The Surrounding Landscape as Living Space: Astrowind and Roman Slavka

Two new releases have just been published by electronic artists of whom we’ve written in the past. Although these musicians are from different corners of the erstwhile Soviet Union (Latvia and Ukraine) they all, in the course of their development, have turned to the landscape for inspiration. Their sense of “evolution” has not run a course of linear metaphors, indicative of some unidirectional “progress,” but instead they nurture a sense of centrifugal expansion. In order to both imagine and evoke that developmental imagery, they open the front door… and take a walk.

Let us start in one corner of this broad geographical expanse, with the new album by Latvian outfit Astrowind. Over a year and a half ago we noted that Astrowind consist of the Riga twosome Kriipis Tulo and Mahi Bukimi, who play on Soviet synthesizers and adhere grimly to other anachronistic practices from studios of the USSR, such as archiving their compositions on reel-to-reel tape. This preference for older equipment, often of explicitly Soviet origin, allows these two musicians to conjure what they refer to as “huge chords of hissing analogue synthesizers,” which in turn is something they interpret as the sound(s) of an overtly Slavic or Baltic “melancholy.”

In other words, the noises we hear on this release are designed to express some sense of retro-yearning for a sadly-missed, pre-modern expanse.

A little specificity amid these desirous fiddlings comes from the album’s name “Kurland” (aka Courland). Kriipis and Mahi tell us it’s “the German name for one of the most culturally and historically important regions of Latvia [shown above]. That’s why we have scenic titles [on the recording] like ‘Kurland,’ ‘Nebel,’ or ‘Sounds of the Shores” – together with various compositions about aerospace and the deep sea, too…. You’ll still find our [trademark] synth-drones, noises, and glitches here, but everything is nonetheless arranged in ways that very focused, if not sublime! Every element [on the LP] is incorporated in a well-considered, rational manner.”

Courland lies on very marshy territory, often covered by both salt water and thick fog. Although part of a small nation, therefore, it offers vistas that are far from clearly bounded. Even historically speaking, Courland has on several occasions slipped back and both between the lands of neighboring nations, due to over-zealous diplomacy and war. In short, this is very much the edge of terra firma. That interpretation takes on a very Soviet hue if we consider that one of the new instrumentals we have on display from Astrowind is entitled “Buran.” Apart from being the Russian word for “snowstorm,” Buran – as shown above – also refers to the late-Soviet space shuttle that managed only one journey at the end of the 1980s… just before the USSR fell apart.

As if that wasn’t bad enough in terms of wasted money and spoiled adventures, the ship was completely ruined in 2002 – when its rusty, poorly-maintained hangar collapsed on top of it, destroying any hopes of another trajectory. The image above – itself an impressionistic, happily imagined view – shows what romantic hopes there had once been for venturing into unknown realms. As with several tracks on “Kurland,” the sounds used to conjure these unknown spaces are peppered with snippets of barely audible dialog or old-school radio broadcasts. Beyond the edge of Courland, beyond the boundaries of little Latvia, lies a domain that’s inexpressibly grand…

At least one member of this Riga ensemble is willing to head in that general direction. Deep into the forest, where the wild things are.

And that brings us to the second recording, by Roman Slavka. In the winter of 2008 we penned a few words about his music, which comes to us from Dnepropetrovsk (below), a large industrial center in southern Ukraine. Despite that loud and busy home setting, however, Slavka is actively investigating other spheres: “Today Roman’s music slowly passes from dark ambient – with elements of noise and field recordings – into experimental techno and glitch.” This “slow passage” between structured musical formats and the more expansive, free-form gestures of field recordings is nicely mapped on his newest release, modestly titled “Some Different Works.”

With a combined running time of almost 25 minutes, these brand new instrumentals have been assessed as follows: “For quite a while, Slavka’s trademark sound was something along the lines of ‘dark ambient.’ More recently, however, his music took on a more uplifting tendency. It acquired a dubbier, frequently minimal techno-ish or electronic feel. In doing so, though, it did not lose the experimental, ambient side we have learned to love. ‘Some Different Works‘ is a small EP worked around sonic dualities. ‘Air/Water’, ‘Balance/Structure’ and ‘Move/Nature’ all contain musical elements that struggle against each other, whilst at the same time they also dovetail.”

