Grey Lenses — Health and Discipline (2021)

 

Cover by Pavel Chainichkov

Happy New Year everyone! We're bursting into 2021 with a new release by Grey Lenses, his 6th electronic release titled "Health and Discipline".

Once again it's a soundtrack for a book, once again it's a mix of laptop noise and ambient, so there ain't no major changes in the sound, despite maybe the fact this time it's less noisy, and ambient pieces are not dark ambient pieces mostly.

All in all, the record has some eerier structures, as well as darker soundscapes, but this 30~ minutes album in general provides sort of "mystical" sonic experience, as the book features some fantastic scenes.

Musically, it was inspired by rather big variety of artists: the title track You Can Never Go Home was inspired by Letter From Home by Blaine L. Reininger; Shower Sequence & Anxiety Attack was inspired by Shower Sequence by Minimal Man, and, certainly, by famous Shower Sequence movie scene.

Visitors was inspired by a song with the same name sung by Dave Gahan for the project named frYars. Finally, Hospital was inspired by the song with same title performed by The Modern Lovers.

One may not find out bigger resemblance of afforementioned tracks in this album, but it was just source of inspiration, perhaps we can speak only about traces of impressions which turned into newer sonic pieces. Again, Grey Lenses is about sonic experience, not music (melody and/or rhythm).

Well, hope you like the effort of this year:

Stay tuned for more!

Sincerely yours, 

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Shadowplay Tape #3 records availiable online!

 

Hi everyone, we've uploaded most of the tracks from recent Shadowplay Tape #3, so you can check it out now!

It includes longplay "I Play the Music - You Dance" by Nervöse Leute

 

And a long track One Drop of Petrol in a Whole Tun of Coffee by The Colourful Pictures:

 

If you want to purschase the cassette, feel free to send me a PM.

Stay tuned, new releases will follow (in 2021)

 

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

VA — Коллиматорный прицел бытия

Hi everyone, we're presenting our annual VA sampler. This is 10th annual sampler, actually, we faced a milestone.

This time it's titled "Коллиматорный прицел бытия" ("The Collimating Sight of Being"), and it's about a worldview, a viewpoint which can be seen through the scope / or if life itself has you in its scope.

A bit of paranoia, fears and anxiety, panic in this paranoid, fearful, anxious, panic time.
 But this compilation isn't about current events, some track were recorded long before the situation. The mood of the compilation partially corresponds to previous one, "Крики раненых и почти что павших" ("The shouts of wounded and almost deceased ones"). But there's also some difference between them, as it's no longer reasonable to shout, as our shouts seemingly can't be heard from here.

That's why the compilation is generally calm, quiet, almost mellow. I can't say it's "bedroom music" because we already released "Music for Homebodies" in 2013 and we're unwilling to repeat ourselves. (I just found out I didn't write a post about it, my bad. Gonna post it in June.)

All in all, it's outsider music. That's where we've been since the very beginning, mostly on purpose. No wonder some artists have left to seek acclaim. No wonder some of youngsters misunderstand it as "another no name stuff". Being a "no name artist" who struggles to be liked and a "no name artist" who can reflect on the aesthetics of outsider music and finds himself in it, are two different mindsets, I must admit. We're free to do music for nobody. We're free in general, and we're too old and too honest to betray this path.

Looking through the tracklist, we see that this time we have 6 tracks by 6 artists of 6 genres.

We begin with a new project of our long time friend. It's called Tulse Luper, and it's a field recording. I wanna believe there'll be a release of this project later this year.

Nervöse Leute contributed a track titled Brain Zaps from its 4th longplay hopefully to be released this summer on tape. Analogue samples, noises, post-industrial as usual. 

Snowbringer contributed the longest track on this compilation, "Palimpsest". It's not peculiar Snowbringer sound, and it's good that project hasn't been closed. There was an LP by Snowbringer not long ago, I think I'm gonna post about it later this year.

Our long time friend Владимир Лазнев (Vladimir Laznev) contributed a minimal synth track Дефицит ("Deficit") with speech samples. You might read about deficit in USSR to understand the context. Current events made people be afraid that it can return, but fortunately we were OK (it couldn't get much worse here lol).

