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

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

The Colourful Pictures — Bakhtin Bakhtin (2020)

 

 

Hi everyone, today I'm gonna present you our latest release, an album by The Colourful Pictures titled Bakhtin Bakhtin after the name of famous and influential scientist.

 

The album consists of 5 tracks which I found difficult to tag; it's obviously experimental avant-garde music, sometimes it turns to noise pop or some weird lo-fi synthpop, though it's played with live instruments: despite typical layers of laptop noise (performed by me), there's electric piano played by Предложный Падеж, live acoustic ('rock') drum kit played by Dmitry Mulganov, live bass played by Михаил Алексеев from Лосины Маршала Потемкина, and there's a flute played by me (track 1) and Предложный Падеж (other tracks).

 

This album also delievers a big deal of vocals (male vocals by me, female vocals by Предложный Падеж). In tracks 1-3 I read excerpt from Bakhtin's scientific papers, for tracks 4-5 I found some lyrics telling various stories about Bakhtin's life and work.

 

The first track, the longest one, named "Франсуа Рабле и народная культура средневековья" (Rabelais and His World), represents sonic study of carnival, it features various resonant noise sources, sometimes abrasive, sometimes mellow. The voice on this album, as well as drums, is kept as background instrument, there was no specific mixing to make it sound "soloing", it's somehow beyond the noise. In general, it makes the track monstrous just like Rabelais' characters.

The second track "Проблемы поэтики Достоевского", (Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics) shows more chilled, relaxed sound, when noise mostly assists the melody.

The third track "Динамика Достоевского" (Dostoevsky's Dynamics) is more energetic track where tempo goes too fast to make words recognizable. The pace of Dostoevsky's works is too rapid to concenrate on every certain word, and the track was up to demonstrate it. Later it reminded of Radiohead's "Idioteque" and I felt sorry for that. It was accidental.

The 4th track, "Диалог / Хронотоп" (Dialogue / Chronotope) is our favourite one. It's actually a weird, long, repetitave outsider pop song about Bakhtin. It's filled with grotesque figures, so peculiar to his studies of carnival.

For instance, there are such lines as:

Little children and old babushkas, everybody knows Bakhtin

Reading Bakhtin, I understand Rabelais with mother's milk

I brought Pospelov's book to Bakhtin, and Bakhtin refused to read it.

When Bakhtin goes out to watch street soccer, it's a carnival on Earth.

 

The final track is titled "Закатилось Солнце гуминатарных наук" (The Sun of Humanitarian Studies has Descended), and it's dedicated to portraying Bakhtin's life and death. The lyrics I read touch upon his bizzare poverty, his status of unrecognized scholar, etc. Sonically, it features eerie noise structures and sad bass tunes.

So, check out the record 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

MWaD & Grey Lenses — Not Long Ago / You Left Me Here (2015)

Hi everyone! This year is floating slowly to its end, and autumn is such a good time for nostalgic thoughts. Today I’d like to show you some pieces from the first meeting of our community in Moscow in 2015. Soon (I believe) we’ll be having the third meeting, but the first one was really exceptionable. It was the only our meeting so far which included a real gig.

Ain’t got much time to describe all my memories now, but these two tracks I’m showing you now will always remain precious to me. It was a pure improvisation, we played together for the first time then, and all the lyrics were picked on the go. I just hope you check it out.

And I hope we’ll finally release something new soon. And I hope you’ll send me some feedback. And I hope, and I hope, and I hope.

Download for free (lossless) (mp3)

 Yours sincerely,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey