10 albums of August – Weekend – Kommersant
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Prey (OST)
Prey, the prequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator, takes place 300 years before the events of the original 1987 film. Director Dan Trachtenberg made Comanche Indians the heroes of his film. The actors recorded a sound track in two languages, English and Comanche, the blood of the Comanches and the Blackfoot tribe flows in the veins of the film’s producer Jane Myers. Sarah Schachner, a composer whose track record in the video game industry is much more solid than in cinema, was enlisted to work on the soundtrack. One of her main works is participation in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. At the same time, Shakhner is an enthusiastic researcher of ancient instruments, playing, for example, the Mongolian cello morinkhur and the Kazakh violin. Shachner’s gaming background and her love of early music are happily combined on the soundtrack for The Prey with the talent of Grammy-winning pueblo musician Robert Mirabal, who ranges from world music to jazz, hip-hop and hard rock. In the film, among other things, you can hear the sound of a flute of his own design.
Publisher Hollywood Records
sarahschachner.com
Vassa Zheleznova “Cultural Code”
The actively growing new Russian folk (Settlers, Hodila Izba, Zalpom, etc.) has earned the interest of a young audience due to a clear distance from the collective Nadezhda Babkina: more improvisation, more borrowing from urban genres, less television gloss in music and video, and a feeling of “today even in songs that are formally built on tradition. “Vassa Zheleznova” is a singer and songwriter Vasilina Ivanova. She recorded music, which she defines as “indie folk for those who are far from folk and its attributes.” On the other hand, there is a lot of acoustic guitar typical of pop-rock, and the intro to the song “The Bird Who Was Not Given Grain” is so similar to Basta’s “Samsara” that you start looking for some kind of postmodern move in this. In the album’s opening song “Young” there is “respect” to the pioneers of the new folk Zventa Sventana, and echoes of the folk experiments of Soviet VIA like “Ariel”. True, it is not always possible to hear what, in fact, Ivanova sings, and this is important – and first of all for songs with themes as far as possible from the official “folk song”, such as, for example, “Auschwitz”.
Publisher Vassa Zheleznova
vk.com/vassazheleznova
Kasabian “The Alchemist’s Euphoria”
In 2020, vocalist Tom Meighan was fired from the English band Kasabian following allegations of domestic violence. Since then, Meygan managed not only to make peace with the woman who accused him, but even to marry her. However, he did not return to the band, and the entire seventh Kasabian album was composed and produced by the band’s main songwriter and guitarist, Serge Pizzorno. Pizzorno’s rare appearances at the forefront during Kasabian concerts have looked more convincing than the work of the full-time frontman, but now Pizzorno is a 100% leader. But opinions about “The Alchemist’s Euphoria” were divided. Much in the group rested on the time-tested charisma of the singer, and not everyone is ready to recognize the merits of the new album. Serge Pizzorno presented to the public a viable body of works, in which the traditional Kasabian rave rock with a Manchester accent (“Scriptvre”, “Rocket Fuel”, “Alygatyr”) is adjacent to constructions that unmistakably refer to older classic colleagues: “The Wall “is a nearly flawless Britpop choir ballad, and in “TUE (The Ultraview Effect)” Pizzorno put in “nods” to Radiohead, Portishead and Pink Floyd.
Publisher Sony Music
www.kasabian.co.uk
Erasure “Day-Glo (Based On A True Story)”
The musicians of the duo position the new Erasure album as “the final part of the The Neon project”, that is, in other words, as a continuation of the 2020 album, which reached fourth place in the English charts – for the veterans it was a serious success. Erasure’s main music writer Vince Clarke was locked up during the pandemic, fiddling with files recorded during the production of The Neon until he realized that something completely new could be put together from them. Day-Glo (Based On A True Story) is not a remix album. This is a meditative and predominantly instrumental record, assembled from materials created for a dance album. Vocalist Andy Bell entered the studio several times during the production of “Day-Glo”, but on this synth-pop album, the vocal samples carry no more weight than the synth parts. The most accurate genre description of the new Erasure music is post-apocalyptic disco. As befits everything post-apocalyptic, it is made from what existed in prosperous times.
Publisher Mute
erasureinfo.com
GusGus x John Grant “Bolero EP”
Last year’s duet of GusGus and John Grant “Love Is Alone”, published on GusGus’ self-titled EP, promised good prospects for this alliance. When the announcements of the joint EP “Bolero” appeared, I wanted to hear the full-fledged song material of two powerful creative units from Iceland (Grant is an American, but he prefers to live his life on the island of volcanoes and geysers). The London-based label HE.SHE.THEY has taken on the challenge, declaring support for talents with a diverse gender, racial and class background and publishing all sorts of dance electronics. As a result, the audience actually received one song, “Bolero (Hold Me In Your Arms)”, with two remixes – the concept of “EP” has a rather vague interpretation. Besides, it’s just not their song. Older listeners will unmistakably recognize “Bolero (Hold Me In Your Arms)” as the melody of German Eurodisco star Fancy (Manfred Segit). In case anyone is wondering, Fancy is in good health and is now 76 years old. And the conditional “youth”, carried away by the disco renaissance and singing songs from its repertoire, is itself already in the status of classics.