Post-rock band Окно Овертона (Overton Window) who you could've listened to back in 2017 contributed an instrumental piece Чуть-чуть (A Little Bit), which melodic structure manages to reflect huge variety of emotions. 

Лосины Маршала Потемкина contributed studio remake of 2013 song Кисель which reminds of past and sort of compares it with present.

Cover photo was provided by our favorite photographer Pavel Chainichkov.

Check out the sampler, friends! (mp3)

Stay tuned.

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Grey Lenses — Circumstantiality (2020)

Hi everyone, we've just released a new album, it's my latest dark ambient / post-industrial work called "Circumstantiality".

It's a soundtrack for another story written by me. The story was published in Moscow in a zine named "Forbidden for Children", but the soundtrack is a-coming only now.

Mainly, it doesn't have much of novelty, still the same sonic structures I've been obsessed with for the last 3 years, this time maybe a little more experimental.

Though tracks are narrowly connected to the story, some pieces have their own sources of inspiration. The first track, "Raus", was created under heavy influence of tracks "Herz-felde" and "Das Spiel ist aus" by Laibach, but it might not be obvious.

"The Damage Has Been Done", the second track, was somehow inspired by "Damaged People" by Depeche Mode. "Good Natured" is a nod to John Lydon's awesome solo song "Sun", and "Make Them Fall" was written with melody of the UK national anthem playing in my head, with a bit of "Hymnen" by Einstürzende Neubauten.

"Stoic" is a philosophic approach which is actually found in every work I do, as I find it useful, up to date and effective. I mean Roman stoicism mostly (Seneca and Marcus Aurelius).

"Cherespolositsa" is a term used in Russian empire to identify lands which, like a chessboard, have different owners though they have common frontiers. I.e., here goes a field owned by Ivanov, and then there's a field owned by Petrov, then — again, a field owned by Ivanov, etc.

This weird division of the land was a result of infamous paranoia of Ivan the Terrible, then it became even worse under Peter the Great. Some attempts to get rid of such irrational division were made in XIXth century and under Nicolaus II, but Russian revolution made the situation even stranger. Cherespolositsa ended only in 1920s because since then such notion as "landowner" became ridiculos. Communists thought it's all "our" land. "Their", actually.

Well, the final track, "Circumstantiality", and the whole story, is about painful mindset, a communication disorder associated mainly with obsessive-compulsive disorder which the protagonist has.

The cover image was provided by our long-time collaborator Pavel Chainichkov, and it's his first cover image for our label since 2016. Glad to collaborate again!

Since there ain't much to add about the release, I gotta spread some news. We're working on an annual VA-sampler (hopefully to be released next month) and the 4th longplay by Nervöse Leute, which currently is on the stage of mastering.

That's all, folks. Hope you're fine.

Check out the new album and stay tuned!



Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

The Colourful Pictures — Forever E (2020)

Hi everyone, we're back after the long winter and we're presenting you our latest web-release.

This is a new project named "The Colourful Pictures". At some point, Snowbringer and me came to an idea that we need a new collaboration between not only two of us, but with participation of other fellow musicians. And the result of this collaboration is right here, it's a full-lenght album consisting of only one track.

We decided to dedicate the record to Genesis P-Orridge who has perished recently. That's why it's called "Forever E": P-Orridge called himself "E", he used "E" instead of "I", and his colleagues simply adopted this as another nickname of Genesis (check out Monte Cazazza's "Monte Adores E" or "Scars for E" written by John Balance and performed by Cultural Amnesia).

(I used "he" because at the time P-Orridge used "he" to identify "himself")

But when we were recording this stuff, personally I wasn't thinking of P-Orridge. I wanted to try something new in a new collaboration. I don't know whether we're going to continue but there are some chances that this project's becoming an ongoing one.

Now let's try to describe the record. It's basically experimental ambient with addition of live instruments, which brings a slight avant-garde touch. The base of the record goes from use of "heavy" synths played by Snowbringer and me, but it occasionally meets parts of electric piano, electric guitar and bass. The tracks aren't separated as it's obviously the flow which floats from the beginning to the end, changing its directions on the way.

The electric piano part was contributed by Предложный Падеж.

Electric guitar part was contributed by Yevgeniy Minaev.  

Bass part was contributed by Yevgeniy Dvoynishnikov, a member of Лосины Маршала Потемкина band.

The album was recorded at Red Moral Studio by Vladislav Klikunov.

Hope you like the record. Download in WAV!

Let's remember Genesis.

Stay tuned,

sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Grey Lenses — Northern Noises (2019)

Hi everyone, we're presenting you today our final release of 2019. It's my web EP "Northern Noises", and it's inspired by Russian North.

It includes 4 tracks, starting with an ambient piece "Teriberka", published on our recent VA sampler, followed by more post-industrial "Dreams of Alyosha", which even has sort of melody.

Then we have laptop noise composition "Karla Libknekhta", named after the same street in Murmansk. Its noisy character depicts its dark and mostly brutal look. This street was amongst the first rebuilt after WWII, and, to my mind, currently it provides the harshest experience when you wander through the city.

We end with "Drovyanoe", a remote area of city of Murmansk, almost a ghost town. It's rather hard to get in there by bus and it's almost impossible to get out of Drovyanoe from your soul. It's half abandoned, depressing and devastating place. The sound shows the ancient feeling of fear spreaded by this area, ruthless and confident at the same time.

You may check out the EP here:

It's been rather prolific year, I must say. Hope that 2020 will brings us more good music. Stay tuned, happy hollidays, Merry Christmas everybody!

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

VA — Географический диктат (2019)

Hi everyone, we're presenting our latest VA sampler. It's called «Географический диктат» (Geographic Dictation), and it's a tongue-in-cheek game because it's almost similar to annual geographic quiz «Географический диктант» (i.e. Spelling test).

It's also about dictation = dictatorship, etc.

Geography, space in general, dictates how we ought to behave, what we should do. We are separated by vast spaces, miles and miles, thousands of miles, we haven't met with some of artists who contribute to us for years and years.

We present different styles here. Grey Lenses (me) presents an ambient piece titled "Teriberka" with geographic destination:"from Siberia to North West of Russia". It's made using different software than on previous ambient releases.

Владимир Лазнев (Vladimir Laznev) plays a minimal synth piece titled "Киевское шоссе" (Highway to Kiev) with geographic destination: "from Southern Russia to Kiev, Ukraine", but Kiev Highway can also be found in St. Petersburg and as a federal route from Moscow to Ukraine. Its sound somehow reminded me of Front 242's debut "Geography" which also fits the idea of this compilation.

Snowbringer continues to experiment here with his "Summer Collage" recorded on vacation with geographic destination "from Kazan to Nort West of Russia". Sometimes it sounds just like Nervoese Leute! You see, Snowbringer is not quite active now, perhaps a break is really needed to think about future of this project. We believe that it would surprise us and hope its new works will be exciting!

Лосины Маршала Потемкина contributed a song «3 соуса» (3 Sauces) with more local story: from Apatity to Murmansk. The song was recorded this summer and mastered this autumn. It tells a surreal story of Semyon Zolotarev (the most mysterious guy from Dyaltov Pass incident) found survived in a local fast food cafe. The protagonist says: "There are rumors you're a double agent", and Semyon replies: "3 sauces ain't always better than 2".

Yes, we love detective stories.

So, you can instantly download mp3 version of this compilation, but once downloaded, please change ".r2r" to ".rar" to open it normally.

Stay tuned!
I'd also like to inform you that since this post we're not going to make publications monthly; new posts will arrive when new records will be released.

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Северный голос — Кто умер, тот не может умереть (2019)

Hi everyone, we're presenting our brand new release: a web mixtape «Кто умер, тот не может умереть» (The Dead Can't Die) by Северный голос (The Northern Voice). Sorry, Mr. Jarmusch, but we weren't aware of your work with similar title.

Moreover, it's a quote.

