Grey Lenses — Nine Insights (2024)

 

Photo by Evgeniy Dvoynishnikov

Hi everyone, it's been more than a year since previous time I had updated this blog, and I hope some of you are still here to check out my new album.

I also noticed someone else started to use name "Grey Lenses" and releasing music under this moniker, which is actually ambigious: the good side is that it's actually a good name, the bad side is that they could google if the name's been occupied before using it, or, even worse, they don't care about such thing as an unique name for the band.

Anyway, as the first occupier of the name I found no reasons to rename my project, and released "Nine Insights" as Grey Lenses. Again, it's a soundtrack for a book. The photo for the cover was taken in 2021 by my friend Evgeniy Dvoynishikov in Murmansk, the district of Roslyakovo where there was a spontaneous "beach" also filmed in our video:

Also, one of the most important scenes in the book takes place there, so this image was the most accurate one I could ever pick for the cover.

Musically, one might not hear a great changes in sound between this record and some of my previous albums though I used a different software this time, and it took me about 18 months to finish the album while previously I used to take only 12.

For this album I tried to "compress" noise (it's almost completely a noise record with less than few pieces of dark ambient) into an everchanging structure which wouldn't allow listener to take a break. In addition, I tried to achieve "warmer" sound with using some of analogue equipment. Unlike Nervöse Leute, the project which was (is?) entirely analogue, Grey Lenses' noise records were entirely digital until "Nine Insights". This time it's sort of mix between digital and analogue technologies, and I believe I managed to make the tracks sound "oldschool" enough.

Technically speaking, the sound's based on feedback noise, a classic approach proved efficacy since 80s, but originally feedback was made when a mic was put against a speaker; I used a mic and a guitar amp with no guitar plugged, and this "absent" guitar was a symbol of significant loss, the great missing link which creates "a hole" in perception, which, i.e. hole, is getting filled with feedback noise.

I took inspiration in analogue noise pieces of industrial music (Cabaret Voltaire, Laibach), and also studied how guitar bands could use an amp to make noisy yet gentle sound (neither noise rock, nor shoegaze, but mostly in style of post-punk like Durutti Column, Joy of Life, Siglo XX or My Dad is Dead).

I hope you'll check out this record, it took effort of me:

Stay tuned for the new posts may follow!

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

StereoStas — Starfall (2023)

 

Hi everyone, I'd like to share with you a single by our new project, StereoStas.

I collaborated with Vladimir Laznev, with whom we've already worked in Nervoese Leute and Concern Void band, and this collab logically continues our movement to more conventional music, started in previous year's Retrowelle EP.

Starfall is a single which includes the title song Starfall and a "b-side" Papa Dj. It provides post-punk sound with mellow melodic structure and more pop oriented verse-chorus lyrics.

The single is inspired by Sovietwave, space exploration and retrofuturism. Also, this is our first collab uploaded to Spotify, YouTube Music and Apple Music.

Hope you like our new beginning, and hope you're still here.

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Grey Lenses — Drain Muzak (2023)

 

Hi everyone, it's 2023, and it's time for new noise. We all know how catastrophic previous year was, and it unavoidably has been reflected in sonic structures I created.

Again, it's a soundtrack for my fiction, and, sardonically, it sort of predicted the events happened last year. The sound became glitchy and even eerier, and noise itself became the voice of rumination. I'd describe these structures as "numb".

Hope you're fine.

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Лосины Маршала Потемкина — Старозубов (2022, ЕР)

 

Hi everyone. Today I'd like to present you latest EP by Лосины Маршала Потемкина, titled "Старозубов".

Last year I moved again, and my bands had to be reformated. Лосины... was no exception. While we're still waiting for our former bandmates to rejoin us, we kept working as a duo with our new multi-instrumentalist and member of The Colourful Pictures Dmitry Mulganov.

We changed style in favor of minimalistic electronic sound based on beats. The cover image, of course, mimics Swans' "Filth", I made this collage by myself using 1970's book about math. The EP may even be called sort of tribute to "Filth", despite it sounds pretty different.

