Proud
to be loud (Mathka 2011)
Denis Kolokol is an Ukrainian sound
artist, composer and performer living in
Krakow, Poland. He ran also a few
underground magazines and was writing about
music. He interprets music not only
emotionally, but also analyze it. He wrote a
lot about music and one day he started to
make music and his first performance was at
the Replica Festival in Almaty -
Kazakhstan. After that in 2006 he continued
to play with Alexander Chikmakov, who plays
guitar. Proud to be Loud is mastered by Jos
Smolders. The first two compositions at his
debut album are collaborations with this
guitarist. A interesting mix between classic
or modern classic guitar and
electronics. The aim of their collaboration
is to explore the possibilities, borders and
contradictions between traditional and
modern music and to create a coherent,
multilayered and carefully composed pieces
of music. And that is what it is. Denis
Kolokol knows how to use his computer in an
intellectual musical way, but it never
starts to be without any emotion. The fourth
track is created with the voice of Carmina
Escobar and was composed and performed in a
residency at the California Institute of
Arts in 2009. The piece is also exploring
the same elements as the music with
Alexander Chikmakov. All kind of
possibilities of the female voice have been
used, like singing, talking, humming,
whispering and shouting. His solopiece is
shorter in time, raw and a combination of
drums, electronics, voice. It is more a
collage of sounds which fits well together,
but the extra element of a traditional
music-instrument or vocalist is missing,
what makes the piece less interesting than
the other three. Although the album Proud to
be Loud is a great debut of the this
musician who knows to combine intellectual
concepts and well composed music. (JKH, Vital
Weekly 788)
http://www.vitalweekly.net/
* * *
Płyta, która uwiera
... ...
Nietypowy format mają też płyty z
sublabela zacnego krakowskiego AudioTonga,
czyli wytwórni o nazwie Mathka
(teoretycznie powinno być raczej:
Córkha). Są opakowane w zwykłe papierowe
koperty, ale towarzyszą im dodatkowe
okładki formatu 7-calowego singla, dzięki
czemu grafika okładkowa robi większe
wrażenie, a same płyty trudno pomylić z
innymi. Ostatnia z nich – album
ukraińskiego kompozytora Denisa Kolokola
„Proud to Be Loud” – nie dała się więc
zagłuszyć w stercie innych. I została
zgodnie z tytułem głośno odsłuchana.
Na drugą już płytę zafascynowanego
matematyką i teorią chaosu Kolokola dla
AudioTonga (pierwsza, „Ily” – tak a propos
dyskusji – została wydana jako plik
cyfrowy) składają się kompozycje z
ostatnich trzech lat, w tym muzyka do
instalacji Marca Silvera (utwór na gitarę
i elektronikę „There Are No Others, There
Is Only Us”) oraz wielokanałowy utwór
powstały w California Institute of Arts
(tytułowe „Proud to Be Loud”). Dominantą
wszystkich jest przetwarzanie brzmień
gitarowych i głosu, zwykle samego
Kolokola, ale w utworze tytułowym,
kompletnie pozbawionym ograniczeń
stylistycznych i kojarzącym się momentami
z nagraniami Mai Ratkje – wokal Carminy
Escobar. „Wake Me Up Ruin My Day”
przypomina klasyczne kompozycje muzyki
konkretnej, a najbardziej przystępny w
zestawie „There Is No Others…” ciekawie
eksploruje dźwięki jeżdżenia bo gryfie.
Nawet gdy w „Feedback Glotka” mamy
sporo klasycznych, nieprzetworzonych
brzmień gitarowych, to zostają nam
zaprezentowane z taką intensywnością, że
wydają się nieproporcjonalnie
dynamiczne. Jesteśmy współcześnie
przyzwyczajeni do jednostajnej głośności
wynikającej z kompresji nagrań, tymczasem
to, co robi Kolokol, wydaje się iść w
dokładnie odwrotnym kierunku. Mamy tu
olbrzymią dynamikę, swobodny, przestrzenny
dźwięk i mnóstwo zaskoczeń na każdym
kroku. Jedyny mankament to kilka
pretensjonalnych momentów w „Proud to Be
Loud”, choć to zarazem najbardziej
ekstremalny i (jak się wydaje) najbardziej
pracochłonny technologicznie utwór
Kolokola. Uwiera nie tylko sam nośnik – to
nagranie również nie pozostawi was w
obojętności.
Polifonia. Blog
Bartka Chacińskiego
* * *
Being musician makes you seek for new
and new ways of expression both in terms
of the composition and the structure of
the material as well as the
technological means to transpose the
ideas into flesh of the musical
track. Since so much time I have spent
on intensive and extensive listening of
music I deeply feel that the quality
lies in ideas and the concept rather
than the technological means. The
pressure you put onto the ultimate
technological search certainly leave
behind the creative spirit and the
challenging obstacles you can encounter
during the whole process.
