ARTEMIY ARTEMIEV
"Mysticism Of
Sound"
(2000)
The fifth solo album by Artemiy Artemiev applies a dense
mist of sound, making you fumble your way through rich landscapes of unknown territories.
The dynamics are extended, as compared to other Artemiev soundscapes, and maybe the title
of the CD hints at the composers intentions; to let us loose in this world of sensed
horizons, probably harboring many an undetected being, be it earthly or of heavenly
origin. There is something of a fantasy novel about this texture, like in some late books
by Astrid Lindgren, the writer who, by not receiving the Literature Nobel Prize, has
rendered that prize meaningless, without stature
I remember a film from my youth,
where a cruel and deadly people lived below the surface, in caves and tunnels, and where
an innocent and beautiful, but intellectually dormant people resided up in the daylight. I
think the film was based on Herbert George Wells "The Time Machine". I
recall how this highly symbolic - on many levels film impressed me then, and this
Artemiev music on "Mysticism of Sound" gives me similar feelings. Its
distant, probably distant in time - I mean very distant, and a whole new human race
inhabits the worlds.The
title of track 1 - "Pictures of I. Bosch & P. Bruegel" - furthers this
impression of a time switch, taking into consideration these painters pictured
worlds, of good and bad, heaven and hell and the eternal dilemmas of human existence.
Track 2 - "Mysticism of Sound. Part I" - brings other characteristics into the
soundscape more electroacoustical, more complex, more in the vein of sound poetry, with
fast moving sounds on top of the slower sweeps, giving you the impression of voices, like
they might have been heard on the reel-to-reel tape recordings of 1960s
spirit-chaser Friedrich Jürgensen in Mölnbo, Sweden. Harder, rougher electronic attacks
associate this piece with the classical electroacoustic composers of today, like Pierre
Henry, Åke Hodell and Jacques Lejeune, to name a random few. This is an interesting
development in Artemievs electroacoustical methods, bringing a deeper artistic
aspect to the music, no doubt, making it viable even to those who prefer the traditional,
classically experimenting electronic music. Track 3 - "Cataclysms of the XX
Century" - brings this home even stronger, taking on a shape, even, of "musique
concrete", which has been nurtured especially by composers in France and Canada. I
can only congratulate Artemiev on this directional choice, and recommend him to keep on
working in that direction! Track 4 - "Mysticism of Sound part II" - keeps the
"musique concrete" character up, in a grand way, almost bordering on the
subterranean Romanian spectral music of Iancu Dumitrescu and Horatiu Radulescu, utilizing
what comes through as a Japanese koto! This is great music for the aficionado of sounds
and electroacoustics, and Im impressed at the development that Artemiy Artemiev has
gone through in these short years since his first compositions showed up on CD. Keep on
keeping on!
(c) Ingvar loco Nordin / Sonoloco Records Reviews
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