Ruhe ist auch bei dem ukrainischen Musiker Andrey Kiritchenko angesagt, dessen lange, dunkle, von der Akustikgitarre bestimmten Instrumental Tracks eine ähnliche Atmosphäre wie die Musik der Charalambides ausstrahlen, also auf derangiertem, alles andere als traditionell gespieltem Folk basieren. Auch hier bilden Gitarre und Field Recordings die Basis, allerdings weniger tür psychedelisch ausufernde Stücke als für einen eigenartigen, suggestiven Btues, wenn man diese verhalten gezupfte Gitarre überhaupt noch mit Blues in Verbindung bringen möchte. Die Stücke gehen nahtlos ineinander über und ergeben eine angenehm wabernde Einheit, mit der uns Kiritchenko an seiner eigenen Versunkenheit in die Musik teilhaben lässt. Eine ungemein zurückhaltende und damit schöne Veröffentlichung.
Review
Andrey Kiritchenko – Stuffed With/Out
Kiritchenko önálló albuma már a borító tekintetében is nagyon megtetszett. Gyönyörű, ötletes, spirálosan csavarodó betűk, számcímek és grafikai elemek kompozíciója. Bárcsak több ilyennel lehetne találkozni, ahol a borító is igazi művészi kivitelű. Az LP címe akár preparált állatokra is utalhatna, de nem, ez esetben az összes szám valamely állatkában rejlő, meglévő attribútum történetét meséli el zenei eszközökkel.
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
Ukrainian electronic musician Andrey Kiritchenko conceived of True Delusion as an album exploring the harmonic overtones of guitar and piano. While these instruments do provide a musical and emotional framework, Kiritchenko’s album is much more about the abstraction of these elements alongside commonplace incidental sounds, quiet rubbings and field recordings of domesticity. In fact, Kiritchenko is not a very good guitarist at all, never venturing beyond a chord or two, which he plucks with Ry Cooder’s sense of space. But what he does with that empty space is captivating, as the quiet tinkling of cutlery, the hushed rustling of a cat scratching its ear and the crickets under the floorboards appear delicate and magical due to Kiritchenko’s care and subtle DSP trickery. Once shifting to the piano, Kiritchenko’s musicianship is far more confident, presenting a polyphony of cascading notes that he in turn blurs into a miasma of ringing minimalism recalling the excellent Vrioon collaboration between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Jim Haynes
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
“Scope of My Perception” is a very pretty intro of off-centered guitar strings that just dance in a pale light. True Delusion is contemporary folk music that uses the guise of noise and various samples that include feedback and the openness of a room capped by a chaotic open mic that wanders, gets dragged and plays with the Polaroid quality of field recordings. The crickets, digging in the dirt and other activities are rigorously tended to as Kiritchenko strums his strings on “Both My Sides.” The piano on “Illusion of Safety” is not as threatening as it is quite lovely. Tells a story of quiet patience, anticipation. The story changes to something of a spiral staircase snow-globe of lost control in the startling “Illusory Self-Motion” that is just raw, unrefined and sudden. ‘True Delusion’ winds down with delicate, repetitive melodies that toy with a far more sleepy side of this album. “Agravic Illusion” is the static foam produced by the last lapping waves of Summer. Low tide drifts away, in it the memories of all this play.
TJ Norris
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
Nuovo lavoro per l’instancabile Andrey Kiritchenko che aggiunge, con questo nuovo album edito dalla Nexsound e SPEKK, un ulteriore tassello ad una discografia gia vastissima. Questo True Delusion segue molto da vicino lo stile evidenziato col precedente Interplays, in-between, superando le derive del glitchcore piu estremo – che caratterizzo i primi lavori – e giungendo ad una personalissima proposta musicale che, pur continuando a strutturare i brani a partire da forme di microsound, alleggerisce una elettronica difficilmente assimilabile con inserti musicali e samples d’ambiente. I brani vengono strutturati lentamente e in maniera progressiva, sovrapponendo a ‘sottilissimi’ layer elettronici alcune delicate melodie prodotte da chitarra acustica e piano. Dalla commistione elettro-acustica che ne deriva, emergono poi intime registrazioni d’ambiente che, allontanando ulteriormente la proposta da un contesto freddo e inaccessibile, amplificano le capacita interpretative dell’ascoltatore, piu vicino – rispetto a quanto accadeva in passato – al punto d’osservazione dell’artista ucraino. Kiritchenko riesce a trovare un sorprendente punto d’incontro fra le ermetiche soluzioni di una avanguardia elettronica isolazionista e un ambient elegante e inaspettatamente spontanea.
Francesco Gemelli
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
Non ha certo bisogno di troppe presentazioni Andrey Kiritchenko, uno degli artisti elettronici piu significativi che l’Est Europa puo vantare, ucraino, attivo sin dai primi anni 90, prima come cantante e compositore in una rock band, poi come dj radiofonico specializzato in musica techno, con uno show anche televisivo (‘Vilna Zone’) dedicato a quelle nuove frequenze, fino ad abbracciare ambiti maggiormente sperimentali nell’investigazione di sonorita assai scarne (microsound), assecondate nella produzione digitale anche dalle influenze d’elettroacustica e musica concreta. Nel corso degli anni non deve stupire abbia accumulato cosi oltre 16 album, su label come Ad Noiseam, Zeromoon, DTA Records, Retina-Scan, Thinner/Autoplate, Notype/Nishi, Soulworm, FGLC, WAN, Tiln, Nexsound, con apparizioni in oltre 20 compilation, segno di una densita d’idee, applicata nel caso di ‘True Delusion’ a strutture minimali ed armoniche, ottenute nell’iterazione di una chitarra acustica, di manipolazioni digitali, assieme a registrazioni ambientali (principalmente domestiche oppure effettuate in contesti naturali). In aggiunta, solo successivamente, quando il progetto era ulteriormente progredito, Kiritchenko ha operato secondo modalita similari al pianoforte, con un suono lento, melodico e dilatatissimo. Il risultato e pregevole, elegante ed austero, affatto distante da una percezione partecipata che riconcilia gli avanguardismi estremi con i sensi piu spontanei che vengono attivati nella fruizione musicale.
