Anterna & Sead Noise: “Control Illusion” and the Weight of History

Anterna and Sead Noise are the pseudonyms of two young electronic musicians, one from Ukraine and the other from Russia. More specifically, the former resides in the city of Nikopol‘, shown below, and the latter in Kursk. The overriding theme that links these callow composers is – to be honest – death, pure and simple. Both work in the realm of dark ambient or drone textures in order to conjure sonic images of some universal and extremely sobering state.

Neither musician is terribly willing to reveal themselves personally; of Anterna, for example, we learn little more than his Christian name is Sviatoslav; Sead Noise, with similar reticence, is revealed to be the creative outlet of a gentleman known in less dramatic contexts as Roman, who labors away in the studio with two friends, Julia and Anton. All of these individuals have just joined forces to release an EP with St. Petersburg’s Qulture Productions, entitled “Control Illusion.”

In a related spirit, the B&W cover-art (above) for this new joint EP, composed across the territory of two neighboring nations, may appear to be taken from a post-war American archive, but it showcases ubiquitous issues of (physical) limit, decline, and demise that might have little to do with the constraints of political geography. In contemplation of such global, all-pervading issues, let’s take a quick look at what these two projects have to say about themselves and their extremely grim outlook on life. In both cases we will be translating the PR blurbs from Russian.

Of Anterna – in fact, with regard to the very meaning of that term – we are initially told it embodies “symbols of a dead reality that has [merely] been technogenetically invigorated. These symbols are blurred and unclear, as if enveloped in the cold mists of a predawn fog. The [music that emerges from such views] is a flight from the ramblings of an idealized human destiny, an attempt to rend the shield of a degenerate utopia that surrounds us all. Anterna tries to release and break through all the closeted limits of our [false] emotions.”

The text continues: “Anterna is a minimalist web of icy, incisive sounds from ‘within.’ It is a mystical, dark-ambient atmosphere, bound with the most extreme noises that have been distorted through various forms of ‘renunciation’ and melancholy. The result is tied to severe, solid rhythms from the realms of industrial or ‘power-noise’ music. These are emotions bordering on the lack of emotion…” A remarkably similar text was used to announce and promote Sviatoslav’s debut recording last spring, released through the Whispering Net Label. Hence, no doubt the image of a black hole or eddy from that first release, shown above.

In a word, these are lasting convictions. Local merchants and architects in Nikopol – as below – may try to resurrect the jolly “traditions” of an imagined,  romanticized past, but something grim clearly, consistently endures in the minds of local youths.

Since the time of that first release, Sviatoslav has asked several people on his page at VKontakte for their opinions and suggestions re: his musical and philosophical trajectory. One listener of these grim, Gothic instrumentals went as far as to say that the worldview behind them is more interesting that the works themselves! Not surprisingly, after such pointed criticism, Sviatoslav popped briefly out of the woodwork with a few words in his defense: “Hold on… don’t go overboard with the criticism. All of the tracks here are indeed joined by a single concept; its general outline [shown above] is sketched in my text, but not in its entirety. It takes the listener to imagine the full concept of the tracks.”

And, as the official (woefully unfashionable) concrete entrance to Nikopol’ suggests, that “fullness” of social concept may reside in something very Soviet – as we’ll indeed suggest anon.

One of the most telling and useful remarks came from another Vkontakte listener who suggested that the new music reminds him of “the horrors of war.” Sviatoslav agreed, stating that his compositions often reflect “ideas that come close to the tragedy of military conflict. These are visions born of the past.” Hoping to avoid such awfulness in the future, he often makes pointed, if not dismissive remarks about organized religion – both in the literal sense and as a metaphor for political zeal. Yet another listener summed up these cynical convictions as his general dislike (or despair, perhaps) for those citizens in “constant search of a demigod.” Sviatoslav concurred with this summation, and – in support of such positions – added recently that “such issues are especially relevant today.”

And indeed, despite the new B&W retro cover and universal themes of “Control Illusion,” there are a handful of snippets taken from US news broadcasts – together with other sounds in these instrumentals, such as police sirens – that make concrete sonic reference to legal and political “failings” in modern America.

The creative rationale of Sead Noise is built along similar lines. “Roman” of Kursk informs us that “my chosen style can be summed up as ‘experimental ambient’ – and for good reasons, too! Since my childhood I’ve felt a strong pull towards mysticism – and I can imagine the work of Sead Noise as the soundtrack to a horror film.  Each little track is a miniature saga, born of my own experiences and true emotions. These sounds allow me to reach out and make contact with the world; they allow me reach the feelings of everyone who has ever lied, been unfaithful, loved, or sacrificed themselves. These same sounds bring me into contact with the simplest of people… who surround each and every one of us…”

All along the deceptively well-scrubbed streets of Kursk.

If Anterna feel(s) that the downside of our negative – perhaps inevitable – failings manifests itself in extreme religion and/or politics, then the members of Sead Noise go further still, speaking of death per se – in all its forms. “The whisper of a nightmare behind you… a cold sense of horror creeping through your veins. A premonition of some nocturnal rendezvous with death.”

This dark foreboding is developed in even clearer terms in other venues: “Why plant seeds in places where they have no chance of growing? Why plant seeds where no rain falls, and there is only wilderness? In places where cries for help will only be answered by the distant sound of a single word… ‘War’? You are one of those tiny seeds lying within the soil. You bleed, pray for freedom, and yearn for a chance to blossom. A pitiful cry reaches your throat, not just from your dead-end existence, not from pain alone… yet it still cannot resonate. Impetuous thoughts in your head have become an intricate dance of Life and Death. Are you scared? Then get up on your feet! Get up from your knees… and start to grow!”

What, in short, has led the young members of Anterna and Sead Noise to such awfully pessimistic views on death, disaster, and military conflict? Of Sead Noise one can surely say that to live in Kursk and not be touched by the weight of history must be almost impossible. The area was home to a colossal military conflict in the summer of 1943 that – due (or thanks) to a massive Soviet sacrifice – started slowing the German move eastwards and perhaps even set the stage for the pivotal clash at Stalingrad. The cost of even potential victory, though, required unspeakable losses (above); the merest hope of life needed awful self-surrender. Maybe as many as 235,000 Soviet troops were lost.

Not surprisingly, tragedy on such a scale was turned swiftly into propaganda designed to spur Soviet counter-attacks (as below) and – in subsequent decades – the kind of Cold War rhetoric that would wall the USSR from the West.

As for Nikopol‘, it lies on the open and fertile lands of southern Ukraine, where agriculture – in prior centuries – would meet the river trade and so, in the region’s history, development came quickly. By the nineteenth century, the town was a major center for both farming and transportation. Given this happy marriage of the landscape and business, of fluid nature and fixed profits, what might give rise to the grand pessimism of this modern music?

One need only look across the river. There, staining the horizon, is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe – as can be seen below.

The history of Kursk is marked by a gross intrusion of mobile warfare, of tanks and bombers that traveled from afar; the landscape of Nikopol’ never allows complete confidence that the future will be safe and secure. And, as with the events of nearby Chernobyl in 1986, if such structures might indeed falter or fail, there will be no escape from danger. Fleeing a tank or hiding from reconnaissance aircraft may seem possible for the swift and nimble; for 800,000 people in and around Ukraine 23 years ago, however, sickness and death came with the same stealth of which Anterna and Sead Noise speak – and which sounds so melodramatic to Western ears.

Local issues, however, clearly give voice to local worldviews. And the soundtracks thereof.

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