A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #14
Oksana Linde, Resonance FM, and listening after the flood
Listeners! Short and sweet this week. Joseph here. I’m back home in Montreal, where I put the finishing touches on dopo il diluvio, the soundwalk I created during my residency in southern Italy earlier this month. If you happen to be near the province of Avellino, please do check out INTERFERENZE / LIMINARIA 2022, 26-30 July. The piece was made with local audiences in mind, both during the festival and afterwards. That said, I hope this work, perhaps, may be of some interest to listeners elsewhere as well. A bilingual version and a vocal-less version are available in the linked google drive folder, which may be of most interest to those unable to conduct the walk in situ.
Meanwhile, we’ve got a special feature in the works that I will share as soon as possible as a bonus newsletter. But there was plenty of interesting material from the past two weeks that I’d like to highlight.
The Immensity of Oceans ~ An Interview With Oksana Linde
Oksana Linde is an artist from Venezuela with Ukrainian heritage, whose recent debut, Aquatic and Other Worlds, presents her electronic works from the 1980s to the public for the first time. Her oeuvre puts the participation of women in experimental and ambient music from the period under a new, productive light. We had the privilege of talking to Oksana over email, an exchange we present below, first translated from Spanish, and then edited and formatted for clarity.
ACL: The liner notes indicate this is your first album. What led you to publish now, and not before?
OL: There was no support for it. I had no economic means to do it myself. Family situations had priority. I decided now because the opportunity arose. They communicated with me – it was not I who started this adventure. At the end of 2019, two young and brilliant women (Cher-ee-lee and Andrea Zarza Canova) contacted me to talk about the possibility of editing an album. Because of circumstances probably related to the [COVID-19] pandemic, the project didn’t materialize. Mana Records, run by Andrea and her business partner Matthew Kent, included me in a digital compilation with another six artists, in 2020. That same year, Luis Alvarado, director of Buh Records, made me a proposal to edit an album with my music from the 1980s. [...]
I was devoted to reading, studying, writing, painting, digital art, to non-formal environmental education (through translations and notes for local magazines), ecological activism, and other things, to family situations. I could do almost nothing with my equipment, now damaged. A few things with virtual media. And then there’s my pieces of the 80s and 90s, stored in boxes in some shelf; I open them, and the cassettes, most of them well-kept, must be digitized (a few works had already been so in past years). Some of them broke down due to trying in an old player that was not functioning as it should, so we commissioned Caterwú studio to make the digitization, a considerable part of which was then sent to Buh Records.
Ukrainian Field Notes X
Time for some number crunching as we’ve reached the tenth episode of Ukrainian Field Notes. What started off as a one off has become a fortnightly series comprising interviews with over 60 musicians from all over Ukraine, many of them internally displaced or having left the country. Most interviews were conducted by email, some through Telegram, and one as a video chat on Signal. Of all those we approached only one band declined to discuss the Russian invasion with us.
Over more than 4 months we’ve also featured 80+ fundraising compilations adding another 11 to the list to bring that number close to 100.
Our most popular episode remains the first, with physiological dips in interest, but with no end in sight to the war, we consider it our duty to keep a spotlight on the Ukrainian electronic and experimental music scene.
Aside from the interviews, we’ve embedded a number of radio shows and docs, with highlights including Nina Eba‘s monthly Air Raid Siren podcast and Anton Somewhere‘s despatches.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their generosity in sharing their experience of displacement and war, with some grieving friends and band members. It’s been an education and a privilege. I apologise if I have been slow at times in recognising my misconceptions of all things Ukrainian. There is much I’ve yet to learn.
But back to our present episode that sees us traveling to Ivano-Frankiwśk to chat to Yurii Dubrovskyi about delayed projects and dubious metal bands. Speaking from Zhytomyr, Oleh Koliada takes us through his many incarnations while pondering the fate of humans as a speck of absurdity. Andrey Sirotkin in Kyiv triples his output as a direct reaction to the war, while Dmytro Bobryk returns to his home in Bucha. Finally, fresh from her selection for the Shape+ platform, Katarina Gryvul extols the joys of schooling whereas Lvcerate opens up about anxiety and questions the unity of the electronic music scene in Ukraine.