But I feel like I need to make an introduction. Северный голос isn't a band, it's a group of poets. Its members are Pavel Surnov, Alexander Shvetsov (in the centre of the cover) and me. The group reads poetry while the music is playing. The music can be different: we read over cello, acoustic guitar, synths, tank drum, whatever.

The project is sort of parody, as it mocks too serious "middle class poetry" popular in Russia, such as Мужской голос (The Male Voice) or Живые поэты (Living Poets). It's a mainstream commercial poetry, vanilla poetry which makes us die laughing.

That's why we decided to use complex approach to poetry. Pavel's poetry, as well as mine, is openly sarcastic, while Alexander tends to read serious verses which adds complication to the concept. It's mostly post-irony.

Reading awkward stories about failures, weird affairs and accidents is mixed here with pseudo-romantic lyrics. As a result, "decadent" tag has been applied to us a variety of times.

You may check out the earliest live performance of the project here:

Also, Северный голос deconstructs not only the image of a modern poet, but provokes an instant reaction to the street performances, just like here:

The fact that Alexander does it all seriously can't make us considering him a "weak link" as some fellow colleagues said. He's a prolific poet who's published 3 books of verses, and his traditional method of work adds balance to our more avant-garde oriented approach.

Pavel also has plenty of serious material, unfortunately it hadn't been published as a book yet, but we hope something would turn out.

Right, let's switch to the mixtape. Spoken word recording for "The Dead Can't Die" were made in a basement studio which was under maintanence then, and there were no proper vocal speakers, so we plugged into bass or guitar amplifier and set it to sound like 60's speakers, and some lyrics sound as if were actually recorded in the times of Akhmadulina's biggest success. Some lyrics also were recorded such tricky way to resemble lyrics by Arseny Tarkovsky (famous director's father and lesser known yet superb writer) read in "Stalker" movie by Kaidanovsky.

So, we wanted to express closer connection to mid-XXth century than to modern techniques where lyrics are read over a hip-hop beat or somewhat similar. We tried to be as analogue as possible. All technical works were done by me.

Anyway, nowadays it could be impossible not to use synths, so there's some ambient soundscapes as well, but it couldn't been avoided.

Alexander's "Запах сирени, запах акации" (The smell of lilac, the smell of acacia) is read while the nylon-stringed acoustic guitar is playing, other tracks feature synths or a tank drum mixed in a way to fit percussion industrial aesthetics.

It's been also done on purpose. Percussion industrial music (like Steh auf Berlin by Neubauten) is supposed be radical ("Extreme conditions demand extreme responses", Test Dept. claimed), so this nod was sharpened to underline the current situation the independent art finds itself in.

The topics of the lyrics are: love stories, famous Russian birches and patriotism in general (in a post-ironic way), Russian North (in Pavel's "Мурмаши" - "Murmashi" - verse), etc. Мурмаши is a place where an airport, a cemetery and a local resort can be found at the same time.

The final 4 verses are the most important. Эгоист (Egoist) tells a story of spiritual degradation, while Женщина с бородой (A Bearded Woman) touches upon difficult issues of transgender people's relationships. In the end, final Веткой надвое разломиться (To Break Down Like a Branch) leads us to the situation of existential defeat, and Горшок (Potty-Chair) falls back to senile lamentations of the lost childhood.

The picture for the cover was taken by Jo Har Key.

So this is the record which is reflecting the Zeitgeist and eternity at the same time. It's difficult and may not be interpreted in a narrow way. It's not even serious, nor a joke. I consider it an example of the most honest poetic and musical approach to the present time.

Download it (wav!) for free (the whole mixtape or any track you wish)!

Stay tuned!

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Snowbringer — Final Handshaker (2019)

Hi everyone, today we're observing latest (and probably last) longplay by Snowbringer. Before the Final Handshaker, the project had released Perfect and Brutal Handshakers.

Handshakers were supposed to be sort of alternative series; while we get used to friendly ambient Snowbringer sound, Handshakers were considered as some harsher releases, (post-)industrial ones.

Now, this Final Handshaker is a long one-piece composition, quite dark and, let me say, moody.

As far as I'm concerned, Handshakers appeared not only to illustrate diversity of Snowbringer's sound, but also to demonstrate how this project gets more and more mature. Final Handshaker sounds even weary, and I think it's a feature of our time.

