Plato Newsroom #20

Five fresh Belarusian releases.

19.08.2024

newsroom

Greetings! Welcome to Newsroom – the podcast about fresh releases from Belarusians by Radio Plato, and your host today is Alik Khamiak, a.k.a. Schmoltz.

Today's episode is a very atmospheric and stylistically diverse selection of releases, including:

Weird Eraser's piano ambient;
trip-hop jazz fusion by Lightmyfire Orchestra Service;
Awlnight with the next chapter of the sample-digging saga;
noir synth pop by Emil Zenko;
Travvma's magical black-gaze.

<br><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1901890092&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe><div style="font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/radioplato" title="Radio Plato" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">Radio Plato</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/radioplato/plato-newsroom-20" title="Plato Newsroom - #20 w/ Weird Eraser, Lightmyfire Orchestra Service, Awlnight, Emil Zenko, Travvma" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">Plato Newsroom - #20 w/ Weird Eraser, Lightmyfire Orchestra Service, Awlnight, Emil Zenko, Travvma</a></div><h2>Weird Eraser's cinematic piano ambient album</h2>

Weird Eraser is a young musician by the name of Maksim Muraška, who creates instrumental music at the intersection of ambient, post-rock, and neoclassical, capable of evoking a wide range of emotions from dreamy tenderness to melancholy to a certain sense of mystery. The album called "In The Shape Of a Circle" released July 5 combines acoustic and processed sounds to a truly cinematic effect – when the musical theme focuses on a certain emotion, but does not develop to a climactic peak, instead leaving space for the listener's reflection. Turns out, the album's perceived cinematic feel is no coincidence. Part of the material for this album was initially created as theater play score. Here's Maksim with more details.

– Around 12 or 13 I realized I liked composing more than I liked playing other people's music. At that time, I was already studying piano at the music school. That's when I started recording my first pieces, installed Ableton and started figuring it out. I got the bug for it. I was always interested in music, listened to a lot of different stuff, got inspired by it and eventually started writing my own music. But I felt shy about sharing my music. Things changed when I got admitted to Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where I study now. Around that time I started putting my music out. Also, that's where I met my new friends at the "Tochka" student theater and started writing music for them.

I started writing the score for one of their plays in the summer of 2023. The play was directed by Andrei Gigin, who is also a musician himself. I was working on the music while the play was in development. So I was not just scoring already scripted scenes. The process was rather based around the exchange of ideas and images. One time Andrei sent me pictures of Rene Magritte's paintings and I composed a soundtrack of sorts to one of them called "La Voix Des Airs". At the time I was back in Belarus, where I have a piano at home. I was recording and sampling it a lot. That's how "Internal Movements" was made. And some of these tracks were recorded later that fall in the dormitory. Eventually, the theater play used only some of the music I composed for it. Some time passed and I listened back to that material, realizing that these tracks stand on their own and they also reflected my emotional state at the time. So I decided to rework a few things and put a final coat of polish on others and just release it as a standalone album.

I would describe the tracks on the album as sound collages. Most of the tracks, while not having much development in musical form, are very layered. And those layers overlap and shift retaining the listener’s attention. I would also say that this album is about an everyday person and the spectrum of emotions one has during the day. Every track reflects a certain emotion I was feeling while composing it.

Lightmyfire Orchestra Service is a jazz project by Andrej Taŭkin. Today we're checking out his single called "Morphine" released last February. It's a modern jazz fusion track with references to Pat Metheny and the old Bristol trip-hop scene. While listening to it, a perhaps outdated term acid jazz comes to mind, echoing some of the old Jazzanova records and early Ninja Tune output. Anyway, enough of our made up references, let's hear the author about what actually inspired him and his whole creative process.

– I've been making music all my life, I've played in different bands, recorded and mixed a ton of different bands from Minsk and other places. For this project I compose all the arrangements myself. I record every instrument I can play in my home studio. For parts that I couldn't play myself, I lay down midi in a sequencer along with basic harmony, melodic riffs, rhythm and anything else that comes up, like a sax solo. And then I take the project down to the studio where I get my friends or session musicians to record those parts. It's a matter of principle to have everything recorded live using real instruments, be it in studio or at home. I always record some bars of improvisation during the sessions. We do a few takes, I listen back to them, analyze them, splice them up, arrange them and mix them to my liking.

On the whole, I listen to a wide variety of genres myself. From Auktsyon and Portishead to Idles, Fotaines DC, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, John Coltrane etc. So, there's always this kaleidoscope and fusion of different ideas and sounds in my head, which I love weaving together. I bring to life the sounds I enjoy that resonate with me in the moment. It's all about getting into that flow state when the music takes you away. Just keep recording, after a million takes listen back, 'wow that's some cool shit' and there you have it. Rinse, repeat.

I find it incredible that somebody listens to it afterwards, or when a track gets on to some jazz charts or something. Because I always feel like I make this stuff for my own fun, in a way. Huge shout-outs to my man Maks, Abstract Museum, the best drummer in Minsk Maks Nelikvid, to Danya Maroka, Dima Shved, my music teacher Halina Tarohina and my lovely wife Ksenia.

Awlnight is the moniker of Dmitry Lukoits, a Belarusian beatmaker who has been living in Vilnius for a while now. He is a true veteran of the scene with his first instrumental beats releases dating back to 2013, under the alias Luka at the time. However, his earliest music output dates back to mid-noughties when Zmicier was part of a Babrujsk rap group Squad 17. The band's releases are up on Bandcamp, highly advisable listen to all fans of the genre. But, back to the present day. As Awlnght, Dmitry has released dozens of releases on numerous labels from all over the world. His latest album "Time" has been released on cassette on a UK-based label Monked Records in April. We called Dmitry to chat about all things musical on this occasion. Here his own words about the value of time, inspiration sources and treacherous paths of the creative journey.