Firstly, overall feeling of filth around makes you want to get cleansed, and it's a cathartic practice leading to purifying oneself, often may be caused by tragic events (that's what tragedy is about), and violent art images are supposed to have an effect on a person in real life.

Secondly, Michael Gira said he used advertising slogans to compose lyrics for Filth, as these slogans are dehumanized and alienized by themselves, and I used the very same method while writing lyrics for the track "Нам доверяют" ("We're Trusted).

Some say this release is a "step back" to outsider music from what we achieved before, but I'd rather say it's a step aside. While I've been into outsider music for years and haven't got any acclaim at all, I used these aesthetics as a founding stone, Jandek especially, as it corresponded to my own feelings: "non-music", "not a proper" music, out-of-tune music seemed to have more opportunities to express what I felt and thought at the time, and currently I believe it's time to rearrange these approaches to express new experience.

"Старозубов" is a name (Starozubov) of fictional Soviet crooner played by an awesome actor Anton Lapenko. The line "Starozubov won't sing about me" is one of the crucial lines here, which means, post-ironically, that neither I would reach acknowledge, nor I'd be even able to try, because the crooner who's supposed to sing, is purely fictional.

This title track is quite depressive, and touches upon topic of suicide which has been "contemplated multiple times" (a Rowland S. Howard reference), but still remains "technically impossible" - a nod to famous Willy-Nicky telegrams and its representation by Neubauten.

World War I, "modernist war", remains part of modernist myth which still lives in our minds as tragic yet not cathartic memory, a trauma which wasn't cured because it had never been paid enough attention to.

Theme of violence, geniunely important for Лосины... (each Лосины... release contains a song about violence, about suicide and about a famous guy who I envy, as I joked), is transformed by the narrator as a stream which floats both inside and outside, it's a simultaneous implosion and explosion, it bursts out and rushes in, it knows no obstacles and never stops. Violence wants to destroy the outside world and its bearer at the same time, during the very same act of crushing the limits, because violence actually is when one crosses the borders which shouldn't be crossed (a Delphic maxima). Violence, therefore, is neither "an answer", nor a "proper" question, but a "rhetorical question". This is what I find similar to Swans' message, too.

The track also contains a reference to a great artist Leonid Purygin, whose works about dreams (and nightmares) inspired me.

Querulant behavior, indifference to "good vs. evil" issues, psychophobia and questions of control are also among the topics.

The track "Хибины с Ильёй" (Khibiny with Ilya) is a rememberance of North we left (Khibiny is somewhat popular place of tourism, ancient mountains somehow suited for mountain ski etc.), but the protagonist returns there "to bury their son" accompained by some unclear dude named Ilya.

The track "Старшие товарищи" (Older Pals) tells a story of a guy who whines that "older pals" "don't promote you" trying to sell you his washing machine at the same time. It's rather funny story, to be fair.

So, hope it find this EP worth your time. I don't know what's going to be our next step, but the fact we still make ones, kind of encourages me during this harsh time. Hope everyone's well these days.

Stay tuned,

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Nervöse Leute — Retrowelle (2022)

 

Hi everyone, we're happy to announce that Nervöse Leute have reunited in an original lineup to release an EP "Retrowelle".

This is indeed a retrowave EP with gentle minimal synth sound. Pure 80's flavor! All music has been written by Vladimir Laznev, and I picked and mixed the samples and also shot a cover picture.

The picture was taken in Petrozavodsk, one of the most depressing cities I ever visited.

But Nervöse Leute has always had a creepy part, and this time all the creepy stuff comes from the samples I used. Guess you know a meme about "I May Not Know My Flowers", that's how the title track's called, and you may know the funny movie "The Gay Deceivers" from which it comes from, but the creepy part is that in Russia you gotta be really careful when joking about gays. Certainly you may hurt their feelings, but there's also notorios "Gay Propaganda Law" oficially banning any coverage of the topic. To be fair, there's nothing in the samples which could be considered as propaganda: a joke's a joke. But if you know the origin of this joke, you sort of know the subtext and context, and you're, like: "Yeah it's something which may be banned in here, alright".

