среда, 20 июня 2018 г.

Лосины Маршала Потемкина — Дебютный альбомчик (2010)

Hi everyone! Just before the work on a new Лосины Маршала Потемкина's single is, as far as I'm concerned, crawling to the end, it's time to tell about their very first release.



 While observing its cover, you might have prepared for extraordinary amount of weirdness, and this is indeed the weirdest Лосины...'s release. The history of the band, started in 2009, was frustrating at that moment, as mates began to leave it, and I remained the only member since late summer 2010 and for long, long years.

The "doctrine" of the band in 2009 and first half of 2010 proclaimed we ain't going to record, and we didn't even manage to perform live in a club then, so when I was left alone I felt like I should make this record just to save the impressions from being in a band. Of course, I was very limited in instruments.

The faces who stare at you from the cover were our avatars created in a PhotoRobot software which is, as we believed, was quite close to ones used by the police. The cover was also decorated with excise stamps from alcohol bottles which represented "alcoholic folk" genre we played back then.

I believe this EP is really, really hard to listen to. It's pathologically lo-fi. It's recorded to irritate listener. It's weird, it's atonal, it's noisy and hopelessly out of tune. It represents mostly anger.

The EP includes 4 songs, some of which we still play in 2018: I have to mention sort of "alcoholic folk anthem" "Я не могу сказать где, твои деньги" ("I Can't Tell You Where's Your Money"), re-recorded in 2011 and still quite popular in a post-punk version (set timecode to 36:21); "Мягкие игрушки" ("Soft Toys") — also check out truly magnetic post-punk version (the timecode is 7:17).

It also featured melancholic yet ironical "Шерстяная кофта" ("A Wool Sweater") which we still play in a modified version, and "Заначка" ("A Stash") with weird arpeggios, and it's the only song from the EP we don't play now.

Well, the primary instrument for the EP was a steel-string guitar, sometimes accompanied by harmonics and synths. The EP touched upon topics of alcoholism, fear and poverty. Perhaps it's anti-music but it's definitely not anti-folk; it's real Russian outsider folk music, as it's close to people.

Retracing this way, I find it easy to surprise how far we've gone, how much we've mutated, and before releasing a post-punk single, our 2nd post-punk release, and dreaming of making an abstract hip-hop record and conceptual post-punk album, it's fitting to recall the very beginning. Moreover, I found this EP missing on BandCamp, so this link is possibly the only chance to download it.

I feel sorry that our new stuff, including annual sampler, is still delayed, but it only means we'll have a bunch of new releases at some moment.

Stay tuned,
sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

пятница, 1 июня 2018 г.

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