With no end in sight, and yet another deadline from Trump crossed, Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine depressingly drags on. Three and half years in – although the real flashpoint came in 2014 and the annexation of the Crimea – and Russia continues to pound away at an already devastated ruinous landscape. Casualties may have reached the million mark, as whole generations fill the mass grave sites on a scale rarely seen outside the scenarios of both World Wars.
In these horrific times it falls upon labels such as the electronic artists Dmyto Fedorenko and Kateryna Zavoloka’s I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free to spread the sound of the sonic resistance. A soft power, a cultural emissary of that country’s experimental scene, the profits from its roster of artists, which includes both its founders, are donated to several self-defence and humanitarian foundations and local volunteer activists.
The latest release on that platform sees the noted Ukrainian multi-disciplinary electronic sonic, media and visual artist Georgy Potopalsky channel the apocalyptic horror, the destroyed and twisted concrete and steel scarred geography of his homeland to create a pulverised industrial and force field electrified work of conflict and brutalism. Under the Ujif_notfound alias, and with the artist’s usual themes that draw upon the volatility and dynamics between man and the machine, between user and interface, there’s now a focus towards, what the PR description describes as, ‘blasted soundscapes, frenetic breaks and bristling guitar noise’.
In practice this amounts to heavy meta(l) meets the electrifying bounce and fractures of techno and the gears and torqued industrial granular effects of machines (both the coded and the weaponized). Fizzling and warping, with ring outs of both contorting grindcore and repetitive guitar, the coarse and corrosive, an ominous presence is always near at hand; an alienness almost, and yet sense of war and its physical effects permeate the scorched earth. And yet, as pads are drilled with tight delay, or spiked, rotations spiral out the influence of Basic Channel, acid techno and breakbeat, there’s a danceable aspect, a dynamism of alive circuitry that gives some of the tracks a buzz.
The grains of acid rain, of filaments and detritus of weapons, missiles, rockets and drones appear like sonic drizzle though. But at the very end, a peaceful coda is reached; something approaching the ambient and Eno-esque, channelled once more through tubular metallic effects.
At any one time I’m hearing hints of Alberich, Cabaret Voltaire, Cosy Fanni Tutti, Atsushi Izumi, Brian Reitzell’s American Gods score, Autchere and Einstürzende Neubauten collectively pulled into a heavy set of the magnetic, pulsating, grinding, crushing, and shuttered. As sonically shocking as it is bouncing and charged, a full immersion that conjures up a full multimedia experience from one of Ukraine’s most prolific and creatively stimulating artists.