Alright, we're moving on. The second track also features creepy samples. "Why Tragedy in My Life?" is a title of an old YouTube video where an old lad tells and comments on the story from The Bible and discusses the topic of tragedy as part of God's Providnece. "God permits tragedy to get your attention", the old guy says. And here comes the creepy part: this is Edarem himself, a musthave in any "Top Creepy Old School YouTubers" list. Edarem was condemned for a really tough crime, and he was prohibited to use Internet, but he did use it to publish his videos, and it ended in second inprisonment; so he died in a prison hospital quite soon after that. He's creepy and what he says is creepy: someone has to die just to make me "pay attention" to God? No, thank you, sir.

The third track is titled "You Look Depressed", the samples were taken from some tape from the 90's with lessons of English. Nervöse Leute have always been keen on using analogue samples, tapes, etc., and this is the case. The thing is that overall mood of the tape is kind of blaming the listener for being a homebody, for being non-social and depressed as if it's a bad thing. You gotta go out, you gotta watch TV to be "up to date", you gotta meet people you dislike just to remain a normal guy in their eyes. Actually, it's about shaming of depression and other psychiatric issues.

The final track has shortwave (Nervöse Leute's hobby horse) samples of a radio show discussing Covid-19 and Omicron in general. It's just the feature of the time. We're having disastrous numbers of Covid victims here in Russia, kids get sick and die, children's hospitals have no vacant places, etc. It's horrorful when you look at the amount of victims of the pandemic. 

Well, we're proud of our work, I must admit. Nervöse Leute change, but remain truthful to their ideology. Let's see if we go on exploring creepy terrotories.

Check out the EP here: 

Stay tuned!

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Grey Lenses — Issues of Nihilism (2022)

 

Cover by Pavel Chainichkov

Hi everyone, it's 2022 and we're still on the go, which is quite amusing, after all.

This time I'm happy to present you my latest and probably last solo laptop noise LP record titles "Issues of Nihilism".

It's another soundtrack for a book, just like I've been doing for last six years annually.

This particular record is more noisy, sometimes it tries to sound like pure Japenese harsh noise, sometimes it sounds calmer, but all in all, it's a quirky album.

Among other sources of inspiration, I thought a lot about Laibach this time, which found its incarnation in tracks like "We Rise" or "Ein Übergang".

The last one was taken from Nietzsche's Zarathustra, "the man is the most gruesame beast", etc.

There's also Dostoevsky's "Devils" ("Canton of Uri", i.e. suicide, or "The Devil") among sources of inspiration.

Guess I ain't got much to add. The release is pretty much peculiar for me. Currently I got no certain plans or something. Life changes, you know. Things change. So let's see.

But stay tuned, maybe something else would occur. And hope you like this effort.

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

The Colourful Pictures — Distance

 

 

Hi everyone, this time I'm presenting you another, and probably last if not at all, then in a row of, release of "The Colourful Pictures".

It's titled "Distance" and it sounds sort of no wave-ish, mostly due to passionate bass played by Artyom Danilovsky who joined our weekly sessions.

I said it may be the last record because it appeared to be our final session; I've moved, and re-listened to it from a distance, that's why I titled the record "Distance".

Dmitry Mulganov played drums and recorded the session, I played synth, mixed and provided a cover image. This picture was taken in Yekaterinburg, one of the prettiest cities I've seen.

Well, let's see what the future brings. I believe at least some of our projects would go on, but currently it's sort of total hiatus here for me.

Anyway, stay tuned and check for updates from time to time.

Hope you'll enjoy the record:

 

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

The Colourful Pictures — What's That Noise? (2021)

 

Hi everyone, today I'm glad to present you another LP by The Colourful Pictures, titled "What's That Noise?".

This time it's a collaboration with a trumpet player who preferred to remain anonymous. I played synth and provided noises and Dmitry Mulganov who picked the album title and made a cover design suggestion, played drums.

