Antistar: Chinese Optimism Becomes Slavic Melancholy

Yet again, the city of Kharkov does Ukrainian music proud. This newest offering comes from a young homebased studio project, plugging away under the name of Antistar (i.e., AHTICTAP).  The genres in question here would be noize, offbeat, idm, ambient, plus other tweaks or twiddles.

The newest work from Antistar is a single/4-track EP called “Good Qi” and is published thanks to the online efforts of the equally callow project 45RPM Records.  As their name would suggest, this company has a special interest in single-length recordings, which is both an admirable stance and a return to the romance of individual songs.

It’s a good defence against graphomania and 45RPM lay down the law in no uncertain terms: “It’s desirable that your release does not exceed 20 minutes in length. As a rule, it’ll consist of 2-4 new tracks. There are no stylistic boundaries here: 45RPM publishes almost all types of electronic music, except noise: Ambient, Chillout, All Techno, All House, Downtempo, Trance, IDM, Synth-Pop, Breakbeat, Hardcore, Indie, LoFi, 8bit, Rock, Jazz, etc. All our releases are available for free download in mp3 format, either individually or via winZIP. Likewise, everything is published under a Creative Commons License for personal use on Archive.org, Last.FM and Subsonic.ru.”

Accepting these regulations, Antistar has/have been able to venture in the general direction of audience interest. We express this doubt over verb number, since Antistar list his/her/their members as: “Me, a PC, software, Axiom 25, alcohol, and insomnia.” All of this nocturnal effort is orchestrated to the happily admitted influences of Coil, Tricky, Massive Attack, and other likely candidates.

Using these material tools and a sleepy body, Antistar starts a musical investigation of a phenomenon on the edge of physical existence.  In particular, this is the “ch’i” or “qi” of the EP’s title.  Antistar offer us the following rationale, which sounds like something cut and pasted from Wikipedia:  ”In traditional Chinese culture, qi is an active principle forming part of any living thing. It is frequently translated as ‘energy flow,’ and is often compared to Western notions of energeia or elan vital (vitalism) as well as the yogic notion of prana. The literal translation is ‘air,’ ‘breath,’ or ‘gas’ (compare the original meaning of Latin spiritus ‘breathing’ and the Sanskrit term prana, ‘breath’ ).”

On a more quotidian level, this is a core concept behind more familiar activities like Tai Chi or Chinese traditional medicine, including massage techniques and acupuncture. During strictly-controlled breathing exercises, for example, the patient is invited to visualize the passage of a semi-visible ch’i/qi running through his entire organism. Little by little, the goal of teacher and patient is a simplicity of fluid, “naive” breathing that’s forgotten as soon as an individual leaves the womb. These notions, not surprisingly, sometimes overlap with talk of longer life or – on a philosophical/spiritual plane – of immortality.

Feng Shui is also an offshoot of ch’i-driven worldviews, since if one’s domestic environment is correctly arranged, greater concentrations of ch’i can be managed.  The ability to harness these powers allegedly brings health, wealth, energy, and general good fortune.

One can imagine how these fluid forces might be sonically rendered in music, especially in the echoing, empty sounds of trip-hop. Even Antistar’s blurred cover (at the top of the post) suggests an unstable, decentered process. And indeed there’s one recognizable voice that plays the role of ch’i here: the Polish singer, Anna German (b. 1936, below), who was hugely popular in the Soviet Union. Her voice is sampled on several occasions.

Despite her blissfully pure voice, German’s life was far from happy. Her father, due to his German roots (not to mention surname), was murdered by the Soviet secret police under Stalin. Still a toddler, Anna fled to Central Asia with her mother and slowly – competition after competition – she worked her way into the mainstream media of the USSR.

These giddy heights were not occupied for long. Due to an awful car crash (in Italy) and cancer, she died in 1982. And this, from the viewpoint of a Ukrainian musician today, is the embodiment of life-forces or ch’i: not a fluid, fluctuating manifestation of life and luck, but a gypsy-like existence that somehow dodges inevitable misfortune for a few decades. Ultimately our Muse is cut down by tragic accident and unforeseeable illness.  That, apparently, is the life and sound of vivid ch’i.

Welcome to the world of Slavic culture.

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