Photo: Light in the Attic Records
Tony Stamp explores two new compilations showcasing exciting music from underexplored global scenes - Soviet-era Ukraine and '90s Japan.
Check out the latest album releases every week on The Sampler.
Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996
Much of the music on this expertly curated, painstakingly researched collection has been impossible to hear outside Ukraine until recently. The project took five years to complete, during which time war broke out in the region, and prompted a change of plan: originally the compilation would also feature Russian artists.
It runs chronologically, with entities from the '70s songs including folk-rock group Kobza, who add jazz elements like frisky flute to in their instrumental waltz 'Bunny', and Vodohrai, who play with percussion and piano vamping on 'Remembrance'.
In the liner notes, written by Kyiv-based DJ, filmmaker, and writer Vitalii "Bard" Bardetskyi, he amusingly calls this style 'Moustache Funk'.
He writes that due to Soviet-era restrictions, "Only state-authorised performers who had gone through hellish rounds of the permit system could record at the few monopolistic, state-run studios."
By the '80s, Bardetskyi says "the Soviet system finally understood that funkified beats quite strongly contradict[ed] [its] principles", and a crackdown ensued. That gave way to an underground scene, and the second half of the album is scrappier, with a wider breadth of styles including improvisation, ambient music, and proto-techno.
It's a fascinating, very listenable look at a creatively fertile period.
Photo: Music From Memory
Virtual Dreams II, Ambient Explorations in the House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999
Another label who specialise in this kind of musical excavation runs out of Amsterdam, called Music From Memory. This album tells a story about the cultural differences between scenes before the internet connected them, full of music that sounds as vibrant and exploratory as it must have when it was first released.
While Virtual Dreams l focused on Europe, its sequel looks at Japan, which had a different trajectory to the rest of the world in terms of dance music. Liner notes specify that the country missed the 'acid house fever' which took hold in Europe and the USA. While IDM, or 'intelligent dance music', emerged in those regions as a response to club culture, in Japan it was there from the start, referred to as 'listening techno'.
'Flutter', by Palomatic, would fit well in a 'chillout room' at a rave, (a space to escape the pounding rhythms for a moment) and other songs, like 'Escape', by Ambient 7, could have come from one of the 1990s' omnipresent chillout compilations.
Then there's '5 Blind Boys' by Yukihiro Fukutomi, a staggering composition which runs for nearly ten mins, delicate and constantly unfurling, infused with the spirit of minimalist composer Steve Reich.
It's music designed to help you decompress after dancing, but we all need some down time occasionally, and the tunes here are fit for purpose.
Tony Stamp reviews the latest album releases every week on The Sampler.
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