Publisher HE.SHE.THEY
heshethey.bandcamp.com
Zero People “Songs of Man”
The new album of Animal Jazz members Alexander Krasovitsky and Alexander Zarankin belongs to the category of recordings that cannot be perceived in isolation from today’s reality, and, as is often the case now, upon careful study of the issue, it turns out that the songs were written not this year, but some not even in the past. Framed by keyboard parts in isolation from the stadium accompaniment of Animal Jazz, Alexander Krasovitsky’s voice has traditionally been characterized as an optional experience, however, the Zero People duet has long formed its own devoted audience. And now, for lines created over the course of two years, the sound of Zero People seems to be the most correct solution. “In this realm of gray-yellow paint, my lump in my chest sings. And that’s what I would like – to be able to exhale the pain outward ”- in principle, it is not so important what exactly was the reason for writing these lines of Alexander Krasovitsky. It is important that these words be heard now. “As one of the greats said, a person is valuable not for hardness and inflexibility, but for flexibility,” the singer comments on the release. “.
Publisher Zero People
vk.com/zero_people
Russian Circles “Gnosis”
Having got rid of the vocals, “metal” instantly matures, because its performers, adults, often obese and gray-haired men, do not need to pretend to be teenagers and sing about demons and dragons. And if the prefix “post-” is added to traditional metal riffs, then this is already quite serious music, worthy of high marks from music media snobs like Pitchfork. So it happened with the latest album of the Chicago trio Russian Circles. Critics note the predictability of the album’s emotional script, a constant fluctuation between quiet and loud, bright and gloomy, majestic and cruel. But when the image is not given by the text, the fantasy of each individual listener colors these constructions in his own way. Russian Circles has a very compact album. The music was written in duplicate, but due to the peculiarities of work during the pandemic, the output turned out to be 40 minutes of compressed guitar sound, at the end of which the listener feels as if he had gone through all the levels of the most difficult video game and, having won, collapsed in exhaustion.
Publisher Sargent House
www.russiancircles.bandcamp.com/album/gnosis
The OMY “Elephant”
On domestic digital platforms, the work of The OMY is characterized as “Russian rock”, although for this it should at least be called something else. From the first song, “Babla”, I would like to agree with the characterization given by The OMY, apparently in some ordinary announcement, but hit the mark. The OMY are followers of chaos and madness. Within the framework of one song, the rhythm changes in the most criminal way, in another, the choking growl instantly turns into swing, the recitative in the style of Antokha MS alternates with samples slowed down beyond recognition from some speeches from the stands – like Brezhnev, or maybe not him, and, it seems , no matter. The desire to create a “new “Pop Mechanics”” regularly takes over the minds of young artists. You hear a wild saxophone in the style of Shabaka Hutchings – be sure, a new “Pop Mechanic” is coming. Under any other circumstances, The OMY freak show would have deserved more skepticism. But the uniqueness of the situation lies in the fact that the album, which begins with the song with the key line “New Year in Prison”, was recorded with a presidential grant won in February at the New / Open festival. Kuryokhin would have liked it.
Publisher Niche
vk.com/omy.band
Danger Mouse, Black Thought “Cheat Codes”
Brian Burton (stage name Danger Mouse) always does well on duet albums, better than anything else. He had excellent collaborations with Sparklehorse, MF Doom, Daniele Lupi and Karen Oh, and the group Gnarls Barkley created with Cee Lo Green is perhaps the producer’s most commercially successful project. The Cheat Codes album, recorded with The Roots member Tariq Trotter (stage name Black Thought), is one of the most talked about albums of the summer. This is Danger Mouse’s first rap album in 20 years, and here he’s working with what he truly loves: old-school rap and cinematic arrangements. Danger Mouse has dedicated his life to building bridges between black and white culture, and Black Thought has done much the same in a slightly different setting, working on the Jimmy Fallon show music team. The lyrics of “Cheat Codes” are devoted to the problems of black America, and the charm of the “vintage” sound is easy to succumb to regardless of skin color. Also check out cameos from Michael Kiwanuki, Asap Rocky and Run The Jewels.
Publisher bmg
dangermouseblackthought.com
Vanderwolf “12 Little Killers”
Max Vanderwolf is one of the musicians who succeeded more behind the scenes than on stage. In New York, he booked artists for the legendary Knitting Factory club, in London he curated the program of the no less legendary Meltdown festival. But the group Last Man Standing, where he worked as a singer, received less attention than it deserved. The preface to the debut album of the Vanderwolf project was the single “When The Fire Grows Cold”, which featured Robert Wyatt and David Allen. In the album, the musician did without collaborations with superstars. Choosing the vocal style for the new album, he did not hide the sources of creative impulses, among which are Tom Petty, Patti Smith, Jeff Lynne, Robert Smith, Jack White … music to make a profession, and then record songs in which there is a lot of familiarity, there is nothing innovative, but at the same time there is a tender and respectful attitude towards the very craft of the writer. In a sense, Max Vanderwolf sits inside everyone, but not everyone is ready to show it to others.
Publisher Vandertunes
vanderwolfmusic.com
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