– I started doing music around 2005 when I bought my first computer and installed Hip-Hop eJay 4. I started in a band called Squad 17. I was rapping, making beats, mixing and coming up with all sorts of ideas. You could say I was doing it all. The band's history ends about 2011-2012. I've been making music solo ever since. I got more into production, losing interest in rapping. As for this album, it was spurred by Monked Records, who wanted to put out a longplay of "classic Awlnight tracks". I have developed my signature style over the years that I call modern beats, heavy use of 80's samples being an essential element. The problem was, I had no material ready for this kind of release, so I went back to my tried and tested production methods to make beats from scratch, sampling a lot of vinyl. By the way, most of the album was made on SP-404MKII.

After a while I had enough material for the album, but it took quite some time. Which is where the name of the album comes from. Time is the central concept of it. Something we all need, something we all often don't have enough of. I was really struggling to carve out enough time to make the record because of my work. This album holds a special significance for me personally, as it was made in a rather challenging period of my life. That’s why it will always stand out for me from my entire discography. Sources of inspiration is a good question, I often get asked about them – where do I get my inspiration from. What can I say? Nowhere (laughs). I dunno, I don't need some special kind of inspiration to sit down to making beats. It just happens spontaneously.

Rewind! That portion of the show where we flash back to the less recent noteworthy releases that we have somehow missed. Today we got Emil Zenko's "VHS". Emil is a Belarusian musician and multidisciplinary artist. The album has been released about a year ago and is made of eight synth pop noire tracks with a balearic guitar and sensual vocals. Another atmospheric cinematic release, which is, again, no coincidence. Emil has vast experience in video production as well as painting and multimedia installations.

– I received classical fine art education, although I wanted to study music more. After graduation I made a living doing computer graphics and painting. But I started to devote more time to music after my friends organized a video production company called "Kinoproby". I often made short mood tracks for their videos about a minute long, and later I started making full versions and releasing them. Over time, I started releasing my tracks and albums on my own, largely retaining the same aesthetics and sound. This album was composed with a vinyl release in mind, which actually worked out as planned. I aimed to make it cozy, intriguing, and cinematic, with stories woven in – like listening to a fairy tale – while still maintaining my unique sound. I have three new tracks, each with an accompanying music video, planned for release this September, so stay tuned.

Travvma is the project of Bieraście resident Zmicier Vasilkoŭ and today we focus on his newest album "Sempervirens" blending sounds of shoegaze and black metal. Zmicier is inspired by nature and the hidden places of his native Paleśsie. The cover art for "Kalevala" – the single from this album we'll check out today – depicts a mysterious summer afternoon at the banks of either the Bug or the Mukhavets rivers flowing though Zmicier's hometown. Travvma's discography also contains a few earlier dark ambient releases made up of the field recordings from the ruins of the old Bieraście fortifications scattered throughout the woods surrounding the border town. In a word, Travvma's Bandcamp page is worth a visit for a few other hidden gems besides the latest album, while their Instagram saved stories narrate the intriguing process behind some of the band's more noteworthy releases. The classic case of the context adding another dimension to the music, if you ask me.

– The project called Travvma started back in 2016. It was my solo ambient and dark ambient project in the beginning. As I have been a metal fan since childhood, I eventually decided to redefine the project and we have been playing as a metal band since 2022. That is when I was joined by a drummer and a female vocalist.

The main idea behind the project (both in the previous ambient incarnation and nowadays) is to create an immersing atmosphere. To immerse the listener into the magical atmosphere of nature and fairy-tale. I've been fond of nature since childhood, spending time hiking in the woods with my father, and the forest magic never left me. So I wanted to metaphorically recreate it in music. But it's up to the listener to tell if I managed that. The sound of Travvma has evolved over the years. I started out making ambient tracks relying on my field recordings of nature. I was recording sounds of nature on my phone and putting them together into compositions while adding low-tuned synthesizers and things of that sort. So it was all-electronic, besides the field recordings. As time went on, first of all I got a better digital recorded and then started adding more and more recorded instruments – all sorts of percussion, bells etc – and sequencing them into something totally different from the initial recordings.

Then I got into the metal sound that the project has today. I wouldn't call it exactly black metal, that genre is usually more aggressive and heavier that what we play. My focus is primarily on atmosphere and immersion. And I still follow the same process. I go to the woods, make field recordings of all sorts. There's so many sounds once you're out there, it's hard to even list everything that makes sounds. From all kinds of birds to wind in trees to raindrops on all kinds of surfaces and so on and so forth. Going from there I would come up with guitar and synthesizer parts and then flesh out the arrangements. So the band lineup, as of today, includes a drummer and a vocalist besides myself. We do play this metal album material live, running field recordings, synths and additional guitar parts from playback.

That's it for today. This was Newsroom, the radio show about Belarusians who make sounds by the Radio Plato team: Reemotto, Stwone, Helga, Krik, Schmoltz, Nadya Ya, Stereobeaver and KorneJ and graphic desiger chernova.ya.

If you're a Belarusian making music, share it with us on social networks and we'll share it with the world in our next episodes. Subscribe to the podcast on streaming platforms, support us on Patreon, or simply Paypal us a donation – this helps us do more cool stuff. Don't forget to support your local artists by buying their music on Bandcamp and, of course, by coming to their live shows. See you next time! Radio Plato loves you!