| Dunaewsky69 "Xquisite. Xcerpt." | ||||
|
|
kvitnu 2
Neural From electronic Ukraine, supported by Dmytro Fedorenko's label (Kotra) and with Zavoloka as the author of the artwork, here's this 'Xquisite. Xcerpt', the second project of Dunaewsky69 (Olexandr Gladun), an artist from Kiev who's also the author of 'Contiguity', an album made in 2004 and released for Shaped Harmonics. These new elaborations are built around harsh frequencies and beats with gentler superimposed soundscapes and improvisational moments resulting in a sensitive and highly reactive mix, even though there are some rough spots, probably due to the grind-core past of this author. The different parts are very well balanced, though, probably thanks to the author's knowledge of the eastern European scenes, rich in talented musicians and producers, and active also in festivals and events more oriented towards live performances. (Aurelio Cianciotta) Vital t is not everyday we have the honor of reviewing albums composed by fighter pilots in the special air forces of Ukrainian army, but here we go! Behind the not so memo-friendly name Dunaewsky 69, we find a very interesting artist whose real name is Olexandr Gladun. After his career as pilot the well-talented composer spent much concentration in music. With a musical background counting drum-player in Death Metal- and Grindcore-bands as well as in Jazz-related orchestras plus a collaborative past with Japanese Noise-project C.S.S.O, Mr. Gladun certainly has a wide musical knowledge for composing music. And this album titled "Xquisite.xcerpt." does reveal a very interesting and clever approach to electronic music. The music on this 78 minutes ride into the brain of Dunaewsky 69 is abstract electronic music based minimalist soundscapes, complex rhythm textures and most important, beautiful and extremely atmospheric ambient-layers. My favorite on the album is the incredible opening track "Flyings in slumber" with some quite amazing rhythmic jazz-like structures giving us a clue that the artist hasn't forgot his career as Jazz-drummer. In combination with the dark long-stretching and quite emotional soundscapes, Dunaewsky 69 manages to lift the expressions up to higher grounds. With a nice balance between a listening friendly style and intellectual textures of high complexity keeps your brain entertained for AT LEAST 78 minutes. Though I bet, this is an album you will keep returning back to again and again! (NM) Cracked A clash of expectations. Dunaewsky69 aka Olexandr Gladun from Kyiv, Ukraine, will hit your ears and mind in various ways at the same time. You'll probably be appalled by his directness and harshness, by the noise and the sheer volume of sound these tracks demand. But you'll also be fascinated by the subtle and minor details, the gentle melodies and the intricate fragments that are also apparent in these tracks. The dozen tracks on this collection vary in the mix of these two opposing, multifaceted ingredients, but they are always there. While one track might take you back a couple of years and remind you of the cold and harsh beats the first round of electronic / industrial musicians like Coil and Cabaret Voltaire used to dish out, the next track might get you into a digital mode surfing the global network for direct to the brain electronical stimulation. The next moment you'll find that you have decieved yourself and that none of these connotations are true and that the track has evolved to something completely different. The next time you listen to the album different tracks might trigger memories that other tracks had triggered before. It is like a living thing. Every track is based on a more or less complex percussive rhythm from somewhere deep inside a synthie-machine. This is the stomp of the engine that you need to travel to the land of beauty and clarity. Atmospheric layers linger in the back, are being mixed to the foreground at times and then take over the drone finally when the beats fade. Or vice versa. “Does somebody live inside me?” starts with almost new ageish keyboard layers only to stop and introduce a distorted 4/4 beat with a slow, akward bass line that is only accompanied by more beats and some noise samples. If somebody would rap over that I'd call it Ukrainian grime, instead the noise samples start to sound as if somebody's voice had been manipulated. And the keyboard layers flowing in some time later sound like gregorian chorals