Gultskra Artikler: Kasha Iz Topora

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.