• Music

    Sak Sok Ensemble of Fershampenuaz Village – Nagaybak Songs From Chelyabinsk Region, Russia

    April 19, 2022 - By 

    A fascinating release from our friends at Antonovka Records.  From their Bandcamp website: “Nagaybaks are an ethnic group that descends from the Christian Tatars and shares the same self-name with them — “Kreshenner”, which means “Baptized Ones”. There are about 10 thousand Nagaybaks in total, they live primarily in the Nagaybaksky district of the Chelyabinsk region, in the South Ural area. In the Russian empire the Nagaybaks belonged to the Cossack estate. Many of their villages were named after European settlements, at which the Nagaybaks distinguished themselves in the battles. Fershampenuaz is the capital of the Nagaybak district, it got…

  • Music

    Nick Sudnick – Opera of the Fifteenth Hour

    March 10, 2022 - By 

    24 Rush Hours is a series done by Zga composer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Sudnick, and this is #15 of 24.  The two long pieces are a pastiche of art-rock (think Rock-In-Opposition like Art Bears or the composers Alfred ’23’Harth and Heiner Goebbels).  Add an element of Bertolt Brecht-like lyrics for theater and you have a fine series of avant-opera Sudnick keeps producing..

  • Music

    Assembly Of Honey – Морозные Узоры (Frost Patterns)

    February 14, 2022 - By 

    Assembly Of Honey are a magnificent Russian ambient drone project related to the magazine Meticulous Midgets, friends of our blog.  Their latest album has several tracks which would appeal to meditative musicians like Steve Roach, but also to New Age artists like Kitaro and even experimental bands like Britain’s O Yuki Conjugate.  There is a calming aspect to the music that, frankly, I needed to hear after a stressful Valentine’s Day.  Well done, as always.

  • Music

    Sunset Wings and Brodsky – Songs of Love, Madness and Sleep

    January 25, 2022 - By 

    From Kaliningrad, Russia (formerly my material ancestral Linn homeland of Koenigsberg, East Prussia) hail one of the most impressive psychedelic folk records I’ve heard in some time.  From the cacophony of the violin starting the album, it morphs into a Beatlesque horn arrangement.  Those few seconds set the tone for what I figured would be a very heavy listening experience. Sunset Wings, led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Aleks Popov team on this album with fellow singer Evgeniy Brodsky.  What makes the album crucial listening, along with the impressive instrumental array you will see below, is the adaptations by poets and…

  • Music

    Jagath – Samadhi

    December 27, 2021 - By 

    Jagath is a field-recorded ritual ambient act from Perm, Russia who use handmade instruments, scraps and metal to make their dark, dank industrial sounds. As quoted from their Bandcamp site, “We do this to share our vision of decaying postindustrial age, to unleash the spirit of deep beyond-world and unveil life in the abyss.”  

  • Music

    Koma Stark – Kelesho

    December 15, 2021 - By 

    Antonovka Records have had an astounding year releasing not only music from Russia’s hinterlands and Central Asia, but even from places like Georgia.  This album documents music by Kurdish-speaking Yezidis, who suffered horribly over the past few years in places like Iraq and Syria.  Koma Stark play traditional Yezidi folk songs, and they currently reside in Tbilisi, Georgia.

  • Music

    Evgeny Ponomarev Quartet – Clockwise

    December 14, 2021 - By 

    I can’t say for sure if Evgeny Ponomarev’s 2021 release, Clockwise, counts as spiritual jazz, but it is holding it’s own as one of the best jazz releases of the year.  Ponomarev plays piano, and is solidly supported by a large cast, incuding: Andrey Polovko — tenor saxophone (1-6), soprano saxophone (2) Grigory Voskoboynik — double bass Peter Mikheev — drums (1-6), percussion (1,4) Pavel Ilushin — guitar (4) Peter Vostokov — cornet (2) Anton Gimazetdinov — trombone, tuba (2)

  • Music - Music Articles

    Russian World Music Chart 2021

    December 6, 2021 - By 

    I’m proud to have been asked to participate in helping to decide which albums would top the Russian World Music Chart.  Here is a press release on this event: Russian World Music Chart 2021 Making Russian world music visible to the world In October 2021, Russia’s first world music chart, the Russian World Music Chart (RWMC), was launched. The purpose of RWMC is to attract the attention of the world music community to the novelties of folk music of multinational Russia, as well as popularization and assistance in promoting unique musicians from remote corners of Russia in the Russian Federation…