Grey Lenses – Perfect Conditions (2015)

 Despite the fact it’s rather hard to review my own records, I’ll try to write about my recent EP “Perfect Conditions”.

I picked the name “Grey Lenses” in 2008 for a band we planned to form with my mate, we were inspired by Iggy Pop, PIL, Joy Division and wanted to play something similar, but there was a problem: we lived in a quite small town, Internet was relatively expensive back then, so almost nobody who was rehearsing in garages didn’t know these bands, everybody played pop-punk and metalcore, so we simply couldn’t persuade anyone to play something different, and our enthusiasm had grown thin, though I had a notebook full of lyrics.

So, I was left alone at some moment and “Grey Lenses” became only my pseudonym, I tried to record stuff using this moniker in 2008, but I wasn’t satisfied with the result, so I didn’t even show most of these songs to most of my friends.

After that, I was involved in various creative activities, but I didn’t release any serious songs as “Grey Lenses” until this year. If you read one of my previous posts, you might know I participated in a project named “Acid Socks”, but it was put on hiatus, and I had to go on working alone. I started to work on this EP in 2014 and released it in early 2015. It can be extremely cold in a town I live in, so I tried to make this EP as cold as possible, and some listeners told me I managed to create such sound.

I found the title “Perfect Conditions” in the Bible, I really liked this quote:

“If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done” (Ecc 11:4)

Sorry for a personal detail, but I’m a very melancholic man, so I often need to be encouraged, and this quote encouraged me, I realized I can’t wait anymore, it’s time to act now!

And I recorded this EP. “Perfect Conditions” can be described as lo-fi minimal synth with low range vocals, although some purists said it’s not “proper” minimal synth – well, ok, I actually wanted to create original sound with more ambience and “cinematic” feeling of suspense, and I hope I succeeded :)

“The Follower”, the title track, is about the fear of being trapped by idols I created, the fear of committing a poseur suicide like some crazy fans did.

“Got rid from the dreary visions,

Woke up right at 5 AM

You acted with great precision

The ritual has turned to slam.

Can you prevent me from following you?

I am afraid I’ll end up just like you”

And from the “relationships” with dead poets, idols, EP moves to relationship with mates (“The Teammate”) which portrays a figure of helpless outsider “waiting for a guide”, like one of my “idols” said:

“Help me to pass this test:

I am tired to be the last

Apathy I had to face

Is covered with layers of rust”

The third song, “My Goal Can’t Be Reached”, is about a dull evening in a small town, where “there’s nothing to do”, nothing can be done, nothing can be changed, etc.:

“I have to spit on my own grave;

Something has faded from my field of view.

My goal can’t be reached,

And there’s nothing to do”

And yeah, “the sly man” is the same sly man which was mentioned by Blue Orchids in their awesome “Low Profile” song, I think you know it’s from Gurdgieff’s works.

The final track – “Artificial Crimes” – is an insomniac cry of despair, cry of fear of infernal visions in Ivan Karamazov’s manner, and also an insight that “things must change” mixed with the feeling of shame / regret for not having any faith:

“I feel like I’m disabled in some spiritual way

I’ve lived in a hurry, so thirsty for time,

And now the time has come for these few crucial days:

It’s time to stop suffering from artificial crimes”

The title, “Artificial Crimes”, was inspired by a work by Russian philosopher Lev Shestov (Camus mentioned him in his famous essay), who, if I’m correct (I forgot the certain quote), wrote something like: “What if Raskolnikov didn’t commit his crime, what if his crime was artificial?”, and I thought: it’s such a similar situation, I know I didn’t commit any crime, but I’m treated like if I did.

Well, enough talking, just listen to this EP!


 

Or check out SoundCloud or YouTube playlist of "Perfect Conditions"

Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey

Hipstor Smith – WAVE (2014)

This time I’m going to review an EP which also wasn’t a Concern Void release, but 3 tracks from it had appeared on our releases before, so it’s going to be fair enough to observe it.

Hipstor Smith is quite popular underground musician from Moscow, and by “popular” I mean the fact that he played a lot of gigs, much more than any other Concern Void collaborator, I believe. He’s a member of several bands, and he also has his web-community (see link below), which, by the way, doesn’t consider us friendly – probably, we’re not cool enough for them – despite the fact Hipstor Smith is my long-time friend and frequent Shadowplay City contributor.

Bands Hipstor Smith was (is) involved in, release(d) DIY-tapes and some merchandize, got some acclaim, as well as Hipstor Smith’s solo stuff – he even confessed he presented his record to Steven Stapleton himself, and Steven liked it. So, that’s a big deal, serious music, not passing time, fellas.

Hipstor Smith plays (post-)industrial, sometimes ambient music, which is sort of different from his bands’ activities, which are more avant-garde, free improv, chaotic (cleverly to say, less disciplined / organized, or just “done-for-fun”) stuff. He started his career in 2012, one of his first appearances was on our annual sampler “Superfluous Music”, and his first album was released in 2013.

