Max Pollyul: Waves of “Soft, Deep Sound” amid Multiple Social Failings

For the second time this week, there is new music to showcase from the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk, one of the nation’s major powerhouses. For decades Dnepropetrovsk was a vital force in the development of Ukrainian manufacturing, both for industry as a whole and – more specifically – the field of space hardware. This connection to secret or military enterprise meant that the city was closed to outside visitors. Perhaps not surprisingly, a move from subsidized factories to market-driven service trade would not be easy after 1991, neither in terms of altered prestige nor employment opportunities.

As a result, the city’s attractive architecture (from the past) often alternates with unappealing options for the future. Bright facades and dim prospects coexist.

The worst consequence of these awkward (downward) shifts came in 2007, when a couple of young men from Dnepropetrovsk went on a prolonged series of terrifyingly unpredictable murders. In retrospect, it seems that this spree of bloody violence had its roots in the city’s recent fate – and what it might offer its residents. In other words, cut adrift from any sense of social purpose, the lives of these boys – and thousands like them – became increasingly anarchic. Soon they started to take their frustrations out on the local populace: over the course of two months in 2007, as many as 21 people were murdered in this one Ukrainian location.

The perpetrators would leave notes at the scene, claiming that “Only the Strong Survive.” A “positive” feeling of being came only at the expense of mass destruction: anything resembling progress or social construction was dismissed on a wave of chaos. The killers’ sense of vengeance was so pronounced, a local resident was being murdered almost every three days. As we see, the police were not able to apprehend the criminals at once… The individuals accused of the killings were finally found guilty and sentenced a few months ago, but the phrase “Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs” has unfortunately endured in the nation’s popular press.

As a result, an aura of dead-end industry and social failing still hangs over the city, now tainted with tales of unspeakable violence.

One can imagine, as a result, how music from Dnepropetrovsk would be colored either by a strong vein of social protest, or an equally strong desire to escape. The new music in this post, courtesy of Max Pollyul, operates according the latter goal. Pollyul has published a four-track, 32-minute EP called “Deep Swimming” on Deep Limit Records. The EP’s title, publishing company, and even track listings leave us in no doubt that these atmospheric, all-enveloping instrumentals are designed to evoke a dual atmosphere of descent and some subsequent, directionless state. Those track titles map a brief trajectory of descent, deceleration, and cognitive clarity. The world makes sense only as one leaves the realm of “maniacs”: “Drop”; “Deep Swimming”; “Viscous Liquid” – and, finally – “Concentrate.”

The pharmaceutical imagery of this musician’s early releases is now replaced by something cheaper, more natural, and less damaging.

At other venues online, where Pollyul has left these older or more experimental works, he occasionally give us a brief snapshot of other styles he might use in order to conjure the musical metaphors of profundity, in both senses. Most of those styles speak to a process of willful minorization: in an environment where large and evident targets are beaten and turned into the subject of snuff movies, hiding away or “shrinking” in some fashion would be a most attractive option. Hence a preference for the following, multifaceted aesthetic in Pollyul’s discography: “ambient, ambient dub, chillout, deep house, deep dechno, easy listening, electro techno, glitch, lounge, microhouse, minimal electronica, minimal house, minimal psytrance, minimal techno, psy-chill, tech house, and… last but not least, tech trance.”

Such are the sounds – and facial hair – that Pollyul has been crafting for the last ten years.

This work, however, is all done far from the public eye. Pollyul does not seem that keen on making his face visible. The small and amateurish image here of our chosen musician is one of only two he uses; the other is even worse.  A polished portfolio or good-looking headshot is clearly not an option. The equally sparse tools he employs for textual PR also speak to this hermetic tendency: “Max Pollyul is an electronic musician. He became interested in electronic sounds in the late ’90s. Following a long series of searches and experiments, he finally settled on a hypnotic techno and soft, deep sound. Characterizing his music with any precision would be difficult, but suffice it to say that Max prefers atmospheric sounds. He prefers music that bears an emotional load.”

And with that, the PR men close shop and go home, leaving Pollyul to his own devices in an empty studio.

Whilst in that quiet venue, he spins off a list of nouns that might at least help to contextualize his instrumentals. If the four tracks of this EP take us gradually in the direction of values upon which we should “concentrate,” then here – in Pollyul’s mind – are some possible objects of desire and respect: “Life, people, God, style, Mother, Father, bass, cinema, art-house, fashion, forest, house,  sound, sequencer, echo, cigarettes, coffee, [mental/emotional] condition, brain, music, technology, factory, advertising, inspiration, nature, love, despair, strength, reason, desire, time, the universe, friends, separation, persistence, aspirations, belief, dream, quality, understanding, rest, work, musicians…”

There’s an undulating quality to this list, as if its author drifts in and out of ostensible social contacts. He slips in and out of physical or sonic states with both grace and gratitude. One moment he’s present, and the next – when needs be – he’s gone. Actuality, in the words of a recent release, is made “elastic.”

In fact, given the happy ambiance of that same long list, it’s interesting to see how it also informs the raison d’etre of Pollyul’s label – Deep Limit. Likewise based in Dnepropetrovsk, Deep Limit has just celebrated its second anniversary. Apparently an ability to “submerge” and then “concentrate” on Ukrainian dancefloors is a successful form of emotional self-defense for multiple electronic composers.

The label announced its birthday with a proud admission that “despite our relatively young age, we’ve nonetheless been able to win the affections of a progressive audience. The very fact of our appearance was something noteworthy on Ukraine’s music and art scenes. The number of Ukrainian independent labels may be growing daily, but Deep Limit [still] stands out from the crowd, thanks to its well-considered musical policies and non-commercial intentions. Over and above our releases, we’ve also been busy with the organization of parties, performances, exhibitions, and all kinds of open-air events.”

Focusing primarily on deep techno, glitch, and microhouse EPs, Deep Limit has now produced a compilation – shown here – to mark the two-year milestone. It can be downloaded for free, allowing an insight into some of the label’s other acts, such as Komponente, the Psycho Cowboys, Stich, Youngod, and Pappy Knead & Servello. Little by little, these are the sounds of musicians reclaiming events in the “open air” of Dnepropetrovsk.

These are sounds, in other words, of people returning – from the deep – to a troubled surface, once the maniacs have been locked away.

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