, the bass frequencies are generally kept subliminally low. The effect somehow creates a sense of inversion by which the fractured samples and melodic particles are forced to struggle upwards from below.
The elegance of the first three tracks is their haunting dub atmospheres that prowl the background spaces while ultra fine crackles strafe and spray the surface. "Falling to Weightlessness" is arguably the best track, its authentic atmosphere of urban despair permeates both singles though. "Plumes," which opens with spiraling, echoing guitars, seems to promise something brighter and exotic before gurgling down into beautiful extinction. "Blinkende Stjerne" further stands out from the rest with its relatively complicated palette of quiet, overlapping melodies and, of course, its more direct underpinning four-four that almost seems upbeat despite the shadowy mood.
"Aeromonarchs Attacks" does highlight one of Kontext's weaknesses, however. The rhythm programming here, more so than the other tracks, is kept reined in far too closely. Given the paucity of competing sound intensities, the repetition and brittleness drive the track too coldly and stifle the soul.
The patient listener will find more here, though perhaps the iPod is not the best way to fully appreciate its subtleties. There is plenty to dance to as well if that's your thing, though misers and DJs alike will still have to fork out for both singles to cover the full spectrum of possibilities.
Lista de sequência de músicasA Falling To Weightlessness
AA Aeromonarchs Attacks
A Plumes
AA Blinkende Stjerne