Some of samplers’ tracks appeared on his tape “Girlfriend in a Nuthouse” (2013), and later ones appeared on “WAVE”. The title track, “Get Me”, as well as “Radio Storm”, firstly was put on a split “Die flux Zeit” with Nervoese Leute, and “Spacedoctorstation” appeared earlier that spring on our annual sampler “We Could Have Been Martians”.

Hipstor Smith declares “lyrics’ sounding > lyrics’ meaning”, so I’m not going to analyze it, respecting his point of view. Moreover, I have to confess, I couldn’t recognize all the words :)

But “Get Me” and “Spacedoctorstation” are indeed classy tracks with actually professional quality of sound. “Radio Storm” is little bit different: Hipstor Smith plays real rain stick on it, which makes the sound wholesome authentic; Russian-speaking listeners could admit that samples of a weather forecast were taken from Russian NTV channel, known for its provocative and “tabloid” style.

I was lucky enough to visit one of Hipstor Smith’s band gig, and I can say they deserve that underground fame, in comparison with other bands playing that evening, they were way ahead. So check out this EP, I guess it’s worth your attention, too :)

Have a listen / download for free from BandCamp:

Contact Hipstor Smith

(you may need to sign up)

Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey

Man With a Dictaphone – MWaD (10–12) (2013)

Actually, this compilation album isn’t a Concern Void release, but it’s a project of my long-time friend and Shadowplay City collaborator / contributor, so I’m going to review it, as most of these tracks appeared on annual Shadowplay City samplers.

Man With a Dictaphone was formed in 2010, though I don’t know much about its 1st year, but in 2011 this project participated in our sampler “Low Ambitions”. It’s certain that real dictaphone was used to record samples at least for some of MWaD’s tracks.

MWaD has his own web-community named “Tatu-mentu” (A Tattoo for a Cop), which we considered as friendly, but during last times it seems to be little less active and disciplined, unfortunately. So, the tracks often appeared both on our and their releases, but that was ok as we’ve never been real labels.

“MWaD (10–12)” is the only solo MWaD release so far; despite the fact it doesn’t include all solo stuff created by this one-man project. Also, Man With a Dictaphone frequently collaborated with other musicians, and released 2 collaborative albums, mostly consisting of improvisations. MWaD also recorded 2 collaborative improvisation tracks with me, and I might review them in the future.

The sound can be described as ambient, sometimes “bright”, sometimes dark and almost drone with a sense of roaring tension (“A-B”, “April Twilight”); sometimes the sound changes to more cheerful beats. Live / field / “musique concrete” recordings have always been important for MWaD, though they weren’t always dominant in tracks’ structures. The sound is often lo-fi but MWaD has a great taste in applying effects, you’ll never find any “cheap” tricks like computer distortion and similar stuff on Man With a Dictaphone’s tracks.

Horns’ (“April Twilight”) or strings’ (“Shadow Dancer in Rainbow Village”) sounds could be created with synthesizers (I saw MWaD’s collection of musical instruments and was pretty impressed!) but it can’t be considered as a drawback.

“Forest Pipes” mixes wonderful industrial soundscapes with bass guitar, reminding me of Factrix, but forest sounds (which, if I’m correct, were recorded live by MWaD using a dictaphone) create quite a different mood – Man With a Dictaphone definitely has his own “signature”.

By the way, “Forest Pipes” end with a street recording of some (drunk?) hobo (?) performing a song which is, most likely, he wrote himself.

Have a listen to some of MWaD's tracks:

Or download for free from Bandcamp

Contact Man With a Dictaphone 

(you may need to sign up)

Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey

Лосины Маршала Потемкина – Гимны нищим духом (2011)

Well, this time I’ll have to translate a lot of lyrics because this band is basically about lyrics. I warn you that you might find some lyrics disgusting and inappropriate, so if you don't want to be offended anyhow, please don't read this post, as I'm not responsible for your reaction.

«Лосины Маршала Потемкина» ("Losiny Marshala Potemkina", “The Buckskins of Marshal Potemkin”, Marshal Potemkin was an 18-century Russian military leader) is a meaningless name; it’s a satirical reference to typical meaningless bands’ names. Actually, «Лосины…» is not a real band at all, it’s a one-man band, and I’m the only member. The band was briefly mentioned in a review of Russian Outsider music, which was a pleasant surprise :)

The project was formed in 2009, and experienced serious evolution, as it became more and more solid and severe during the each following year, but it all started as a joke. «Лосины…» didn’t record any of their songs for quite a long time, but there were faux news about bands’ tours, performances and other activities, I even created faces of the bandmates via PhotoRobot, there were artificial characters representing «Лосины…», take a look:

I mean it was real fun, everybody understood it was a joke, and in 2010 Лосины Маршала Потемкина started to record their stuff, it was very lo-fi folk / neofolk, the sound was even primitive, consisting of an out-of-tune acoustic guitar, occasional found objects (often industrial/post-industrial), harmonics and some computer effects which could be applied to such lo-fi record, but some listeners found lyrics funny enough to enjoy it.

