Igor "Grundik" Kasyansky and Slava Smelovsky are Russian Jews based in Israel, and have three previous releases on Israeli labels, but this is their first to have international distribution. It's perhaps a little surprising to discover that this album's title means what it says: the pretty ambient electronics produced by its creators do accompany sampled birdsong on many of the tracks. The album starts with pretty xylophone sounds and the occasional muted beats under birdsong, with synthesised sounds and occasional glitches adding to the mix. Things turn around on track 3, where the wailing vocals of Victoria Hanna are added to the mix. For some listeners the ambient nature of the music will be too uneventful, but there are some gems if one's patient (such as the panned bells on "Music Box"). Meanwhile, at the beginning of "Pianka Do Golenia" one wonders if suddenly ambience has given way to cheesy background music, but the synthesised accordion and violin are fragmented in a bizarre and charming way. It's hard to know what to make of this album, but in the end the beautiful passages outweigh the weird bits of burping farm animals. A fascinating experiment.
Peter Hollo
Тэги записи: kunstkamera: reviews and interviews