Final Handshaker, as well as other Snowbringer releases, came out not as Concern Void Records release. It's easy to understand we're looking for a "proper" label which would make promotion, etc., and if you know something suitable, some labels dealing with ambient / dark ambient / drone, as well as outsider music, please let me know by suggesting ideas in comments.

Final Handshaker isn't officially last Snowbringer release, but currently this project is "on vacation".

Check out this album:





Stay tuned!

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

VA — Крики раненых и почти что павших: Video

Hi everyone, here's the video version of my review of our recent VA sampler "Крики раненых и почти что павших":

We got some more stuff to review, so stay tuned!

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

VA — Крики раненых и почти что павших (2019)

TL;DR? Then check out video version!

Hi everyone, we're happy to present you our new annual sampler. This year, it was titled "Крики раненых и почти что павших" ("The shouts of wounded and almost deceased ones"), and, despite the fact we turn 10 years this time, it's in no way an anniversary sampler.

The picture for the cover was taken by me in Moscow.

The sampler represents the way we feel in modern media and social environment. It's mainly about self-actualization.

We begin from an end: the title track by Wladimir Laznew is called "Вместо эпилога" ("Instead of an Epilogue"), and it's a retrowave piece, very moving and suming things up at the very beginning.

You see, there's no action anymore; it's not even post-action, it's more like post whatever (just like your T-shirt prints say).

I did hope and I do hope Wladimir would release a solo record one day, because I know how many outstanding minimal synth pieces he has in store.

Then we have an abstract hip hop piece by Лосины Маршала Потемкина (prod. HANGOVER). It's the first and only experiment so far, and it might be considered even as a demo record, but we'd check out if it's liveable. Perhaps we would go on. Anyway, there's some remakes on the go, and plans to record newer stuff as well. And yeah, it's the only track featuring lyrics on this sampler.

Then there's a short interlude by Nervoese Leute, the track from their forthcoming 4th longplay hopefully to be released this year; further exploration of weirdest noises ever heard.

Then there's a super long track by Automatic Alice, the new monkier of our long-time friend. We decided there's no need anymore to have any shapes and restrictions for our samplers, so let this almost 12-minutes recording flow right into your ears. It's also an exploration, it's prorably even sort of meditation, it's kind of weird psycho folk / post-industrial experiment hopefully to be released later on tape in Moscow.

And we end with an ambient requem to Mark David Hollis of Talk Talk recorded by Snowbringer. The sad thing is also that it may be the final or one of the final tracks by this project before disbanding: perhaps there'll be final longplay, but it's uncertain.

And this is devastating. Musicians do leave; yup, they grow old, turn 30 etc., and got some other activities to waste their precious time on, but still there's sort of grief about that. Only few of us remain, new ones never seem to come.

Maybe there's no time or no creative space anymore for obscure Russian lo-fi diy records, partially because these efforts had never been appreciated seriously, anyway, when the desire to be avant-garde and weird disappeared, some cherished pieces of soul deceased.

Well, this sampler is designed to be percieved as a whole complex piece in 5 parts. It's different, but, without a doubt, it represents our vision. It's ideologically completed and it's more like a missile than an actual music piece. Seems like we've faced a dead end.

You may instantly download the sampler (mp3 only, change .7z to .rar when downloaded).

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Grey Lenses — Exploitation of Icarus (2019)

Hi everyone, we're entering 2019 with a brand new release, another soundtrack for a book by Grey Lenses.

The difference is that it is finally a soundtrack for a hardcover book, not a .pdf. "Exploitation of Icarus" is the title of the first story included in a book, and this album includes music which is supposed to be playing while reading first and last story featured in edition.

Since 2017, I annually release book OSTs, and they are always laptop dark ambient music. They are quite similar, I'm afraid it could be rather hard to tell one from another, but it's caused by the plot, because all these stories are connected, they share characters and show the development of both fictional narration and my skill in creating laptop ambient / post-industrial.

In this case, it's entertaining to think what is post-industrial literature and post-industrial music in general, and I hope this is something we can actually build by our own efforts.