“The track entitled ‘Door in Dolphinarium‘ can is a good example – even if it’s not explained in terms of a clear-cut duality like the other tracks. This particular instrumental incorporates aspects of a cityscape, the environment and urban-like sounds, too, all stitched together with the chatter of dolphins. It’s all part and parcel of a curious – but most effective approach.”

What is indeed striking is that the binaries implicit in Astrowind’s music are both embraced and extended here. “Kurland” defines a small terrestrial realm in terms of its edges – which are indefinite. Identity, in other words, manifests itself in terms of potential, of realms where limits may reside. In this pondering of virtual extent, an understandable shuttling takes place, back and forth between the comfort of limitation and the anxiety of expansion. Hence the enduring opposites used to title the new tracks by Slavka: Air/Water; Balance/Structure; Move/Nature. As time goes on, as the tracks continue (and the musicians mature), these oppositions actually start to vanish. They speak less of some clearly-defined line between the safety of solid land and the formlessness of “what’s outside” than they address an overarching totality.

“Movement” is evoked as a passage out into the totality of nature; as a result, this EP – as suggested at the outset – is not the music of a one-way, linear progression, but the sonic embodiment of an increasingly wide embrace. It slowly makes the divisions of political geography meaningless.

Borders vanish, in both senses.

Take the artwork of Slavka’s new release, shown here. As the title of one track suggests, this is an evocation of a “balanced structure,” a teetering inclusion of both air and water. There’s a very good reason why the EP opens with a track called “Door in Dolphinarium.” Again we have fragments of speech, lost amid the squeak of dolphins and the blip of sonars. We find ourselves, like Astrowind, having “gone outside” to make field recordings in the biggest, truest expanse possible – where mammals mange to exist in a “balanced structure” of both water and air. We’ve moved in a place – both sonically and visually – where the difference or line between air and water no longer matters. We’re everywhere.

And, then, in the middle of “Some Different Works,” a discernible voice does appear. It’s taken from an interview with Brian Eno, discussing his 1978 release, “Music for Airports.” This was an album designed to create the prefect soundtrack to new civic spaces, in this case Cologne Airport. Astrowind and Roman Slavka are trying to pen music that will match an equally new civic space. In the case of Astrowind, the interest is in Latvia’s position on the edge of… what? A politically defined realm, or a more nebulous territory, the limits of which are blurred by fog and rain. Slavka’s hometown was itself a closed city under the Soviets and is now repositioning itself in a bigger, broader world of networked nations. What are the limits and potentials of these spaces?

Using space-agency metaphors cut short at the very end of the Soviet Union, these musicians – from either end of that sociopolitical space – are creating Eno-esque sounds for the greatest unrealized potential of all. They speak of a civic dimension not defined by the glass of airports, but something that removes all doors, “windows” and other frameworks in order to enter a realm that simply is. Astrowind’s artwork shows us this trajectory with admirable clarity; on the backdrop of a nondescript, yet somehow calming and monochromatic drone, a natural point of departure is formed.

Salty winds and waves muster the energy to move on, taking little pieces of Courland with them as they do so…

The cynics among us might equate this yearning for ubiquity and permanence with something staist, but at least for the young men behind these often-poignant recordings, a better ideal is under consideration. This, they would say, is not the grandiose or militarist posturing of a space program, for example, but a sheer centrifugal sense of adventure. For that kind of outlook a different soundtrack is needed, one that speaks not so much of flag-waving and a “homeland,” but simply of endless time zones across a land(scape) that is home. Hence we will dispatch the military bands back to their barracks, and bring out the ambient sketch artists instead.

As Eno said 21 years ago in the aforementioned interviews: “Early one Sunday morning, the light was beautiful, everything was beautiful [in the airport]… except they were playing awful music. And I thought, there’s something completely wrong in that people don’t think about the music that goes into situations like this.”

Astrowind and Slavka have given this very issue a thought – to the point where not only the notion of political geography dissolves, but even the need for an actual audience. A couple of dolphins will do just fine.

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