Updates come from Hanna Svirska, who has a new EP out, and Oleksandr Demianenko (whom we first chatted to when discussing the fundraising compilation …for my Ukraine he released on his Tbilisi based label Giraffe Tapes). Also included is the latest by the ever prolific 58918012.
To round things off we’ve chosen the recent Beatport portrait of Nastia, who, like our guest Dymtro Bobryk, shows us the ruins of Borodyanka. Plus, we look at the latest from Ukraїner, an account of 52 days in the Azovstal bunker through the testimony of Katia and, one month on from Pride, we close proceedings with the short film Pride Is Not Available In Your Region, featuring Koloah’s Millenium Sun.
But to begin with, Ukrainian Field Notes has now also become a podcast for the UK based community radio Resonance FM, with the first episode addressing the sonic impact of the war and the use of field recordings as rhythmic structures through interviews and music from Zavoloka, Burning Woman and Vlad Suppish. You’ll find it embedded just below from our Soundcloud page.
UPCOMING RELEASES
(complete list with Bandcamp links here)
Contemplator ~ Morphose (29 July)
Dominic Cyprès ~ Interregnum MMXXII (Submarine Broadcasting Company, 29 July)
Glass Horizon ~ Precipitation (100% Silk, 29 July)
Healing Force Project ~ Drifted Entities Vol. 1 (Beat Machine, 29 July)
Iceberg ~ Final Thaw (Astral Spirits, 29 July)
Jeremy Cunningham / Justin Laurenzi / Paul Bryan ~ A Better Ghost (Northern Spy, 29 July)
Mario Diaz de Leon ~ Heart Thread (Denovali, 29 July)
Mark Vernon ~ A World Behind This World (Persistence of Sound, 29 July)
Nate Wooley ~ Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes (Pyroclastic, 29 July)
Nite Fleit ~ Nite Fleit/Day Fleit (Steel City Dance Discs, 29 July)
Velt ~ Allotrope (Bigo & Twigetti, 29 July)
V/A ~ Visions of Darkness: Volume II (Cold Spring, 30 July)
Black Sky Giant ~ Falling Mothership (Made of Stone, 30 July)
many pretty blooms ~ bow & clatter (Whitelabrecs, 30 July)
Raven Musen ~ Peppermint Soldier (Werra Forma, 30 July)
Thorny ~ Mostly Gray (Witherwillow, 30 July)
Robert Scott Thompson ~ Ascension (Aucourant, 1 August)
Henrik Meierkord & Sole Gipp Ossler ~ Lära (Ambientologist, 2 August)
airport people ~ from nine mornings (Whited Sepulchre, 5 August)
BI DA DOOM ~ graceful collision (Astral Spirits, 5 August)
Keefe Jackson / Oscar Jan Hoogland / Joshua Abrams / Mikel Patrick Avery ~
These Things Happen (Astral Spirits, 5 August)
Lunar Lemur ~ Sifting Stars (5 August)
Magnus Granberg ~ Night Will Fade and Fall Apart (Thanatosis, 5 August)
Massimo Magee ~ Toneflower (577 Records, 5 August)
Pierce Warnecke ~ Deafened by the Noise of Time (Room40, 5 August)
Shall Remain Nameless ~ Retitled (5 August)
Shepherd Stevenson ~ Man Down (Somewherecold, 5 August)
staraya derevnya ~ Boulder blues (Ramble Records, 5 August)
Concussed ~ Electromagnetic Dust (Somewherecold, 12 August)
Derick Penrod ~ A Leaf Adrift (12 August)
Kim Myhr ~ Sympathetic Magic (Hubro, 12 August)
Maschinenzimmer 412 ~ Macht Durch Stimme (Cold Spring, 12 August)
Pulselovers ~ Circles Within Circles (Subexotic, 12 August)
Susie Ibarra & Tashi Dorji ~ Master of Time (Astral Spirits, 12 August)
Transient Visitor ~ TV2 (Subexotic, 12 August)
zander raymond ~ To Have Several Lives (sound as language, 12 August)
Open Spaces ~ The Wandering Mind (lo fi spiritual, 13 August)
Strangebird~Sounds ~ Lavender River (Audiobulb, 13 August)
Gregor Dys ~ riss (14 August)