So, «Лосины…» participated in a compilation in 2011 and then released a long-play album «Гимны нищим духом» (“Hymns to Poor in Spirit”), which was humorous (except the final track). The picture for cover was created by Alexander Cohan and Cat Rid, check it out:

The title song «Славная песня» (“Glorious Song”) is actually a topical song, satirical and, I believe, sometimes even witty. Then goes «Шутник комнатный» (“An Indoor Joker”), a funny story about a college roommate named Zheka (a reference to popular Russian humorist, a mascot of unfunny and old jokes) who had very strange sense of humor.  

 "Once Zheka invited his girlfriend to our room.

He was joking all the time and constantly adding beer in her cup.
She was laughing, she forgot about everything,
Her smile was reflected in a pool of vomit." 

“Once Zheka was spitting on the ceiling

And every time his saliva was falling down on his face”

“Once Zheka broke a jar full of cucumbers.

He wasn’t upset with that and tried to eat it anyway.

He ate pretty much glass together with cucumbers,

Oh, he could die, I mean, there was blood everywhere”.

And so on. But the story had kind of happy end, so please don’t worry :)

Another song I wanted to mention is actually main «Лосины…»’s “hit” «Я не могу сказать, где твои деньги» (“I can’t tell you where your money is”), it’s about vodka culture. You know, the guy was drunk so he can’t remember now what he was doing and where is the money which, by the way, wasn’t his own. Such a common story.

“You’ll ask me where your money is, but I can’t answer right now.

You’ll ask me where your money is, but I won’t reply even in an hour.

I can’t tell you where your money is, because I spent it on drink”

There is also very long, 16-minute song «О масле» (“About butter”), and it’s indeed a 16-minute song telling how healthy butter is. It also has an ironic subtitle «Поучение детям» (“An Instruction for Children”) which is a reference to Russian medieval book with the same name, written by Prince Vladimir Monomakh. I wrote the lyrics together with my old mate.

“If you don’t like butter, it means that you’re a fool”

I hope you understand the subtext of the lyrics, I mean the lyrics are not stupid even if it could seem so, native speakers quickly realized what it’s all really about, and I tried to explain it for you because I find it worth your attention.

So, the final track is way serious. It’s called «Разум советует» (“The Mind Advises”), it includes a dreary poem and, in the end, an excerpt from “Devils” by Dostoyevskiy, read in English. Some listeners found this track scary. My friend Pavel Chainichkov plays accordion on this track.

“Oh, every sincere thing seems to be so artificial”

Further «Лосины..»’s albums were more and more serious, and if you’re interested, I’ll review them as well. 

Check out this album:

 

Or listen to a SoundCloud playlist!

Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey

Nervöse Leute – Nervöse Leute (2015)

Too long to read? Now you can watch the video of this review!

Now, it’s a little sophisticated one. To cut a long story short, it’s a long-play album of radio sound collages, noisy, (post-)industrial one, messing around with shortwave stations, mixing real shortwave recordings and then even deconstructing this idea.

Of course, we’re aware of what The Conet Project was doing, but Nervöse Leute are way different. First of all, The Conet Project’s goal, as we can understand, was to document the shortwave stations’ recordings; unlike them, we consider shortwave collages as a form of sound art. None of Conet Project’s samples were used in this album; it was all originally recorded for the album (at least that’s what I’m told).

Moreover, Nervöse Leute didn’t claim any copyright for this album, instead, Nervöse Leute used Creative Commons license (Some Rights Reserved); so if you’re a copyright owner of any samples Nervöse Leute used in this album, please contact us, and your samples will be removed from the album.

Also, Nervöse Leute is not just about shortwave; playing with this idea was the goal of the first album; now Nervöse Leute turn to different methods while working on their second album, which, as I want to believe, will be released next year. Tasks and methods may vary, but the primary purpose of Nervöse Leute is to show the anxiety spilt in daily life. It’s like – you gotta be scared if you listen carefully. Or you may laugh – it’s basically the same reaction.

You see, creating such kind of sound collage requires a lot of time, hours and hours of recording and editing (no major computer effects were applied to the records: only editing, volume changing and occasional delay), so it took Nervöse Leute about a year to finish the album.

I was involved in this project: it was me who made all the mixes from previously recorded stuff. Also, I sometimes recorded samples, added some spoken word, found objects, and “Sell My Car” is actually my song. But Nervöse Leute was a collective project, at least in 2014 when it was formed – I had to finish the album alone at some moment, but I hope I won’t continue this project just on my own.

The name “Nervöse Leute” (Nervous People) comes from a short story with the same name by awesome Russian writer Mikhail Zoshchenko, known for his humorous stories, but we highly recommend you his later works “Youth Restored” and “Before Sunrise”, especially the second one, the true masterpiece of Russian modernism.

Have a listen to our collages:

 

The album is available for free listening here (SoundCloud) and here (YouTube)


Contact the recorder

(you may need to sign up)

Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey