kvitnu 4
Tokafi
In the documentary “A labyrinth of time”, Elliott Carter describes the world as a place of confusion, in which individual elements are sometimes cancelled out by the sheer magnitude of voices whispering, speaking and screaming at the same time. It is an insight which might well have been at the heart of “Graphorrhea”, an album which no longer searches for a singular truth but instead tries to capture reality in all of its contradictions and opposing strands of thought.
Comparing a noise project to one of the seminal composers of the 20th century may seem outlandish, but the Carter-connection runs even deeper. Just like him, Critikal have expressed themselves most clearly in a Quartet form (after the band innitially started out a trio). And then, both have a preference of transferring their view of society directly to the realms of sound.
Which means that each performer within the group seems to have both an enormous amount of freedom at his disposal while also fulfilling a pivotal function in the context of the collective: Seldomly has an imprrovisation been a more lively representation of what it means to live in the new millenium. The title of the album already refers to this duality, describing “the writing of long lists of meaningless words, as occurs in some manic disorders.”
While at first seemingly without order, these lists can attain meaning later on, through cerebral processes which have already worked in favour of techniques like cut-up. “Graphorrea”, then, could be understood as an effort of churning out all you have – and trying to make sense of it after the tape’s stopped running.
Some of the most surprising moments on the album work according to this logic, with Death metal bass throes lurking from underneath pulsating distortion fields, torn-apart beat loops or digital sequences morphing incessantly while microclicks and finely threaded glitches swirl around like swarms of homeless bees. The stylistic diversity is enormous, as the ensemble opens with aggressively abrasive textures, but gradually enters a zone, where more nuanced shadings take over, setting free powerful associations and metaphors.
In the final third, especially, the inclusion of drones, both of the comforting and nauseating kind, emphasises the atmospheric side of Critikal, with structures imitating the slow undulating movement of aquatic plants and discreet noises entwining themselves around sustained tonal waves. “Rapture Periods”, placed at the heart of the album, serves as a summary of all of its different poles and shows the daunting sense of layering and timbral demarcation the band are capable of.
Fans of harsh noise will be disappointed, as “Graphorrea” never wallows in ecstatic hollers and even uses complete silence as a natural breath. There is a strong impending notion that the music is headed somewhere instead of merely cherishing the moment in a hedonistic fit. It is a sense of direction which doesn’t deny confusion and chaos, but doesn’t regard them as complete nihilism straight away – and which turns Critikal into a group with a message, even though it may be a wordless one on this account.
(Tobias Fischer)

Touching Extremes
A while back Jeff Surak, Andrey Kiritchenko and Jonas Lindgren founded Critikal, a project where one of the members uses materials produced by the others to construct a new work. After Lindgren's departure, Tobias Astrom and Dmytro Fedorenko joined, the latter being the organizer of the ideas that came to result as “Graphorrea”. The piece is a disquieting tapestry of just anything that can be put on tape, including what Astrom fascinatingly calls “manipulated recordings of long lost cities/memories”. It really sounds like nothing else, never staying in one place; we're simply not allowed to take a breath. Asymmetrical drum-and-electronic patterns and earth loop-based pulse break the news about the complete loss of logic of “composed” music. Everything is reduced to a succession of acrid particles, bitter realities and hyper-flexible structures, extremely noisy more often than not, still approachable via a condition of mind detachment and, apparently, even connected to a superior scheme of things in determinate spots. A record that requires full concentration, your only chance of catching the revealing particulars, the vital signs of an organism moved by the worms of a dead harmony. That continuous swarming does indeed appear as the energy allowing the quartet to look towards the light at the top of their self-excavated hole, although these premonitions do not foresee any good in that sense. Paradoxically, there seems to be life beyond the post-industrial and dark ambient fences.
(Massimo Ricci)

Neural
Differenti esperienze elettroniche confluite in un unico 'ensemble', progetto voluto da Andrey Kiritchenko, Jeff Surak e Jonas Lindgren (sostituito poi da Dmytro Fedorenko e Tobias Åström), sperimentatori elettronici tutti abilissimi ed altrettanto capaci nel rimanipolare ognuno altrui suoni, in un processo creativo di continue permutazioni, fra agenti umani e macchinici, software, strumenti, field recording e feedback. Scrittura sonora strutturata e profondamente infusa da modalita compartecipative, in questo caso in prima persona operate da Dmytro Fedorenko (Kotra), chiamato a riassemblare i materiali preparati dagli altri citati in un pulsante insieme di sonorità sensibilissime e crude, espressione subculturale di forme sintetiche, glicciate, dissonanze e momenti d'aliena melodia. Tredici tracce in neanche quaranta minuti, impercettibili singolarmente nel continuum fratturato d'emergenze auditive: sibili, salti, interruzioni, hum e ronzii vari, clickerie, tagli, cacofonie e sghimbesce elaborazioni, frutto d'un editing maniacale, reso ancor più intricato nelle performance dai live-video operati simultaneamente dallo studio di Jeff Surak a Washington.
(Aurelio Cianciotta)

Indieville
Critikal brings us music from the noisier end of the Ukrainian experimental electronic spectrum. Named after a manic symptom in which patients write incessantly and often nonsensically, Graphorrhea is often an incessant and nonsensical record. Which isn’t strange fare for a noise release, of course. Operating as a sort of experimental super-group, this quartet of Dmytro Fedorenko, Andrey Kiritchenko, Tobias Astrom (Militant Fields), and Jeff Surak (of the Zeromoon label) construct abstract, abrasive soundscapes that fit somewhere between Merzbow and Fennesz. Especially exhilarating are the moments in which tension is built between loud and soft dynamics, as is best exemplified by “Rapture Periods” and “Wail Absorption.” Also gratifying are more atmospheric pieces like “Tesseract of Distrust” and “The Prime Seed,” the latter of which concludes brilliantly with the magnificent sounds of some sort of digital helicopter. At times, you feel like you’ve stumbled into the middle of a very surreal horror film (think Session 9). Indeed, it is that unpredictable, almost cutthroat mood that makes Graphorrhea appealing. 80%
(Matt Shimmer)

Signal To Noise
Member Dmytro Fedorenko (better known as Kotra), sent sample food by his comrades to do with what he will, seems hellbent on chewing his curd twice, the better to masticate those sound files into disinterred mulch. Why this propensity for sonic violence when all diplomatic sonic means are seemingly exhausted? To give the people what they want, I guess—Fedorenko is nothing if not accommodating. Base materials such as melody, harmony, or rhythm are not just jettisoned they’re nonexistent; all is random noise, power surges eclipsing red zones, caustic sharks of distortion, scattergun sound effects, hiccupping software, pilfered plug-ins. Unruly and witless digital lifeforms left in Critikal condition.
(Darren Bergstein)

Connexion Bizarre
"Graphorrhea" is defined as "the writing of long lists of meaningless words, as occurs in some manic disorders," a confused and volatile state which is very much the order of the day for the forty-minute duration of this offering from Critikal, here making a one-time only appearance on the Kvitnu label. Opener "Tesseract of Distrust" sets a glitchy breakbeat pace, but this is no one trick pony. Throughout the album's thirteen tracks, the Critikal ensemble guide you with an assured and even hand though an assortment of soundscapes ranging from the jittery insectile wail of "Scud Twitcher" to the cold shudder of "Wrath Rationale," progressing to grinding intensity in "Mind Opacity" and the semi-tribal beat/swamp rock guitar combo of "Linear Fear." This is a place where a track may start in one place but ends up in quite another. "Prime Seed," for example, with its stop/start opening suddenly blossoms into a fully fledged aural assault, from which you emerge breathless into the void of "The Place Below End" before the organic chittering and oddly 50s-style advert-like melody of album closer "The Truce" decline into nothingness. You'll likely find yourself wanting to go back and explore the album again, and you certainly should, as each listen reveals another layer of intricacies beneath the deceptively smooth surface. It would be unfair not to mention the low points, though there are few. I disliked the circus music-tinged "Rapture Periods," and "Sine Verbiage" is possibly the only moment that feels like an intentional bridge between tracks. Otherwise there is a distinct lack of the contrived cleverness that has unfortunately become synonymous with so-called "experimental electronica." The distortion techniques alone are cause for celebration, here deployed in a way that enhances rather than occludes the sound, but it is the ambience of the piece which is really breathtaking: a palpable menace and coldness throughout, a very real sense of utter isolation, of removal from what is happening around oneself - while at the same time being constrained by it - of insects in enclosed spaces, of being lost in a vast wilderness or trapped in an alien industrial landscape, claustrophobic yet agoraphobic, a true meeting of opposites; "Graphorrhea" is a triumph.
(Catherine C.)

EtherReal
Critikal est un quatuor d’artistes dont nous avons déjà parlé par ailleurs pour la plupart. Commençons par l’Ukrainien Andrey Kiritchenko, certainement le plus connu, composant sous son propre nom et également boss du label Nexsound. Voisin de palier, Dmytro Fedorenko compose quant à lui dans un registre plutôt bruitiste sous le nom de Kotra. Il a sorti quelques albums chez Nexsound avant de monter sa propre structure, le label Kvitnu. Jeffrey Surak quant à lui est américain, principalement connu en tant que Violet dans un registre ambient-noise minimale. Il dirige également un label dénommé Zeromoon, d’où la sortie conjointe de cet album par Kvitnu, Nexsound et Zeromoon. Le quatrième artiste participant au projet est Tobias Åström, activiste en tant que Militant Fields, responsable des effets et manipulation de field recordings.
Les présentations étant faites, et étant donné le pedigree de chacun de ces artistes, on a déjà une petite idée de ce à quoi s’attendre. Œuvre de musique contemporaine aux composantes à la fois rock et électroniques, Graphorrhea joue sur les cassures. Changement incessant de tempo, changement éprouvant de sonorité, cet album s’apparente dans sa composition à une œuvre de musique concrète ayant pour source sonore une batterie, une guitare basse et diverses machines. On passe ainsi de syncopes rythmiques bruitistes au quasi silence (Tesseract Of Distrust), d’une basse rock à des glitchs électroniques (Wail Absorption), ou encore du bruitisme industriel aux nappes en suspend (Wrath Rationale). En effet si le bruit électronique reste une composante majeure de cet album, quelques surprises se font jour lorsque les hésitations et syncopes bruitistes s’estompent, même pour une courte durée, au profit d’un souffle sifflant et linéaire (Rapture Periods), un drone légèrement métallisé (Sine Verbiage), un travail de composition plus fin à base de micro bruitages (Mind Opacity). La fin de l’album est d’ailleurs un peu plus douce, avec très régulièrement des souffles et drones qui servent de tapis sur lequel viennent se poser de bref à-coups électroniques. Linear Fear en est certainement le meilleur exemple, doux mélange de nappe et souffle, crépitements, craquements, claquements rythmiques et mélodie subtilement suggérée.
Graphorrhea est un album complexe et inclassable. Globalement expérimental bien sûr, mais intégrant aussi bien des éléments bruitistes qu’ambient dans des compositions abstraites, que ce soit par volonté de déstructuration ou plus naturellement par simple improvisation.
(Fabrice Allard)

Gaz-eta
Graphorrhea is the writing of long lists of meaningless words, which occurs in some manic disorders. Critikal is a quartet from Ukraine who take this practice to heart. Made up of Dmytro Fedorenko on variety of arrangements, bass and drum programming, Andrey Kiritchenko on computers, field recordings and guitars, Tobias Astrom on effects/feedback and manipulations along with Jeff Surak who plays autoharp, micro cassettes and processing, the band strikes at their target early on in the game. Not just pure glitches or noise for the hell of it. Instead, the four musicians bring forward a variety of influences and techniques to the common table. Bits and pieces of microtonal work, along with field recordings and instruments being processed left and right is what happens on majority of these tracks. It's scarce, it's amplified, it's alien but best of all, it's filled with an element of surprise. "Graphorrhea" represents a mixed concoction of the weirdest elements imaginable, served up to go down with an element of adventure.
(Tom Sekowski)

Earlabs
Sound artist and label manager Andrey Kiritchenko cajoles and browbeats with Kvitnu foreman Dmytro Fedorenko, and musicians Tobias Astrom, and Jeff Surak on this slab of enchanted sonic excrescence.
Graphorrhea, the albums title, can be defined as the scribbling of lengthy lists of meaningless words. Indeed, the group evince no qualms with obscenity, that is with the tearing away of sounds from their setting, in fact, even from any last morsel of sense. The field recordings and instruments exhibited here are volatized by their arbitrariness in manipulation, by their fullness that allows for a litany of quick connections to form and eventually teem like an overgrown forest.
Opener "Tesseract of Distrust" isn't so much buoyed as it is crestfallen with a ferment of burbling, babbling, and wheezing percussive pops and splashes. With this a momentum is established that serves as the background for successive pieces, one which is either subjected or invested with a small clutch of motifs that are equally punishing and generative in their purification. Here an opaque drumming defines densities, tapping against the background, a harsh, edgy sound, in a manic manner, until like magic it dissolves into a twilight of deformed and gnawed notes. At other times, the brawling meatiness is pummeled with an electronic distortion and the sheer, ecstatic, cranky noise of rock.
Curiously, with only the odd exception, everything on the album shrivels up like a shred of skin after one or two minutes of life, as though its high-wire tension and mad movements can only be sustained for but a very short while. Oddly enough, when approached from a distance, this concision re-establishes a palpable sense of coherence and purpose in the music. When this is removed, and one is lost in its quagmire of unorthodox tunings and thrashing textures as though in a delirium, only a constant threat can be gleaned from its dark surface. As such, the album can be appreciated on both levels.
(Max Schaefer)

Cracked
As far as the theoretical framework of collaborations are concerned, Critikal is one of the most intersting due to its strict logic and consequent performance. And this carries over to the music as well. Critikal is the bonding of four renowned noise-experimentalists and the main condition is, that with each release one of the four constructs music from the sound material provided by the other members. This logic makes for quite diverse array of music that always clearly shows the handwriting of the person in control, but also has heavy and clear routes in the interests of the other three. This time around it is Dmytro Federenko’s task to take over control and to peruse sounds done by Tobias Astrom, Jeff Surak and his long time comrade Andrey Kiritchenko. If you have heard some of the things that Federenko released under his Kotra moniker then you might have an idea what you are up for.
The result seems to be influenced by the dynamic and structuralism of the logic of the collaboration behind it. The various sound parts and stunning distorted eruptions of all kinds of noise seem to stand in the aural room without a lot of connection to each other, almost as if randomly categorized, or at least ordered by some elaborate algorithm. With time the noises seem to start to order themselves – or as usual I am wondering if it is just my mind searching for structure and order where there is just chaos – and an almost evolutionary dynamic starts to unfold. Low grumbling noises, very much like those used in science fiction movies to support the movement of gigantic insects, lay down a floor for feeping and rumbling noises and then some crushing distortion. After a while also the compression and tension of the soundparts contrasting each other start to fade a little.
When I was younger I liked the full blast noise, of course, Merzbow and Masonna and the like, but as I grew older and sank deeper into the sea of noise, I started to find a liking for more subtle and enigmatic and less harsh and direct in your face sounds. The processing of sounds into a dense carpet makes more sense to me now than trying to blast away every living breathing being with plain amplification. That I find a lot more during the second part of “graphorrhea”. A humming noise indicates irradiant live, some crisp scratches mean that industrialism is still winning out and the high pitched frequencies whistling in the back give me hope that not everything that lurks around the corner is evil. The overall atmosphere changes from harsh and corrupted to dark and evil over the course of the record and I get sucked into a dystopian world that I last experienced this way when I listened to “black vomit” by Wolf Eyes with Anthony Braxton.
As a final remark, the title “graphorrhea” refers to a symptom of psychological, manic disorders that result in writing long lists of meaningless words. Like some autists will also, or the guy who in seven years work copied the old and new testament by hand, or someone who sits down and over the course of several years types a few hundred record reviews into the internet. Meaninglessness and manic compulsions to do meaningless things – meaningless in the sense that overall society will put down for these things – is central to almost all artistic impulses that focus on the fringe, the weird, the uneasy or the distorted. So yeah, for good art, ie. art that I find interesting, any kind of manic disorder that helps to bypass the rules and regulations societ puts into visionary minds is fine by me.
Final final remark, “graphorrhea” is released as a collaboration of the various labels the respective artists are running, and these are Kvitnu, Nexsound and Zeromoon. For Kvitnu this is a more outlandish, weird and fringe release than what they released in the last months with Zavoloka all techno and digital. The same is true for Nexsound who started the pqp-sublabel for the great singer(!) Saralunden. Then again Nexsound always had their mp3-releases reserved for the really outstanding stuff. “graphorrhea” is somewhere closer to those than to the rest.

