P_Sh, T!NN!, and Hard TON: “Shocking” Views of History

Far away from the center of mainstream Russian web activity lies the netlabel TruType Sounds. Their distance from fame and fortune, however, is no cause for concern. The label’s owners actively cultivate a sense of proud isolation. “Imagine two groups of people. For the sake of ease, let’s call them ‘Group A’ and ‘Group B.’ The first group listens to MTV or major radio stations, and frequents the kind of record shops where people buy 50 Cent, Akon, Souljah Boy, Britney Spears… and other bubble gum artists. ‘Group B,’ on the other hand, listens to more advanced music – like modern hip-hop, glitch, indietronic, pure noise, free jazz, etc.”

It will come as no surprise to learn that TruType represent the latter group, being arbiters of “new and fresh types of music.”  Lapsing occasionally into elitism, the label’s owners claim to work on behalf of “open-minded people, the kind of music lovers who have no time for [generic] labels. They simply enjoy what’s good.”

That’s just the way it is. Crossed arms = no chance of a rational debate.

One of the musicians whose works often appear in TruType’s discography is Vasilli Stepanov, shown here. On one of his half-abandoned sites, in this case dedicated to some visual work, Stepanov informs us that he was born in Moscow 26 years ago. He graduated from the city’s Fine Arts and Technical Design Institute in 2007 and has since worked primarily as a graphic designer.

The folks at TruType are grateful for this multi-talented colleague, helping the label once again to sidestep the banality of anything standard. “Stepanov is our good friend, a superb musician, and a brilliant graphic artist!” (From this point onwards we can safely wave goodbye to objectivity.) “His music is a mix of field recordings, drone, improvisations, ambient landscapes, speech-cuts, and more.” Among his instruments of choice is the Faemi, a late Soviet synthesizer, all of which speaks to the redoing of a childhood aesthetic. There’s a simplicity sought in these works that never came to fruition.

This issue of capturing something – of fixed names (or recognizable noises) for passing phenomena – is inherent in all three collectives under discussion here. It’s a theme that goes round and round…

Stepanov’s new EP, “Changed Weather Melodies” – published under the moniker of P_Sh – expresses this disjuncture between metamorphosis (or the alteration of time) and a desired state of consistency, of something that supersedes change. In trying to name that elusive entity, Stepanov’s syntax rejects clear-cut clauses and any serious punctuation in favor of a long series of adjectives. Different qualifiers work to one, unwavering purpose – the desire to find a singular meaning in changing times: “These are flowing, soft, tender, delicate, refreshingly gentle, ambient, cozy-glitch soundscapes, naive piano pieces, and beautiful/sublime abstract scenes. Give the EP a listen. Enjoy it, leaving aside all your worries and preconceptions…”

Prior to adult, conscious thought or any resulting “worries,” therefore, is some soft, tender, and abstract. Stepanov’s artwork does justice to this interplay of change and permanence. The EP’s cover refers to a state that almost endures, yet almost vanishes, too. The line drawings above appear to be taken from antique sketches of semi-transparent deep-sea organisms, existing on the barely-visible boundary between firmity and flow. This is an audio-visual technique of self-definition through reduction: the closer to minimalism, the better.

En route to a childhood naivety (to hushed smallness), Stepanov’s quiet ambient tinkering deliberately excises as much noisy clutter as possible, just as TruType declares its modus operandi in terms of distance from anything resembling a stable or standard musical center. This new EP, in fact, has been released by kindred label Top-40, whose very name is also an ironic reference to hard work – to constancy – in the name of escaping the charts (and their constantly predictable genres!).

This self-description through increasing absence is clearer still in a new release by T!NN! (as if “P_Sh” wasn’t hard enough to pronounce…). The oddity of the stage name can quickly be removed by saying that it stands for “Tam! Net Nichego!” – which is Russian for “Over There! There’s Nothing!” The project proudly declares itself a “partisan theater of the absurd,” which is headed by musical producer Valerii Posidelov, a resident of Rostov-na-Donu in the south of Russia.

On his MySpace page he says: “In no way can this be considered a rock band.” We don’t what it is, but we’re absolutely sure what is not present. Again an departure from anything predictable, banal, or unwavering comes in forms of distance, flux, and even absence. Expressing that which is not – or never stops altering – is clearly going to be a tough call.