echoing through the centuries. Gladun has a history of jazz, brass orchestra, death metal, electronic experiments and once trained to become a fighter pilot in a special air forces of the Ukrainian army. The thing I like most about travelling with jet planes (100 % civillian, though) are the sounds the engines make and the impression they have on the body and mind. There are two things: at first the starting and landing which is loud, massive and the velocity puts a lot of pressure on your body. The other thing is the constant, actually rather loud noise of the engines during flight. A ten hour flight is like a trance meditation in a wall of noise. The mind starts to block the constant rush of noise to a small humming but if you open your ears you realize you are in a small capsule that leaves you barely enough space to move around a little and that is terribly loud. A mind opening experience indeed. “xquisite.xcerpts” are neither mind altering drones nor massive punches to the head, but rhythmical excursions into the dark sides of your brain. Or maybe Gladun just sets the pace and your mind starts to wander all by yourself? With its second release after the Kotra & Zavoloka -CD the Ukrainian imprint Kvitnu is giving away a big hint at the direction it wants to take: supporting and presenting electronic artists from their own country that transform their visions into harsh beats paired with well composed layers of more harmonic sounds and that leave a lot of holes open. Sometimes these holes are more important than the rest of the music in building up the effect of the music. Music is the sounds played just as much as it is the sounds not played. Therefore a rhythm is always a good place to start. There is an army of young experimentalists all around the world proving that this idea is an interesting one to work up a musical vision (check Rusuden or Peekay Tayloh to name just two that have appeared around here and are not from the East). The consequence and strictness to adhere to the given beat and the will to not give in to any kind of byways, workarounds and circles of Dunaewsky69 makes this record unique in its own way. Metica Dunaewsky69 bjuder på en lekfull utflykt in i en outforskad samtid, musik med ett arv präglat av föregångare som Squarepusher, Autechre, Aphex Twin och µ-ziq. 'Xquisite.Xcerpt.' är en egensinnig platta, allt annat än komponerad för åhörarens väl och ve. Man är på besök i kompositörens rike och befinner sig där på nåder. Relativt ofta avgör lyssnarens sinnestillstånd hur själva mottagandet kommer att bli. Inte alltid är det tokintressant att ligga på rygg på en solvarm gräsmatta och titta/lyssna när fraktflygen passerar förbi långt där ovan. Men det händer. Eller betrakta den röda strumpan som smyger fram bland de blå och gula i den brummande tvättmaskinen. Men visst kan det vara en rogivande aktivitet. Plöstligt dyker det upp en melodi som hastigt tar till reträtt rakt ut i periferin. Var förberedd, en våldsam loop kan ta över kontrollen vilken sekund som helst. Som i 'The Opening of Infinity' som gör skäl för sitt namn och leder den nyfikne rakt in i en evighetslång tunnel utan synbart slut. Med plattan följer en liten lapp som förkunnar 'High blood pressure music' och en hänvisning till skivbolagets webbplats. Om det betyder att musik som släpps på Kvitnu tilltalar människor med högt blodtryck, eller att musiken i sig alstrar denna åkomma, framgår inte. Men det ger en vink om vad Dunaewsky69 skapat. Cyclic Defrost An exercise in brashly ornate modernism, maybe, Alexander Gladun bounces between beats like a rubber ball as he giddily twines dubbed distortion, maimed fairground music, and erratic tape loops into a dense miasma of swirling sounds which leaves the listener nearly gasping for breath at the audacity of it all. The high density, rich textured music, though clearly in the vein of Kid 606 and their ilk, is often powerfully uninhibited. As on pieces such as ‘Visual Surrounding', Gladun carefully sculpts these sounds and arranges them in intriguing ways. It is not something that Gladun is able to maintain throughout, though, as a handful of pieces get too bogged down in clunky, oftentimes dull 4/4 beats. Yet, for all that, certain other passages assert themselves enough to balance out the scales. ‘The Way To The Sun', for one, with its bass drum booms strung along a line of rapid, skittering digital bleeps, is a fine raw cut and splice piece; while ‘Roman Kosh', in the way its relentless swell, is unexpectedly sensual; ‘Mishush', meanwhile, is just impulsive and, with its dewy keyboard melody beating against the angular polyrhythm, expressive enough to afford it body and soul. Indeed, asides from the tangible energy of some of the works, it is the beauty of the looped melodies and the way they hang heavy in the vibrating air of all these electronic musical fibers that enables this recording to enjoy some manner of achievement. Gladun displays a certain strategy, too, balancing percussive weight and burrowing melodic hooks on certain tracks, while also allowing the former to outdo the latter and vice versa. Despite the fact that certain moments may simply strike at prosaically ecstatic results, then, others establish a delightfully knotty web of allusion. (Max Schaefer) e/i mag DUNAEWSKY69 Xquisite.Xcerpt. (Kvitnu) • In spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sound, it's a safe bet that the average music reviewer rarely has Russia and its former/neighboring republics high on the list of regions known for innovation in the field. To the casual observer, the remnants of the Eastern Bloc mostly ape the basics of the West in developing the soundtrack for their young efforts in democracy and capitalism: plastic pop meant for the most generic of discos and the shadiest forms of adult entertainment. The pride of Kiev in the Ukraine, Alexandr Gladun puts together a second LP (for himself and for the Kvitnu label) which raises the intellectual stakes for the scene and for his work as Dunaewsky69—yes, in spite of the juvenile innuendo in that stage name. Xquisite. Xcerpt. finds Gladun just knowledgeable enough about styles and genres beyond your basic club-thump to be dangerous. Wide synths and a cluttered topsoil of tuned percussives allow "Does Somebody Live Inside Me?" to patrol the border between German minimalism and the New French Touch. The center of the album addresses industrial music and its offshoots: The minor-key melodies of "Mishush" peek through the powernoise, the washes of "One World's History" grunt and growl more than they glide, and the sense of old-school EBM menace in "Dancing Glare is Visual Surrounding" is gloriously out of left field. Two tracks dedicated to acquaintances of Gladun close things out and, with surprisingly subdued funk ("Liya") and ties to µ-ziq and the fringes of big beat ("Roman Kosh"), make their pitch as high points for the album and Dunaewsky69's career to date. There are maybe a few too many straightforward 4/4 moments throughout, and tracks like "The Opening of Infinity" and "The Children of Underground. Inhalation. Exhalation." don't help matters by piling a mess of extra beats and beeps on top. That said, Xquisite. Xcerpt. is an altogether pleasant surprise. (AB) Connexion Bizarre On June 2007, Dunaewsky69 released their second CD entitled "Xquisite.Xcerpt"on Ukrainian label Kvitnu. This relatively new label was started in late 2006, with "Xquisite.Xcerpt" being their sophomore release. The album contains twelve tracks, clocking in at 78 minutes and comes in a cardboard eco-pack limited to 500 copies. The artwork, created by Ukrainian artist Zavoloka, is quite visually pleasing and the simple clean design of the packaging adds to the CD's appeal. However, I would like to note that it's quite hard to remove the CD from the plastic peg without having to worry about bending or breaking it. I made sure to test this theory to confirm that "it isn't just me" who had trouble removing it and my test subjects agreed. The general consensus was that the CD is quite troublesome to take out from its casing. The first eight tracks didn't really impress me at first, but to be honest the CD really ended up growing on me after I listened to it for the fortieth time or so. "Flyings In Slumber" doesn't really have any outstanding high nor low end, which leaves the song sounding flat. "Touch to Unattached" could benefit from some cross fading and more organic transitions between the loops, however, the warm synth sound in the beginning of the track is nice. As the tracks progress the song structures get more interesting although the overall anatomy of the songs remains very simple and loop based. I find the later tracks such as "The Children Of Underground, Inhalation, Exhalation" , "Roman Kosh" and "Liya" to be the three most outstanding tracks on this release. "The Children Of