To build is more fascinating than to demolish, it's some sort of creative credo. Despite the fact you might hear some quite disturbing noise and some occasional musical pieces here, it's all about sonic structures, it is by design. This album differs from previous ones because it has longer tracks consisting of different pieces. Previously, I created soundtracks making a track for a chapter; now these tracks reflect certain motives mentioned in a book, not particular chapters. This is why they are longer and even might be resembling dark ambient "sonatas".

"Icarus" is a typical "main theme", it exposes a sonic image of mythical Icarus which later disappears ("Disappearance"): a metaphor of losing the ideal role model. "Animal Blood" and especially "Death by Drowning" represent darker sound (there is honestly nothing cheerful in drowning), and final "In the Sandbox", "Reconstruction" and "Salvation" deal with an idea of liminal theme, topic of resurrection after a challenging encounter of death, all so traditional for world literature. The image of a sandbox is both Apocalyptic and modern, it's all about rebuilding. Reconstruction is a final phase of deconstruction, we destroy to rebuild, we'll never put up with empty spaces. And, in the end, everybody deserves salvation. If we're speaking about ideals, we should be moving towards such ideal unless it becomes irrational and/or useless.

Moreover, all my projects fight against music and it's pseudo harmony, because total harmony equals death. This is just another round, and I encourage you to be brave in creating most abrasive non-musical music which is not neccesary should be harsh. What is most valuable, is the method, the approach, not rawness for rawness. Just listen!



Stay tuned! 2018 was successful for our label, we had 2 physical releases and 4 web-releases, and I'm eager to make 2019 even more successful.

Feel free to leave feedback. Most physical releases may be ordered.

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Snowbringer — Brutal Handshaker (2018)

Hi everyone, today I'm gonna tell you about latest release by Snowbringer. It's not a Concern Void release, but it's worth your attention, I assure you.

Brutal Handshaker is sort of the development of ideas of Perfect Handshaker, released previous summer, and, to my mind, is probably best Snowbringer's release so far.

I remember enjoying Perfect Handshaker and thinking about making a remix of it which would sound more brutal, that's why I coined the title "Brutal Handshaker" to Snowbringer. Anyway, my remixes were never finished, and I just wrote lyrics and recorded vocals for a piece from Perfect Handshaker, which was called "Man in the Mirror" and released on a recent Concern Void mini-sampler (bigger annual sampler is still yet to come).

Despite the fact personally I enjoy this record with its solid post-industrial sound full of fascinating soundscapes, one might start to miss "classic" "bright ambient" Snowbringer, so that's much an issue whether its more "brutal" sound is a development, a step ahead, or it's just a spin-off. There are 2 Snowbringers now, actually: ambient one and darker one. Both sound pretty nice, though.

So I recommend you to check out this release. Our new releases will follow this summer!

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Grey Lenses — Music for The Cub (2018)

Hi everyone, it's time to put out a new release by our label: my latest soundtrack to my latest book.

This release bears proud "CV30" sign which is sort of anniversary for us. A picture for cover was taken by me in Peredelkino in 2016 (like to our previous release).

The record continues the direction I chose on Demotivating Tunes, a soundtrack to my previous book.

The book has pictures of stray cats and dogs on every page, basically pictures serve as background images for text, which makes it hard and painful to read it. It was made on purpose because reading is supposed to be source of your enrichment, and where's no pain, there's no gain, you know.

I know that cats and dogs have kittens and puppies, not actually cubs, but I chose these images to show there's no difference between cats and, for instance, cougars, because they're both predators. "Predator" type in literature has always been one of the most prolific, different writers used it, some liked it, but others blamed it. So when I decided to tell a story of a "little predator", no-one but the stray cat could match it better.

Basically, the story is more about an "accidental family", such typical and traditional topics which I believe I expressed differently. The story is finally published online, and I gotta say people tended to mistunderstood or being caught in traps I set just in every sentence. I don't want to explain what I meant to say, moreover, the story isn't translated, and I feel I'm totally unable to translate myself (though I tried so hard). Maybe some of our readers would like to help me out?