Once again as in case of The Colourful Pictures, this is a free improv record of what we call a sonic meditation. As far as I can't know for sure what was on the mind of my colleagues, I'll speak for myself.

As you may know, my other project, Nervöse Leute, was put on hiatus after releasing the latest record "I Play the Music - You Dance" because I felt being done with field recording and analogue samples, I simply couldn't find anything worth attention, as if I've already recorded all the sources I ever wanted.

But some ideas remained, and I was messing with putting them on the go by different means, by using different sonic strategies, and The Colourful Pictures seemed perfect for it.

For instance, the track "Ravenous" was initially designed to be Nervöse Leute track dedicated to Coil, and I managed to create digital eerie noise somewhat similar to early Coil's samples.

"Are You Enjoying?", probably the most interesting track on this LP, was also initially designed for Nervöse Leute. There I was trying to create Cabaret Voltaire-esque synth noise. Also, this track was supposed to refer to Killing Joke-like "thickness" of sound.

Some tracks on this record were made out of findings for Grey Lenses, my solo project: my parts from "Youth Restored", "We Are Fossils", "Incompleteness of Life" and "Happiness of Sadness" could fit a new Grey Lenses album.

For example, "Youth Restored" was inspired by the same novel by Mikhail Zoshchenko, great Russian Modernist writer. "We Are Fossils" was a dreamy idea of what if Depeche Mode started to make noise music.

All in all, this is just about noise; I guess the main mood of the album is made by the trumpet. Hope you like such sound!

Check the record:

 

Stay tuned!

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

The Colourful Pictures — Urbi et Orbi (2021)

 

Hi everyone, today I'm presenting you our latest release, "Urbi et Orbi' by The Colourful Pictures.

This record is a free improv session dedicated to Ancient Rome. I provided synths, vocals, did mastering and made cover design for it; Snowbringer provided synths and recorded the session, and Dmitry Mulganov played live acoustic drums.

Mostly it's noise with live drums, sometimes there are more ambient-filled sections. Two tracks feature vocals, De Tranquillitate and The Enchiridion include reading of these works (fragments).

This Heat's S.P.Q.R. slogan "We are all Romans", as much as my interest to Stoic philosophy, led to thinking about fundamental core of civilization, established by Romans. We owe to them, we owe to them too much, I must admit, and it was sort of musical meditation (in a Roman way, not in an oriental way) about that.

You may check it out right here:

Stay tuned for new updates!

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey

The Colourful Pictures — Wittgenstein Wittgenstein (2021)

 

Hi everyone, today we're presenting you latest album by The Colourful Pictures. The project goes on reflecting on famous scholars, and this time the record deals with ideas and image of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The problems of language studied by Wittgenstein inspired us to create this sonic piece, divided into 2 parts named after Wittgenstein's most famous works: Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations.

Basically, we treated this ideas like the idea of 'power of language' (Tractatus) and the idea of 'weakness of language'.

Sonically, this album contains several layers of ambient and laptop noise created by Snowbringer and me, live bass guitar, kalimba and flute by Mikhail Alekseev who also provided drum programming, and slight and actually interrupting the wholesome structure pieces of acousting guitar (sometimes barely heard) played by Alexey Pavlov.

There are also a couple of jokes: a musical phrase reminding of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus, and a sample of Siri (as an example of artificial speech).

We found this record extremely 'inconvenient' (there are 2 different levels of sound: 'harsh' level and 'musical' level, and the latter one divides into 'conventional' part and 'irrelevant' part) yet coherent to Wittenstein's views in its (d/r)evolution. I mean, we found the language itself both, at the same time mighty and useless. This is sort of total ambivalence which governs current cultural situation. Therefore, the record is also totally up to date.

We'd also like to thank Crank Playthings experimental podcast from New Zealand who played out track in a recent show, that was a real honor for us to be played in the same show with Lackthrow :)

Check the record, and hope you like it!

 

Sincerely yours,

John "Grey Lenses" Grey