New release: Ilia Belorukov’s “Scattered Underfoot”

Crónica starts the year in the best possible way, presenting the first release by Ilia Belorukov in the label.

Ilia Belorukov is a musician from Saint Petersburg, Russia. He works in the directions of improvised, noise and electroacoustic music, collaborating with local and foreign musicians and performers. Ilia practices an experimental approach to sound extraction on alto saxophone, using modular synthesizers and other instruments. He founded the Intonema label and was one of curators of Spina!Rec label. He organised events in Saint Petersburg and Russia and co-organized the Teni Zvuka and Spina!Fest festivals. He writes reviews for Jazzist and notes about music as musicworm in Telegram channel.

This album was created in 2020-2021 in the most strange times of the pandemic, when almost all live music was stopped and many had to work from home. Honestly, this was not something totally unusual for me, as I have a habit to compose at the computer when I have some kind of inspiration or, better said, when I try different things. I tend to work on several concurrent pieces at any given time, slowly developing them, and sometimes finding they can come together as an album.

Scattered Underfoot is one of these cases, and it is something new for me. It is an electroacoustic composition that crosses analog and modular synthesis, field recordings, percussion, and processing. This was an experimental process, exploring possibilities for the computer to add its own inputs by developing chance processes. A similar process was developed with the percussion elements, improvising with small setups of snare drum, cymbal, and objects, focusing on sounds rather on playing, as I am not a drummer, after all. Several of these sessions were collected, serving as a starting point to the compositions.

There is no randomness in the creative process itself, it all comes from thinking and trying to connect sounds and ideas to each other in, most importantly, new ways that I had not already explored in my previous electroacoustic or acoustic improvised music.

Scattered Underfoot is now available as a limited edition tape, and for download and stream from Crónica.

Ilia Belorukov’s “Scattered Underfoot” reviewed by Musique Machine

While the pandemic of 2020 changed the lives of everyone on our Earth, many artists used this period of tumult and isolation to create and dive deeper into their psyches to represent this unease and fear as gorgeous pieces of art. Ilia Belorukov is no exception, and he took his normal, home composing routine and took it in a new direction. Mixing analog and modular synthesis, field recordings, percussion, and processing, Scattered Underfoot was born into an unsure and drastically changing world. A definite product of that changing, growing, intermingling zeitgeist, Ilia’s composition is getting to see the light of day through MC Crónica 195 on January 10th. 

Mixing electronics with natural, acoustic sources, Belorukov constructs an interesting blend of sounds that evoke a varied emotional response. Scattered Underfoot is composed in such a way that it almost bridges the gap between ambient and musique concrète. Considering when the album was composed and recorded, the bleak sounds on display really capture the state of the world at the time as well as varied outlooks into the future. The almost broken sounding horns that appear over the low, mechanical drone on “The Night Whispered and Sang” alludes to a very dystopian and dark future. One can imagine walking down along the muddy tracks from the album’s cover and hearing sparse, somewhat mutilated sounds of joy from an era that’s passed.  There is a definite lost and lonely vibe throughout Scattered Underfoot, and Belorukov deftly captured the feeling of the time. His take is interesting, too. Although we’ve heard many releases that were composed and recorded at this time, this is clearly a very individualized vision, despite similarities in tone to other albums. We may have all gone through this together, but our realities are shaped by our perceptions, and that is unique to the individual.  

Scattered Underfoot hearkens back to a wild and highly influential time in our world’s history. This is because it was composed and recorded during that tumultuous period and is being released by MC Crónica 195 on January 10th. Ilia Belorukov’s use of both electronic and acoustic sources brings forth an evocative look at a strange present and a possibly grim future. Slowly moving and growing, the layers here utilize both ambient and musique concrète and wonderfully express one man’s vision of a very historic time. Paul Casey

via Musique Machine

Ilia Belorukov’s “Scattered Underfoot” reviewed by African Paper

Der in St. Petersburg lebende Klangbastler und Mehrfachinstrumentalist Ilia Belorukov bringt soeben sein neues Langspieltape mit vier zu Beginn der Pandemie produzierten Stücken heraus. Das Album entstand auf der Basis u.a. von diversen modularen Gerätschaften, Akustikgitarre, Becken, Drums und Drummachines, auch Feldaufnahmen und zweckentfremdete Objekte kamen zum Einsatz. Das Tape erscheint am 10. Januar bei Crónica, das Album ist auch digital erhältlich.