Anyway, I believe this soundtrack deserves your attention. It still has some dark ambient and post-industrial sound, but now the album is shorter, and it offers bigger variety of sonic structures. The structure of the sound is critically important, this is what I'd like to build in my tracks, and I try to build it the same way as I'm 'building' texts, it's construction, not composition.

And I also avoided to use musique concrete techniques, the only instrument here is the synth. Though I believe I'll do some musique concrete records, but probably under Nervöse Leute moniker.

All right, here's the album, and I hope you like it!

Stay tuned, I believe the spring is going to bring you our annual sampler, and probably a new Concern Void Video.

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey 

VA — Миф новогоднего настроения (2017)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

We're saying goodbye to 2017 with a new short VA web-EP called "Миф новогоднего настроения" ("The Myth of a New Year's/Christmas Mood").

Photo by me

We can say we don't have "Christmas mood" at all. So if you have, I guess it's not the best time to check out this sampler. You see, we came to conclusion that "Christmas mood" is not real, it's a fake, or, which is probably more accurate, a myth. It has been constructed, we were made to believe in some special New Year's mood.

So this sampler represents such idea. It's as short as it could be: about 10 minutes. It's also as gloomy as it could be. And it's as sincere as humanly possible.

The picture for the cover was taken by me near Moscow, in famous "writers' village" of Peredelkino.

The sampler starts with a track by Диспозиция Линча, it's the second track published by this project, and it creates proper New Year's mood from the very first seconds.

The second track is a collaboration between me and Snowbringer: I provided voice and lyrics; Snowbringer provided an instrumental from one of his latest releases.

The third track is the first appereance of the project "Окно Овертона" ("Overton Window"), titled "Пост-рок" ("Post-rock"). Окно Овертона is a band where plays our long-time friend and collaborator who have participated in our 2014 sampler "We Could Have Been Martians" as John Francis Dooley. This is the longest track, and the most musical on the sampler. I gotta say this band has quite a lot of interesting instrumentals hopefully to be published.

The final track is an instrumental from Лосины Маршала Потемкина titled "Добрые, добрые, добрые слова" ("Kind, Kind, Kind Words"). It's actually my solo track and the only track where I play balalaika.

Hope you will like our sampler. You can download it for free (mp3; instant download link if the previous one is broken).

Stay with us in 2018, there's always more to come.

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Snowbringer — Perfect Handshaker (2017)

Happy All Saints Day everyone!

We've prepared a special gift for you on this occasion: a new release by Snowbringer which differs greatly from other works by him, and, in my opinion, is so far his best!

Now this is not typical classic "bright ambient"; it's more noisy experimental stuff made with synth emulators (as far as I remember). These structures are filled with various emotions, and may even entertain the listener.

Also, pay special attention to the cover: this is a sculpture of a sheep: very fascinating and maybe even scaring! So awesome and suitable for Halloween!

By the way, Snowbringer had performed live for the 2nd time just a couple of days ago, so, stay tuned and remember to check out our YouTube channel to see more from us!

I gotta add it's a Snowbringer's own release, not a Concern Void one, but I liked this stuff so much that I even added vocals & lyrics for one piece, and this collaboration is about to be released on Concern Void sooner or later.

There's always more to come, guys. Just stay here. Don't leave :)

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Nervöse Leute / Snowbringer — 2nd Split (EP) (2017)

Hi everyone, we're happy & proud to present you our latest release, a web-EP split of Nervöse Leute & Snowbringer.

(click to see the album cover; images refuse to be imported by some unclear reason) 

This is like a large bonus to a split cassette released last year (still available for purchase). The picture for the cover was taken by me in 2015.

So, the tape is almost out of print, so we're preparing to upload albums from it, and while it's not done yet, you may enjoy watching all the covers (each tape had an unique cover) and listening to these tracks.

Nervöse Leute present here a 10-minute exploration of Russian chanson, a musical genre quite separated and distant from original French chanson. In Russia, chanson is supposed to be the music of criminals and young criminal wannabes subculture. This music has enormously big radio and TV rotations, and even the most respectable people tend to enjoy it, especially somewhat called post-chanson or chanson pop. Emigrants feel huge nostalgia while listening to it live in some Russian restaurants abroad.