Luna Kafe
The four piece Critikal is an international gathering of sound artists, counting Andrey Kiritchenko, Jeff Surak, Dmytro Fedorenko (Kotra) and Tobias Åström (Militant Fields). For each new project one of the members are responsible transforming all the contributed material. This time the sound conductor is Dmytro Fedorenko. Graphorrhea is the extreme expression of quite challenging rhythms and a cacophony of sound. Sheer noise terror, if you say so, and quite a demanding listen. Some of the parts remind me of the more far out stuff by Andrej Nebb's Holy Toy back in the day. And there's even a thread somewhere inside. Others are just....unlistenable. Graphorrhea is 13 tracks at nearly 40 minutes. I dare you.
(Håvard Oppøyen)

Nowa Muzyka
25 grudnia 2007, w rocznic? rozpocz?cia dzia?alno?ci, w katalogu ukrai?skiego Kvitnu pojawi? si? czwarty materia?. W projekcie Critikal, oprócz prowadz?cego label Kotry, udzia? bior? szefowie dwóch wytwórni, które s? wspó?wydawcami albumu. S? to Jeff Surak (Zeromoon), Andrey Kiritchenko (Nexsound) i Tobias A*ström (znany tak?e jako Militant Fields). O ostatecznym kszta?cie "Graphorrhei" decydowa? Kotra, który operowa? materia?em dostarczonym mu przez pozosta?ych, przekszta?ca? go, uk?ada? w utwory, a tak?e dorzuci? troch? od siebie (np. gr? na basie).
Nie pami?tam, kiedy ostatnio chcia?em w??czy? p?yt? znów zaraz po pierwszym ods?uchu. W tym przypadku po cz??ci dlatego, ?e tak mi si? podoba?a, ale te? po to, by uwa?niej prze?ledzi?, co dzieje si? w tym g?szczu d?wi?ków, balansuj?cym chwilami na granicy chaosu. Ju? pierwszy utwór mo?e przyprawi? o zawrót g?owy – to niemal ca?a p?yta w pigu?ce. S? zgrzyty i brudne elektroniczne d?wi?ki, a tak?e loopy i charakterystyczny sposób budowania utworów, w którym elementy nie przywieraj? do siebie ?ci?le, raczej s? ze sob? zestawione. Potem b?dzie nadal do?? ha?a?liwie, ale nie odstr?czaj?co, dynamicznie, zaskakuj?co, zap?tlone b?d? pojedyncze d?wi?ki albo te? wi?ksze fragmenty. Czasem da si? us?ysze? "manipulated recordings of long lost cities / memories" (które s? wk?adem A*ströma).
"Graphorrhea" przywodzi na my?l "konkretno-industrialnych" P16.D4, momentami te? Voice Crack, przez u?ycie d?wi?ków kojarz?cych si? z b?yskaj?cymi diodami, laserowymi wystrza?ami i ?wietlnymi sygna?ami ostrzegawczymi. Metoda tworzenia, któr? przyrówna? mo?na do kola?u powoduje, ?e kawa?ki nie posiadaj? jasno okre?lonej formy. Mo?e to by? problem, gdy? czasem wydaje si?, ?e zbyt wiele rzeczy dzieje si? naraz, ?e nat?ok d?wi?ków tworzy bezsensown? kakofoni?. Jednak po kilkukrotnym wys?uchaniu to, co wydawa?o si? z pocz?tku niezrozumia?e okazuje si? by? intryguj?c? mieszank?, w której cz??ci pracuj? ze sob? w co rusz inny sposób, ujawniaj? nowe zale?no?ci.
(Piotr Tkacz)

Umka
Critikal is, as known, a joint project, a mobile construction. Participants in it may be replaced from one event to another – however, not all of them. Thus, in this release Andriy Kyrychenko and Dmytro Kotra are accompanied by Tobias Astrom and Jeff Surak – and the joint work by so diverse musicians, maybe, just could not be homogeneous, unambiguous. Therefore, having paid attention to the black-and-white design of the cover, also pay attention to that actually it is saturated with delicate patterns of various degrees of complication. Just as the content of the disc – it is only at first sight that it seems rather simple... However, gradually – almost unnoticeably but persistently – the number of lines, layers, bands, aftersounds, parallel and independent steps grows. And all of that flows, sounds, disappears without pressure without transforming into structured noise – with appearance of new details previous ones somehow modestly grow transparent, after which they disappear in the English manner. This is not city graffiti – but urban graphics, if you like. Simultaneously rich and ascetic, quiet and swift. Self-sufficient.
(Anton Jozhik Lejba)

Boomkat
Ukranian electronica label Kvitnu brings us an album's worth of noisy, compelling experimentation, drawing its name from the compulsive act of writing long, meaningless lists. There's a certain resonance with that title here, and Graphorrhea's music often feels like an abstract creative spillage, spouting forth odd, misshapen blasts of treated recordings and pure digital sound design. The Mego comparisons are inevitable, and are entirely to Critikal's credit.