via African Paper

New release: @c’s “Installations: S(o)al (2021)”

During the twenty-plus years of their collaboration as @c, Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s work spanned composition and performance but also, and prominently, several installations, often site-specific and ephemeral works that have at most been documented with short videos. This series of releases in Crónica is dedicated to revisiting and documenting these installation works, not only in situ recordings but also the computational systems developed for the works, archival materials, and other assets, presenting new compositions that unfold from each of the installations. This series is accompanied by the book Installations / Instalações, also published by Crónica. The third release in the series is S(o)al, after the installation commissioned by Museu Zer0 in 2021 and developed at Ermida de São Roque in Tavira.

The city of Tavira, in the Portuguese region of Algarve has an ancient connection with salt,its production in the area going back millennia. Nowadays, salt is still very relevant to the local economy and culture, with salt ponds being one of the most striking elements in the landscape. Working in a 16th-century chapel, Tudela and Carvalhais took inspiration from the culture and the sounds of salt and the ocean. Most of the physical apparatus of the installation was housed at the chapel’s nave, while the chancel was used as a resonant chamber for sounds that were composed in two sets, echoing the cadence of breaking ocean waves, and exploring granular sounds that evoke processes of crystallisation.

Installations: S(o)al (2021) is now available for download or stream via the usual channels.

Sun Dog’s “Col des Tempètes” reviewed by Silence and Sound

A peine s’est on remis d’Echoplasme, qu’eRikm (électronique) nous propose un nouveau projet tout aussi envoûtant et singulier, aux cotés d’Isabelle Duthoit (voix).

Avec Col des Tempètes, le duo dessine des paysages surnaturels, habités par une faune aux faux-semblants familiers et d’êtres fantômatiques à la présence inquiétante.

C’est par touches que Sun Dog nous fait gravir ces montagnes hérissées de pierres et de légendes, d’arbustes désséchés par le froid et de spectres cachés dans les entrailles d’une géographie millénaire recelant des histoires défendues.

Avec peu d’éléments, le duo réussit pourtant à composer des atmosphères riches en surprises et bouillonnantes d’idées, trajectoires aux effluves peuplées d’ombres et de traces, d’existences floues et de chuchotements aux consonances parfois inuit, de crispations hurlées et d’animalité écorchée. Remarquable. Roland Torres

via Silence and Sound

New release: André Gonçalves + Angélica Salvi’s “As Things Flow (for Waters’ Witness)”

Artist and electro-acoustic composer Tarek Atoui (Beirut, Lebanon, 1980) works on large-scale compositions that stem from anthropological, ethnological, musicological, and technical research. His exhibitions weave installations, performances, and education, in processes that move away from the conventional notion of performance, both for the performer and the audience, and that suggest forms of visual, aural, tactile, and somatic experience of sound. Atoui’s first exhibition in Portugal, Waters’ Witness, at the Serralves Museum, is part of the project I/E, ongoing since 2015, in which he captures the sounds of port cities — Athens, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Beirut or Porto — by recording their harbours’ industrial, human, and ecological activities. Together with artist/recordist Eric La Casa, they listen to sound below the surface of the sea or within materials such as metal, stone, and wood. On Waters’ Witness, the audio recordings of the seaports of Athens, Abu Dhabi and Porto are played through materials chosen in each location — marble stones from Athens, steal beams from Abu Dhabi, and wooden structures housing compost, worms and organic material, specifically produced for the Serralves presentation. The work with organic decomposing matter takes Waters’ Witness in a new direction: an acoustic ecology that receives and perpetuates residual sounds through the audible frontiers of a world in flux. This unique soundscape extends from the Museum’s central room to the Park in the shape of sound constellations, platforms and systems activated throughout the entire period of the exhibition in scheduled performances, collaborative and educational workshops.

As Things Flow (for Waters’ Witness) is the recording of a performance held on July 3, 2022, as an activation of the exhibition Waters’ Witness by Tarek Atoui at Fundação de Serralves — Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto. The exhibition was curated by Filipa Loureiro and on view between February 24 and August 28, 2022, and included a series of activation performances curated by Pedro Rocha. Image: Tarek Atoui, “Waters’ Witness”, installation view, Fundação de Serralves, 2022; photo by Filipe Braga.

As Things Flow (for Waters’ Witness) is now available for download or stream via the usual channels.