The Russian sound artist Vlad Dobrovolski is readying his Natursymphony No.3– Vibrant Matter LP for release on June 16th via Klammklang. The follow-up to the artist’s brilliant 2019 cassette for the label, Non-deterministic Polynomial Poems, a conceptually themed outing that brought poetry’s “unprovable truths” to bear on mathematics linear logic, Dobrovolski’s newest effort is an equally whimsical electro-acoustic adventure into the living, breathing world of sound.
The fact that Natursymphony‘s 1 and 2 do not yet exist shouldn’t provide a hurdle in enjoying this journey backwards and forwards into a time when ceremony, hand-forged instruments, and acoustic detail yield(ed) an organic microcosm of sound capable of transporting the listener to the far reaches of the imagination. Having spent formative creative time in Japan during the aughts, Dobrovolski’s improvised, electro-acoustic approach is influenced by traditional Okinawa island music. Additionally, it looks back to a time when the rhythms of nature prevailed over the deadening drone of commerce. The artist explains:
“Mentally impotent, like indolent bubbles of protein inflated with information we wander in between football stars, face-polished social media simulacra and status-dependent robots of everydayness. I look back to the world we lost with regret and melancholy. It was the world where farms were full of life and their barns weren’t empty; where the forests were still here, not destroyed. Of course the social situation wasn’t the best, our ancestors were no angels wearing human clothes. But there were things we keep forgetting: nearness between people, the joy of small things and incidents, a common knowledge that human being is a ‘dust thou art,’ and so shall it remain no matter how much we shout and rummage into the planet surface. While working on this album, I wanted to grasp and bring some of these special things I remember since I was a kid.“
Below, you can listen to Natursymphony No.3’s lead track, “Impetus,” which features the Russian sound collective Kurvenschreiber on synthesizers…
