Artemiy Artemiev - Time, Desert and A Sound

Order Number elcd038

Retail Price from indie-cds.com site A$30.00: / Unit

IMPORTANT Please note no orders will be despatched now until Dec 14th - we are having a holiday! If you don't mind waiting until then you can order now. Wholesale Price A$18.00: / Unit

"As with many of his albums, Artemiy Artemiev's "Time, Desert And A Sound" (ELCD 038) begins with an oriental soundscape, this time the opening track "Beyond Bounds of Reality" sounds as if it is portraying the great steppes of Siberia, with what sounds like a Mongolian throat singer vying with flutes, choral loops floating over a bed of synths. This track is both highly atmospheric and restful, a feature that continues with the next track, Time, which suggests a cosmic spaciousness few other musicians can create. "Desert" is another mellow track to start with - acoustic guitars (courtesy of Valery Siver) lull one into a false sense of peace before some ambient/industrial sounds slowly take over the soundstage for a while before the guitar returns to bring some sort of peace again, finally fading into a single church bell slowly tolling. "A Sound" is a lengthy piece, nearly seventeen minutes long - a lone drum beats out a simple, almost mournful rhythm while a variety of sounds (buzzing synths, the return of the throat singer, various atmospherics) unfold slowly. This is another one of those tracks that is enhanced if you close your eyes and relax, letting it just wash over you - a strong sense of timelessness is your reward. The final track is "Mysticism of Sound. Part II", a thirty-six minute live recording from Artemiy's Euro-Siberian tour last year. This reprises the track from a previous album of the same name, but in an extended format, and encapsulating all of the musical signatures that identify Artemiy Artemiev's music: glacial clarity of sound, inventive use of regional ethnic influences and samples and a sense of spaciousness that pushes loudspeakers to the edge." - John Peters ("The Borderland")

"Artemiy Artemiev offers us a masterful album inspired in the vastness of the deserts. Through the five themes of the CD, the listeners can easily recreate in their imagination the desolate landscapes of The Desert, the adventures, sometimes tragic, that its explorers experienced, and the atmosphere of those regions. By skillfully utilizing synthesizers, the composer creates arid textures, mysterious, near to "ambient", in the most unsettling parts of the work. Other passages could be labelled within the "electroacoustic music". There also are some touches of "world music"." - Edgar Kogler ("Amazing Sounds")