ASTRAL & SHIT + SÁDON | Imitation Of Meditation

Digital, EP /

BLWBCK029 – Release date : February 03rd, 2013
digital | download

Words are useless to describe this russian collaborative provided by the lonely Astral&Shit and the fiery duo Sádon. The 23 minutes of ‘Imitation Of Meditation’ will leave you in a hypnagogic state, like a slow-moving rock in suspension. Dive into this alloy of fathomless textures, forget walls and deadlines, dream about dreaming… if you play the game words become null and void.

music by Ivan Gomzikov, Donat Mavleev & Sanya Vorobey
recorded in December 2012, Nevyansk / Saint-Petersburg
mixed and mastered by Aleksey Aleksandrov,
http://sadon.bandcamp.com/
http://astralandshit.tumblr.com/
Cover Photography by Romain Barbot, “Portrait of a portrait”
Photography of a cutted print from “Trip to Cappadocia, 1935, vol. II”

PRESS QUOTES

‘Imitation of Meditation’ works out as an intense work viewed from far away. The sound tries to run away. While track plays there is an obvious debt to post-rock and spaced-out feedback obsessed groups like ‘Flying Saucer Attack’. Like Flying Saucer Attack the sound appears motivated by taking a different approach to melody. Within the sound the melody is nearly hidden unable to be fully detected. Everything works towards it. Even vocals are barely intelligible. Grasping the purpose appears to be somewhat opaque. Other equally strange genres inspire the piece as well. Shoegaze would be yet another influence, thanks to the vocal-less vocals. In fact the vocals merge quite nicely with the melody as well, creating a choir of heavenly bound angels. The song wastes no time in beginning. Shifts start up immediately to show exactly where the melody lies. With each additional repetition it becomes slightly sadder. A desire comes through the wavelengths. Hearing the consistent density of the track is soothing at well. Initially jarring it manages to settle down into an extreme form of sky-gazing ambience. Vocals come in to accompany the track. Upon the proper number of rotations the vocals appear once more. In spite of the vocals wordlessness it feels extremely beautiful, nearly mournful. How they sing do, by simply expanding their voices onwards to the sky is grand. Plus the vocals serve as a reminder that though it feels heavenly this is Earth-bound sound. At the end it subsidies, though the way they end it makes it feel like this sound has started and will continue long after the listener is gone. – Beach Slot (7.3/10)

It’s still not a common practice for DIY Conspiracy to showcase music beyond the hardcore/punk frame. However, DIY is surely not an approach monopolized by those genres and their followers, and it was high time we brought up something different. The latter word being quite conditionally used here as a third of the people who wrote the record, discussed here, is actually an active part in the Russian (post) hardcore scene. Namely this is Sanya from Euglena (that we mentioned already here) is a part of the drone duo Sádon. Quickly after they put out their debut in January this year and through the French tape label BLWBCK, they were ready with another record, featuring music from Sanya Vorobey and Donat Mavleev. This time they weren’t alone, but accompanied by the sounds of Ivan Gomzikov’s Astral & Shit, a very productive, yet quite underground sound artist, also hailing from the cold lands of Russia. The result is a 22 minute long piece, so organically incorporating all three approaches to sound, that you can barely tell it’s a collaboration, and an not actual band. The only distinctive elements, reminiscent of something already known are the blurry and gentle vocals, already mastered by Sádon in their previous recordings. The sound in Imitation Of Meditation is slow, thin and fragile. It is icy, distant and its shallowness is just a mask for everything you will find hidden below the cold and tense layers of drone. Despite the name it’s carrying I don’t find this piece mediative. It is too complex for such a purpose. It’s challenging and interesting, which should be valued more than a bunch of never ending drones, suited to be a plain background music for times spent in trance or just sleeping. Yes, you can’t sleep on this record, because you will freeze to your very death. The only thing that makes me sad about this record (and in general about Astral & Shit) is the name chosen for the project. It’s just not fair to put such fine pieces of music under such a lame and dumb monicker, really. – Angel S. for DIY Conspiracy