P034: Cabeza de Vaca – Russian electonica and Udacha special

“You are indebted to create good from evil, because there is no other material for it to be created.”

 

Robert Penn Warren

 

These are words up on a website called Far From Moscow  in which I found some of the only reliable information on the Udacha label, the focus of our show on Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM  this week. Deliberately obscure and yet out in the open, spacey, dreamy and foreign, yet tangible and logical. Such is Udacha. Their sound is certainly not what you would call a Russian stereotype; if there was one song today looking for that claim it would be “Morskaya” by Kompakt legends SCSI-9, with its intense stings and rainy claustrophobic melodies. But the point of Udacha is exactly this, that it is not a cliché, but a new way of seeing (or meeting) a country. Certainly in Barcelona there has been a recent increase in the presence of people from the east, and not just Russia, but Romania, Ukraine, Poland. On the way to my old work there was a new Russian bakery and delicatessan that opened up, for example. Why should this even be mentioned? It seems an important moment, that after living the Cold War as a youth, and having such a one sided story, that so long after its end, that suddenly the people, or the descendents from the other side of that story should suddenly become real, become “available” for communication.

 

In electronic music at least there has been plenty of new stuff from the old eastern block countries that has come to the fore. Udacha is a prime example, somehow forging a sound in only a few short releases and more to come. Here is a couple of recent or upcoming rleases from Russian artists and some notes on the show.

 

 

 

 

 

Dirty Owl

 

We at Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM are loving Dirty Owl and the design of the SEALT label stuff. There was never any need to doubt vinyl as a medium, and less so when you get such wonderful design and presentation. But the image is only one thing and the music has to match and without having heard any of the other releases in full, I can only speak for Dirty Owl. Excellent! A lot of variation, technique and humour as well. Great debut and highly recommended. A digitial version is now available as the vinyl is pretty rare already.

 

 

SEALT

 

 

Nina Kraviz

 

As far as Nina and “Bubblebathgate” goes, better look for yourself at the original video and then have a look at the comments and some of the opinion pieces. Quite an extraordinary reaction to message boards etc that can seem more and more apathetic. I of course am all for promoting women artists here in whatever way they want to represent themselves. I try not to resort to positive discrimination, but where possible I also try to consciously keep a balance of female artists in the show. The Wire recently highlighted these kinds of issues and mentioned a website that tries to quantify the number of women in electronica called Female - Pressure.

  

Greg Wilson

 

FACT – Lauren Martin opinion on Greg Wilson

 

Storify

 

 

Finally a few other things I discovered researching this show:

One of the most well known Russian artists Anton Zap has something new coming out soon:

 

If the show had been a bit more techno based, I might have put something from Yuka on instead of Nina Kraviz, although the story is of course an important catalyst. As well, Yuka hasn’t had a very fresh release, but in any case, looks like an interesting producer and DJ to keep an eye on.

 

Alexey Volkov has also had some interesting techno releases on some good labels including Semantica, and Terrence Fixmer’s Planete Rouge.
 

 

Anyone looking for free house sounds should check out the label Chevengur Melody who are a Russian deep hpuse netlabel with some great stuff available on their Bandcamp page. They have just advanced into physical releases as well.

 

 

 

Number	Artist	Track	Label	Year
1	Bipolardepth	Vessel	Udacha	2012
2	Pjotr	I see	Udacha	2013
3	Alex Danilov, Brother G and Yuri Shulgin	Untitled	Udacha	2013
4	Dices	Confuse	Udacha	2012
5	Andrey Pushkarev	Gingo Biloba	Circus Company	2013
6	Nina Kraviz	Aus Feat King Aus On The Mic	Rekids	2012
7	Dirty Owl	Veltro	SEALT	2013
8	SCSI-9	Morskaya	Kompakt	2006 / 2013

 

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P030: Cabeza de Vaca – Ambient

A beatless program this week as we play all ambient on Cabeza de Vaca show and Scanner FM. The show is split into two halves. The first half focused more on experimental and left-field music is also divided into two halves.

 

The first two tracks are from Spanish artists and labels. First up is Mikel Lauki from Pais Vasco (the Basque Country) who is apparently resident in Barcelona. This is his second release after “69º54´S​-​135º12´E” which came out on the Audio Gourmet netlabel in 2011 and available for free on Bandcamp.

 

 

 

His latest release comes on the prolific and highly interesting Audiotalaia label which is also based in Barcelona. All or most of their releases are also available for free by following links from the Audiotalaia website . There is plenty there if you have a look around, including some compilations.

 

Also for free is the recent release from Lovethechaos, another Barcelona-based label. This release, recently made available on cassette, has an interesting history and I quote from the label’s website

 

“Engendrons emerges as a result Of an experiment by Lovethechaos Records, in an attempt to bring together different artists under one same project.

 

In a secretive exercise, five artists were invited to create a 15min long sound piece.none of them knew who participated in this project nor the aim of it. The only premise was to create an unrhythmical piece to lay them over afterwards and create a unique composition unknown to the artists until it’s release.”

 

As for who the artists might be, one could be D.forma who we played on the recent Spanish music show, although there are plenty more there as well.

 

One artist and release that I did not play on the show this was by Alex Gámez aka Asférico and Störung organiser which you can also download for free:
 

 

 

The second quarter of the show features tracks from two albums recently released on Aguirre, the Belgian experimental and ambient label. We feature a segment of Quiet Evenings (Grant and Rachel Evans; Motion Sickness of Time Travel) and a whole track by JD Emmanuel who has been releasing music for over 30 years.
 

 

 

One of his most surprising releases is perhaps a track that came out on Innervisions a few years ago:

 

 

The second half of the show is taken up by some techno and house artists, mostly B sides, but the Anthony Child (Surgeon) release is obviously more stand-alone. In particular, the Udacha label track by Bipolardepth has some beautiful qualities and we will be focussing an entire show on them in the next few weeks. As for Anthony Child, I always wanted to start a set with “Not-two” the ambient sound design track from the end of “Breaking the Frame”

 

Number	Artist	Track	Label	Year
1	Lauki	Atlas	Audiotalaia	2013
2	Engendrons	Side-A	Lovethechaos	2013
3	JD Emmanuel	Illusions	Aguirre	2013
4	Quiet Evenings	Telepathic Heart	Aguirre	2013
5	Anthony Child (Surgeon)	The Space Between People and Things (Part 1)	NNA Tapes	2013
6	Len Faki	BTX3	Ostgut ton	2013
7	Planetary Assault Systems (Luke Slater)	Beauty In The Fear (The Black Dog's Destroyed On Purpose Mix Pt. 1)	Ostgut ton	2012
8	Bipolardepth	Posevy	Udacha	2012
9	Space Dimension Controller	Music For Spaceports	R & S Records	2013

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