Part of this claim to nothingness comes in the form of self-irony. Posidelov makes fun of himself as someone who is either unsuited to primetime display, being less than youthful, or who simply wouldn’t want to be on (regular, national) show. “Posidelov is an aging, married kind of guy.” In his musical projects he declares an intention to “keep changing the scenery.” Like Stepanov, therefore, Posidelov also strives to find some kind of consistency in change – and thus ignore it altogether, perhaps. By ignoring fashion (or simply changing faster than market-driven whims!), he hopes to get away from “the necrosis or mortification of my ideas.”

These efforts have been ongoing since 1988, which explains both the retro-image above (with its mid-90s Madchester overtones) and the iconography of his pictures, which are often loving close-ups of guitar necks. They serve to grant those instruments a statuesque importance, again in the spirit of late Soviet rock, rather than the tech-friendly aesthetic of today’s youngsters. (It should be noted, in fact, that work on these recordings also began long ago, circa 1994.)

The new – or remastered – release by T!NN! is called “Songs of Mechanisms” and consists of 18 instrumentals, clocking in at just over one hour. They partially bridge the gap between electronica and the obvious talents of an old-school guitarist – playing in the SOR vein of perestroika tradition. In this light it’s important to know that Posidelov is inspired not only by similar ax-wielding heroes of innovation like Zappa and Hendrix, but also Lenin and Stalin(!). The “mechanisms” investigated in Posidelov’s instrumentals are suddenly thrown into a different light. As somebody whose adult life passed through the greatest social “change” – or collapse – of all, the music on display here is seemingly running from genre to genre in order to outdo/outpace other (social) transitions.

It’s a case of music jumping before it’s pushed – a real sense of anxiety that lies beyond the experimentation of Stepanov. If P_SH represents mild concern over life’s variations and advancement, then T!NN! is the epitome of fear in the face of history. Stepanov’s concerns are personal; Posidelov’s are public.

If we were looking for a recent mashup of keyboards and strings, of (future) electronic and (old) analog traditions in ways that were equally disrespectful of established genres, we need look no further than Hard TON (above). The offshoot net-projectof R.A.I.G., “Accessory Takes” has just published for free download his album, “These Stars Are Not Yet in Sight, When the North Passes By.” For a third time, we’re offered the theme of “something” that might be constantly discernible against the background of time’s passage.  And, with equal frequency, that search takes place in between genres, in empty places that are “always there,” no matter what labels or tags are chosen. The very creation of styles, in fact, also creates gaps between them, places of nothingness that can only be investigated with minimal music and a modest worldview.

The young man behind these investigations - Hard TON aka A.D. Drogunkin – begins by throwing a few incongruous terms in our direction: “instrumental/ experimental/ industrial metal.” The first term implies his absence; the second a lack of generic limits; and the third is a genre(!). This is the paradoxically unbounded playing field on which we find ourselves.

His own label is also lost for words.  ”There’s not much we can say about HARD TON except that it’s a solo project by Drogunkin A.D., a wonderful and multi-talented newcomer from Reutov (not far from Moscow). Equipped with a computer and some other, more peculiar instruments, he blends influences from the past and present of several industrial traditions, together with some experimental things, a little bit of prog rock, some metal… and so on.  He creates a sort of extreme digital music for our Cyber Age. This is arguably the most impressive and shocking debut on this year’s Russian independent/ underground scene.”

These sounds are accompanied by a fittingly fractured text, penned by Drogunkin himself. “Toy blocks? I throw them around. The Number ‘6.’ Six dots. Yes. I am the mirror that cannot be looked at…” He lays claim to an inexpressible process that may be best evoked by chance, by the roll of a numbered block or dice. In making music that tries to illustrate an escape from “mortifying” genres and styles, the most successful – but frightening – solution may come not from a search for childhood naivety, nor a redoing of nostalgic social projects, but in the admission that over and above all melodies of “changed weather” or historical “mechanisms” is chance and randomness.

Any conviction that fickle fate trumps the consoling patterns of “history” – or the unchanging limits of comfortingly familiar styles – will not produce a happy worldview. After all, it turns existence into a crap shoot. This same outlook, logically, should not produce easy, pleasant music, either.

Drogunkin on one occasion uses the phrase “Games with Art” to try and express the essence of his chaotic instrumentals. It might be more accurate to say these are artistic snapshots of life as a game, one that either slides out of control, or has a one-in-six chance of working out the way you’d like it to. The odds are heavily stacked against you, both personally and – if we believe T!NN! – historically. Philosophically and artistically, that – no doubt – is what makes Hard TON so “shocking” to his Moscow audience.

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