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Gultskra Artikler

Kasha Iz Topora

(Miasmah; US: 9 Oct 2007; UK: 15 Oct 2007)

Gultskra Artikler is the avant-garde musical creation of Moscow-based artist Alexey Devyanin. The moniker has no English translation (in fact, I’m pretty certain Devyanin invented the words), but appropriately signifies the random experimentation displayed by his music. Gultskra Artikler mostly consists of freeform instrumentals which feature such unorthodox sounds as creaking doors, impending footsteps, discordant strings. There are also your garden variety twinkling pianos and winding cellos, but the selections seem to revolve around the unpredictable rhythmic elements of the field recordings and various unidentifiable background noises. His nearly 68-minute Kasha Iz Topora is based on a fairytale about a man and his magical, porridge-making(?) axe. The effort is haunting and methodical. Although some of the more time-consuming pieces appear to wander aimlessly through unchartered territory, you get the slight inclination that a burgeoning genius is a work. Rather than a mishmash of disjointed elements, Devyanin manages to create some sort of cohesion out of the wide array of seemingly unrelated sounds.

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Joe is a freelance writer who focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. His work has been published at AOL Music, Staten Island Advance, NYDailyNews.com, and SIDump.com. One semester away from mastering J-School over at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Joe lives in a pastoral abode out on Staten Island where he enjoys the solitude and the whiskey.


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