Aurelio Cianciotta
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
This time the Ukrainian musician Andrey Kiritchenko has incorporated acoustic instruments like the Spanish guitar and the piano, so there is an emphasis in the organic sounds thta is complemented with the digital processing, and even incorporating the electroacoustic music by using domestic objects. This album took 10 months in the making to this young musician from Kharkiv and during the first six months, he spent his time meditating, travelling and the rest of the time he experimented recording instruments in such spaces as the kitchen and the quarters, as well as making field recordings with rural sounds. The idea was to take sounds with few guitar notes that were transformed into harmonic tones, but to this minimal atmosphere a subtle piano unfolds beautiful melodies which evoke Frenchman Erik Satie. Few instruments and the sonorous conception that shaped Kiritchenko after the contemplative stage that he had in this album, is the creative raw material that allows to produce an intimist atmosphere, and a state of mind to the listener, suggesting images with the sounds that surround us, and specially as opposed to the development of few elements, where we have imperceptible resonances. and timbres, and some few notes and chords, there are are sufficient to be able to find extreme gentleness in the work of our protagonist.
Guillermo Escudero
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
Wieder mal eine ziemlich magische Platte von Kiritchenko, der hier mit vielen Gitarrenklangen arbeitet, die dem ganzen so ein Gefuhl von Folk geben. Klar liegen auch hier viele digitale Klange druber und drunter und knistern, fliesssen, rauschen leicht, bleiben aber immer sehr flussig und wirken so fast wie ein Grillenschwarm aus einem anderen Planeten. Die Einblicke in Urainische Kuchen zwischendurch sind auch ziemlich gelungen. Sehr subtile fast heimliche Platte.
*****
Bleed
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
Of course the name Andrey Kiritchenko is familiar to you. Apart from his own music and his own Nexsound label, he also plays with Critikal, Sidharta and Nex and is at the forefront of experimental music in the Ukraine. His previous releases on Ad Noiseam displayed an interest in glitch, ambient and rhythm, but that seems all far away when playing ‘True Delusion’. The record falls apart in two parts, each of them having four tracks (and noted as ‘side a’ and ‘side b’ on the cover, very odd for a CD). In the first four tracks environmental sounds and guitar play the leading part and on the second four the piano plays the same role. Playing around with overtones is what Kiritchenko had in mind when he started working on this record. Despite the computer-processing that no doubt went into making this record, both guitar and piano are clearly to be recognized. They play a set of simple tune and the overtones of both instruments are clearly worked out. Rhythm and techno influences are no longer there. Unlike Boca Raton’s new CD on Spekk, this new Kiritchenko certainly qualifies as ambient glitch music, although it’s less minimal than some of the outings on say the Line label. Kiritchenko keeps his own tunes together, plays around with them in his own way and at that he does he very fine job. A fresh start, perhaps? (FdW)
Andrey Kiritchenko – True Delusion
Come in molti altri casi ormai, l’apertura contemporanea e il rapido accesso contribuiscono a rendere visibili zone d’ombra del pianeta, mettendo in luce nuove sensibilita in grado di combinare deviazioni locali e tendenze globali. Andrey Kiritchenko e consapevole di questo aspetto, e lo assimila nel migliore dei modi; egli e personaggio noto in circuito sperimentale, ha collaborato con parecchi nomi di punta della scena elettronica contemporanea e degli anni ’90, Kim Cascone su tutti, ha pubblicato per Ad Noiseam, Zeromoon e per la label personale Nexsound, a cui lavora dal 2000, e il cui scopo e quello di creare una “piattaforma per la produzione di musica sperimentale dall’Ukraina”. True Delusion e il suo ultimo lavoro, proprio per Nexsound, e indaga un’aspetto piu folk del suo agire musicale, meno sviluppato ad esempio in Interplays, In-Between (Ad Noiseam, 2004) dove era il territorio glitch-ambient ad essere messo in discussione. “True Delusion” e esplicitamente diviso in due parti: la prima ha come elemento cardine la chitarra acustica, la seconda il pianoforte, ben riconoscibili talvolta, ma poi fusi in magma corposo fatto di field recordings ambientali, glitch e momenti noise. Si indaga il duplice significato delle cose in mancanza di un contesto che le renda tali, la percezione soggettiva di queste e l’intervento dell’illusione come agente di cambiamento di uno stato. Un lavoro intimista, si evince da queste note testuali riportate nel booklet, ma soprattutto dalle note musicali, anche laddove field recordings domestici (l’appunto vocale, infantile, di Both My Sides ) si fondono allo strumento, quest’ultimo rapportato sempre ad una dimensione ristretta.
Txt: Simone Bertuzzi