Having said that Denis Kolokol's
first cd(!) is a way more ahead of many
improvised gems I could ever
imagine. The obvious reasons for liking
this material as the perfect time-space
balance and first outburst of this
experienced ukrainian composer now
residing in Cracow, Poland are preceded
by so much skill and craft and ingenuity
put into the composition which really
feels like giving a new paths in
experimental improvised music dominated
by sonorous trips. Vocal parts mingled
with acoustic guitar tracks and their
processing, drone and harshy bits with
laptop treatise, analogue synths so
delightfully and subtly referring to
synth psychedelia...I cannot recount all
the raisins in this cake. Denis, it was
so worth waiting for Your full
release!!! (Hubert Napiórski, felthat)
http://felthatreviews.blogspot.com/
* * *
...
So tonight I listened to a CD sent to
me a few weeks back by the Polish Mathka
label. This one had sat on the side for a
while unplayed, the oversized (and
unfortunately not that nice) packaging not
really enticing me to pick it up and play
it. Until the weekend the name of the
music’s composer was also unknown to me as
well- Denis Kolokol. However it was while
writing about the PRES Revisited album a
few days back, which includes music
rescored by Kolokol that it suddenly
occurred to me that the disc sat beside me
was composed by the same person, so I gave
it a spin yesterday and then listened a
couple of times more this evening.
The album is named Proud to be loud,
and contains four tracks of digitally
sequenced sounds, some instrumental, some
vocal, some electronic. If I had to place
it into any one convenient category maybe
I would go for musique concrete, but in
all honestly it doesn’t quite fit easily
anywhere. The nearest immediate comparison
I might make would be with Parmegiani, but
only stylistically. It sadly isn’t
anywhere near as interesting to me. The
first of the four pieces is named Feedback
Glotka and is made up of guitar parts
recorded by Alexander Chikmakov and vocal
snippets and electronics by
Kolokol. Unusually for my taste, it isn’t
the vocal parts that turn me off of this
track. Kolokol seems to use tiny guttaral
snippets of gasping breath, smacking lips
etc which he brings together to create
little sections of sound that actually
work quite well. On this track then its
the guitar, and to some degree the
electronics that don’t work so well to my
ears. The guitar often shifts into a
tinkling, semi-ambient mode, sometimes
pulling away to a kind of sub-Bailey
abstraction, but also quite often
disappearing into a really quite
off-putting post-Eno prettiness complete
with some unfortunate effects. The
electronics aren’t as bad, all bits and
pieces of crunchy (sampled?) sounds and
processed elements the origin of which
can’t be easily ascertained. These parts
seem to just don’t work against the cheesy
guitar work though, and we are left with a
bit of a mess with the guitar layered over
the top. I found this track really very
hard to listen to.
The second track is apparently the
soundtrack to a video installation by
somebody named Marc Silver, and again
Chikmakov’s guitar is paired against
Kolokol’s electronics, this time without
any vocal parts. We don’t get the new agey
niceties on the first track here, which is
a blessing, and the piece, named There are
no others, there is only us is a little
more interesting, made up of droning tones
undercut by angular acoustic guitar and
sheets of fast moving maybe synthesised
electronics adding detail beneath. It all
has a bit of a polished sheen to it, which
doesn’t appeal much, and feels a bit too
amorphous and lacking in firm structure
for my tastes. The we have a piece named
Wake me up and ruin my day, which it must
be said makes for a good track title, and
this piece is perhaps the most rewarding
here, despite its brief five minute
length. The guitar has gone and we just
hear the vocal parts mixed with deep,
atmospheric bulges of sound that might
easily belong the backing track of a film
about deep sea diving. Over this slow,
glowing backdrop tumble and scatter a mass
of little samples, mostly vocal parts but
then later with percussive, cymbal strikes
that for a while sounds good but gradually
slip into a loosely rhythmic pattern that
slips off to an uneventful ending.
The final piece was recorded during a
residency at CalArts in 2009 and utilises
a female voice alongside the
electronics. The early part of the track,
mixing piercing but quiet vocal shrieks
together works quite well, but it moves
into a section that uses little gasps and
moans of the female voice that when pulled
together sound very much like she is
undergoing something between sexual
ecstasy and the pain of childbirth, and I
found this part very difficult to listen
to indeed, partly because the sounds are a
little distressing, but also because how
they are used just feels a little
clumsy. After this part the twenty-minute
long track improves somewhat, streams of
tiny glitching detail flit about over more
semi-ambient murmuring providing a sense
of restraint and subtlety after what has
gone before but still some bad use of
reverb applied to the female voice, now
singing in a foreign tongue pulls it back
into hard to stomach territory.
This really isn’t my kind of album
then, in case you hadn’t guessed. It feels
like it belongs somewhere between a John
Hassell/Harold Budd ambient dream world
and Paremegiani styled concrete sound
experiments but all of these parts don’t
feel like they come together very well and
too often it feels like I am listening to
a catalogue of studio trickery and effects
box fireworks rather than music of any
real purpose or compositional
integrity. Tomorrow is likely to be just
as hard a day at work. I’m going to try
and find something I enjoy more to listen
to in the evening.
http://www.thewatchfulear.com/
* * *
Debut album by this Ukrainian artist now
residing in Krakow, Poland, whose work
arrives from electro-acoustic exploration
and improvisation yet aims for the academic
approach of certain modern composers. Very
nice album, though, full of movement, depth
and the fine art of surprise, with enough
electronic noise and crackle sewn into it to
keep those of us interested in such things
perfectly satisfied.
RECOMMENDED!
Fourth
Dimension
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