This week a superb EP appeared through the Accessory Takes offshoot of RAIG (The Russian Association of Independent Genres): it exists in order to publish web-based music that’s associated with the market-driven side of RAIG’s operations, yet not actually for sale.  In other words - as we’ve pointed out in the past - Accessory Takes showcases offcuts, archive tracks, live recordings, and other “peripheral” sounds that deserve an audience but - for whatever reason - will not be seen on the shelves of record stores.

The newest noises to appear in this form come from a recently announced project by the name of Broken Ghost; their free mp3-EP is called “Tichi Star Diaries” and can be downloaded from here.  The amount of available PR information - due to the recent release date and the band’s equally recent appearance - is close to zero.  We do at least know that the two musicians involved are Dima (no surname, on guitar) and Diona (keyboards).

Both of them are from Moscow and began working together two years ago.  It wasn’t until this year, however, that they started playing live.  This preference for studio work is clear in the sounds created by Broken Ghost: a warm, layered style that - in its finished form - may appear more atmospheric than consciously structured, but on further and closer listening, the degree of craftsmanship in what they term their “electro-acoustic ambient” sound is evident.

RAIG tell us that the release is designed to invoke a state of “peace and calm.”  Dima himself - visible in the images of this post - goes a little further in explaining the raison d’etre of the “Tichi Star Diaries“:  “This is the ambiance of a lazy Sunday morning, when the sun begins to shine through the curtains and you still feel sleepy.”

His label agrees, jumping into the proceedings once more for a few final words: “Sometimes the guitar work might resemble the grey light of a rainy day, but this duo nonetheless adheres to their neo-impressionist visions of reality.”

Why “nonetheless” neo-impressionist?  If we look seriously at the term, at least in its usual context of the visual arts, then we’ve got a school that strove to depict phenomena in a slightly more permanent manner than the intuitive approach of the impressionists before them.  If, in other words, impressionism saw actuality as something in flux, which could only be engaged and evoked emotionally/intuitively, then neo-impressionism started applying a greater degree of conscious technique to the canvas (specificially through the meticulous use of colored dots) in order to evoke states of greater permanence.  Maybe Broken Ghost - or at least the staff at RAIG! - see this as a way to describe the group’s long periods in the studio.

Finicky knob-twiddling and tape editing leads to an ambient release, to a recording that is not - allegedly - akin to the miserable greyness of a rainy day.  And so - applying this logic as rigidly as possible! - we conclude that delicately built, finely constructed forms of permanence are not miserable: they are desirable.  So what kinds of happy stability do we have in these four instrumentals?

Dima’s titles form the only specific information: our sunny, happy Sunday is expressed in tracks such as “Mourning [sic] Cold Breath,” “Hypoallergenic,” and “Berlin Tickets.”  Suddenly everything is turned on its head: happy notions/grim titles.  Textually there’s an air of sterile death and other “exits,” whereas the music as a whole is described as akin to that happy Sunday waking.  We’re caught - pleasingly, it would seem! - between both rising and “descending” (once and for all), between arrival and departure.

Two years of studio work have led to this delicate, “neo-impressionist” limbo.

If it takes two years to express the “peace and calm” that lies somewhere between Sunday mornings and a final, fatal “evening,” then that would suggest that Russian reality is a something of a roller coaster!  The sounds of this difficult balancing act come to us via “a cheap microphone and a 15-watt guitar combo amp.” 

So despite the help of Diona on keyboards, Broken Ghost is - when all’s said and done - “a one-man project.”  There’s only room for one person on the tightrope.