Aonghus McEvoy ~ Under & Cracked (Astral Spirits, 19 August)
Eli Winter ~ S/T (Three Lobed Recordings, 19 August)
Neil Swainson ~ Fire in the West (Cellar Live, 19 August)
Steve Fors ~ It’s Nothing, But Still (Hallow Ground, 19 August)
Szun Waves ~ Earth Patterns (Leaf, 19 August)
3 Electro Knights ~ Rave One EP (Post Records, 19 August)
Trio Solo ~ In Flower, In Song (577 Records, 19 August)
String Noise & John King ~ Centripetal Light (Gold Bolus, 25 August)
Brown Calvin ~ dimension // perspective (AKP Recordings, 26 August)
Cape Canaveral ~ The Observatory (Machine Records, 26 August)
Miguel Zenon ~ Music of the Americas (Miel Music, 26 August)
More Klementines ~ Who Remembers Light (Twin Lakes, 26 August)
Rachika Nayar ~ Heaven Come Crashing (NNA Tapes, 26 August)
Rudi Mahall / Michael Griener ~ Jazzpreis (Astral Spirits, 26 August)
Savvas Metaxas ~ For How Read Now (Flaming Pines, 26 August)
Sweet Juice ~ S/T (wiaiwaya, 26 August)
THLTTLDBB ~ SeeUSearching (Somewherecold, 26 August)
Xia Ye ~ Night Swimmer (Shy People, 31 August)
Copenhagen Clarinet Ensemble ~ Organism (År & Dag, 1 September)
Bill Orcutt ~ Music for Four Guitars (2 September)
Cub\cub ~ Radiant Crush (Subexotic, 2 September)
Forest Robots ~ Supermoon Moonlight Part II (Subexotic, 2 September)
Cyprian Busolini / Bertrand Gauguet ~ MIROIR (Akousis, 5 September)
Alex Fournier/Triio ~ Triio – Six-ish Plateus (Elastic Recordings, 9 September)
Briana Marela ~ You Are a Wave (9 September)
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay ~ Withering Field (Cronica, 9 September)
Dario Crisman ~ The Nature of Thoughts (Bigo & Twigetti, 9 September)
Hekla ~ Xiuxiuejar (Phantom Limb, 9 September)
Manuel Mota & David Grubbs ~ na margem sul (Room40, 9 September)
OHMA ~ Between All Things (Colorfield, 9 September)
Rivers of Glass ~ By the Light of Burning Bridges (Somewherecold, 9 September)
RSS Disco ~ Mooncake (Mireia Records, 9 September)
Aaron Turner & Jon Mueller ~ Now That You’ve Found It (American Dreams, 16 September)
Aura Gaze ~ Great Moon Essence (Somewherecold, 16 September)
Henning Schmidt ~ Piano Miniatures (flau, 16 September)
The London Sound Survey ~ From Dusk Til Dawn (Persistence of Sound, 16 September)
RA Washington/Jah Nada ~ In Search of Our Father’s Gardens (Astral Spirits, 16 September)
Maya Bennardo ~ four strings (kuyin, 17 September)
My Education ~ EMKA (Somewherecold, 20 September)
XINDL ~ 11 (STRD, 22 September)
Aaron Martin ~ The End of Medicine (Lost Tribe Sound, 23 September)
Aki Yli-Salomäki ~ Valunta (23 September)
Aleksandra Slyz ~ A Vibrant Touch (Warm Winters Ltd., 23 September)
Ian William Craig ~ Music for Magnesium_173 (Fatcat, 23 September)
Star Guided Vessel ~ Tethered/Severed (Somewherecold, 23 September)
Valentina Magaletti & Yves Chaudouet ~ Batterie Fragile (unjenesaisquoi, 23 September)
Adrian Corker ~ Since It Turned Out Something Else (SN Variations, 30 September)
Ben Glas ~ Superpositional Melodies (Room40, 30 September)
Saint Abdullah & Eomac ~ Patience of a Traitor (Other People, 30 September)
Brian Harnetty ~ Words and Silences (Winesap, 7 October)
Tujiko Noriko & Paul Davies ~ Surge Original Soundtrack (SN Variations, 14 October)
Cate Kennan ~ The Arbitrary Dimension of Dreams (Post Present Medium, 21 October)
Daniel Avery ~ Ultra Truth (Mute, 4 November)
This is awesome! Appreciate the "short and sweet" approach to this week's update. If you are interested in experiencing some new ambient music and white noise, check-out our podcast. Keep doing what you do!