Underground, Inhalation, Exhalation" showcases Alex Gladun's prior experience within the Noise genre, as is evident through the use of the noisy synths in the beginning of the track that create a fantastic atmosphere. The synths are crunchy and cohesive with the beat, which is a successful combination that creates a mood that the artist has been trying to establish since the beginning of the album. The final track on this record "Liya", is the most standout track of "Xquisite.Xcerpt", with its beautifully robust synth lines that come precisely together. Unlike the first few songs on the CD, it feels more like a finished product rather than loosely tied collection of good ideas. (Beatrice Wilgucka) phosphor The Kiev-based artist Olexandr Gladun started his carreer as a grind-core and death-metal drummer and guitarist. Four years later he got involved in the electronic scene and grounded his project Dunaewsky69. A release followed on the Moskow label Shaped Harmonias, run by Novel 23. His latest output on a Kvitnu label features 12 instrumental tracks with harsh rhythms. The music sometimes slightly reminds of Esplendor Geometrico (like track 3). But this is an exception, in the general the tracks are looser and less minimal; the rhythms swing (without loosing any strength)! A very original approach, situated between rhythmic industrial and dance. lunakafe Firstly, Xquisite.Xcerpt. is way too much. Nearly 80 minutes of rather rough and challenging electronic beat soundscapes is more than I can handle. Don't get me wrong, there are indeed exciting parts here, and Dunaewsky69 is playful experimentalism ping-ponging between minimalism and maximalism. There's a lot of things and nothing going on at once. It's a brutal and bleak, grim and ghastly collection of sampled sounds and twisted songs. I'm not sure but I don't think I'm done with this record. Guess I need some more time to check it out. EtherREAL Il aura donc fallu trois ans à l'Ukrainien Alexander Gladun pour produire ce deuxième album qui voit le jour chez ses compatriotes de Kvitnu dont c'est ici la seconde sortie. Après les expérimentations un peu hardcore de Kotra et Zavoloka, on ne s'attendait pas vraiment à trouver sur cette structure un artiste produisant une musique aussi mélodique. En effet Dunaewsky69 se classe assez clairement dans un registre electronica mélodique, avec cependant une palette sonore assez différente de ce que l'on trouve habituellement dans le genre. En effet, pas de débauche de complexités rythmiques ici, pas de bleeps ou autres sonorités propres, claires et limpides. Une approche un peu plus "rentre dedans", des sonorités un peu crades, sans forcément abandonner l'aspect mélodique, finalement Dunaewsky69 a une approche assez rock de l'electronica. L'album se révèle du coup plutôt énergique, et au lieu de mélodies planantes et mélancoliques, Xquisite. Xcerpt. déborde de sonorités qui vous prennent à rebrousse poil, et de rythmiques percutantes parfois à la frontière avec la techno. Partant de ce constat, le résultat est suffisamment différent de ce dont on peut être habitué pour y trouver un certain intérêt, voire même un certain attachement. Nappes mélodiques nasillardes et rythmiques syncopées, avec Flyings In Slumber Dunaewsky69 pose les bases de son album. Mené tambour battant, mélodies en mode turbo, fort dansant, ce premier titre permet de rentrer de plein pied dans l'album. On aborde ensuite une électro minimale et mécanique avec Li. Exquisite. Excerpt. , Does Somebody Live Inside Me ? avec même quelques influences industrielles sur One World's History ou The Way To The Sun et ses chocs métalliques. Le dernier tiers de l'album se fait tour à tour immédiat ( Mishush ), imprévisible ( The Opening of Infinity ), plus posé et mystérieux sur The Children of Underground. Inhalation. Exhalation. pour terminer un peu comme il a commencé, mélodies efficaces nasillardes ( Roman Kosh ), ou enfin avec une electronica mélodique plus classique avec Liya à qui l'album est dédié. Un album plein a ras bord (70 minutes) mais très homogène, ce qui risque de le rendre lassant sur la longueur. Mis à part ce petit bémol, Xquisite. Xcerpt. est plutôt une bonne surprise qui, de part son style, se détache suffisamment de la masse estampillée "electronica mélodique". On notera également un joli packaging, format original, carton découpé, signé Zavoloka . (Fabrice Allard) |
| Last Updated ( Saturday, 02 May 2009 15:10 ) |