Time to do some catching up on winter listening. I quickly started zoning out to Ilia Belorukov’s solo release Someone Has Always Come on Sublime Retreat but then started paying closer attention and reappraising it while still playing it for the first time, which is always an encouraging sign. The four tracks here, assembled over 2017 to 2020, seem a bit samey at first in that grey dark-ambient kind of way, but the redeeming features are in the attention to detail and finish, as suggested by the lengthy gestation period and confirmed by the depths that are revealed in closer listening. Behind the rather staid impression received at a distance, each piece deploys a wealth of dark-hued tones enlivened by faint motifs that sometimes recur, imparting structure and direction for the listener and adding a nice, open-ended uncertainty quite different from the usual claustrophobic atmosphere of this genre.
I’ve discussed Belorukov before, in his collaboration with Gaudenz Badrutt, Rotonda. It got described as “slow, deliberately-paced music [that] unfolds over nearly 50 minutes, each performer knowing that the resonance of the space will fill and colour their inactivity.” The two are reunited as a duo on Sauerkraut, released on Intonema a couple of months ago. These recordings date from 2019, based on live performances with electronics, sampling, feedback and analogue synthesis. Both musicians’ use of noise, placement of sound and phrasing have developed here into a high-contrast study of extremes. Where Rotonda flirted with cautiousness, Sauerkraut tempts recklessness. Two brief tracks set up expectations for the main course, a long piece of sporadic outbursts of intricate noise, peppered with unsteady near-silences that unfold with a kind of unreadable, autonomous machine-logic. The sleeve notes suggest that the complex processor chains used in the music create plenty of opportunuities for feedback loops, which goes a long way to explaining why the David Tudor-like organised chaos heard here sounds so unforced, and why the passages of bludgeoning noise are so enjoyable.