A tremendous tape manipulation by Nervöse Leute distorted the structure of typical chanson cassette, making it totally noire, close to Bain Wolfkind, and maybe even apocalyptic. Above these distorted layers (by the way, no actual distortion effect was applied) there is a song, "Bury Me Dressed Like a Chanson Star" sung by me imitating typical chanson singers' intonations. I also played guitar here. After it goes apocalyptic folk version of this song, resembling some of David Tibet's whispers.

You know, the idea of being buried "dressed like a chanson star" is some kind of dream of getting rich and die, not having a chance to use benefits of being prosperous. The dress code is extremely important here because "chanson stars" dress like kings of far 3rd world countries, their look represents success & wealth, not style. Also, I can tell you it's some kind of dialogue with Nick Cave's "Higgs Boson Blues" where he expressed wishes how he'd like to be buried. Irony, irony everywhere.

Regarding Snowbringer, I gotta confess I don't know what else to say about it. He presented his classic untitled work, "bright ambient", "Andromeda music", "Northern lights soundtrack" — and there's not much to add. I believe now he moves to a different sound, cruder and firmer, and this split shows more a glance to his past than to his present. I hope this autumn or winter I'm gonna tell you about his latest release which, in my opinion, is so far his best.

And now you may download this sampler for free (flac; instant download; if broken, please change file type to .rar) and check it out!

Stay tuned! I'm sorta worried we release only a couple of projects this year, but I keep dreaming of expanding our label and of new physical releases.

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

VA — Coldspot Muzak (2017) [VIDEO]

Hi everyone, check out a new video about our sampler "ColdSpot Muzak", released this year. The text version is right here.

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Grey Lenses — Heaven Accepts Ordinary People

Hi everyone, we're back again with my another album. This, "Heaven Accepts Ordinary People", is actually a lossless recording of my live set played this June.

The covers are my photos taken in the centre of Moscow in 2015.

I gotta say that, despite the fact "Grey Lenses" exist for 9 years, this was the very first gig for such a long time. I presented classic laptop dark ambient and some classic laptop noise.

The first two pieces, "Teleport Me Home" and "Heaven Accepts Ordinary People", represent more ambient side of my music. "Teleport Me Home" was inspired by the idea of despair, homesickness and nostalgia. Pretty much same things and same emotions. "Heaven Accepts Ordinary People" was inspired heavily by David Lynch's "Eraserhead", and the famous radiator scene.

The last two pieces, "Searching for Cats in Dark Rooms" and "You Were Out Again", represent more noisy, (post-)industrial side of my music. This is a very rhythmic noise, dymanic and active. Almost a music. "You Were Out Again" is made probably more in an oriental style, a friend of mine compared it with works by Kazumoto Endo, that's why I picked such name for this track. But that's not the only reason for such title: I thought it's a piece of a thought, very peculiar for outsider music and especially for Jandek, whose way of lyrical thinking I sincerely respect.

In the end of the show I performed my minimal synth song "External Approval":

And yeah, the show was filmed, but it's an incomplete version. On the other hand, this video version contains occasional vocals, inspired by abovementioned radiator scene and Japanese noise influences.

You can download the album in any possible format from BandCamp:




Stay tuned, we're working hard to present you new releases soon!

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Snowbringer — The Places I've Gone Without Going Anywhere (2016)

Hi everyone, I've just noticed I hadn't posted one of albums by Snowbringer released by him in 2016.

This "missing" album is called "The Places I've Gone Without Going Anywhere", and it's a classic "bright" ambient record divided into two parts: "The Places I've Gone..." and "...Without Going Anywhere".

Each part lasts more than 1 hour 16 minutes, so this journey is about to be long, though, I believe, it would be rather calm and inspiring. Even the idea of "remote control" journey is something which really seduces the mind, when one allows oneself to dream without limitations. Anyway, the author could imply something different from my interpretation.

So, check out this album — and stay tuned!

 

Sorry for brevity, got too much work these days.

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey