ALEXEI BORISOV
& ANTON NIKKILÄ: TYPICAL HUMAN BEINGS
Label: N&B Research
Digest (Finland/Russia, www.nbresearchdigest.com)
Format: CD
Catalogue number:
NBRD-07
Release date:
September 1 2004
Promotion: Dense
Promotion (www.dense.de)
The first duo CD
by Borisov & Nikkilä is another anti-solipsistic look by these authors at
their surroundings past and present. To paraphrase the title of Borisov's
latest solo album "Polished Surface Of A Table", this is a gaze from
the imaginary space between the seemingly solid table-plate and the lacquered
surface on top of it, complete with stains and acoustic disturbances that
distort the perspective.
Borisov's Russian
texts (translated into English in the CD booklet) scan the panorama of his
everyday life, moving rapidly from "a vagabond from Dagestan" to
"bio-underpants" and Soviet hospital life to oblique reminiscences of
European demi-monde, creating in the process compact psychological snapshots
and surreal verbal cascades in which multiple meanings border on complete
dissolution.
The music,
inextricably linked to the texts, could be interpreted the same way. It looks
at the commonplace forms of rock song, free improvisation, muzak, "smooth
jazz" and noise with the purpose of turning the viewpoint around and the
structures inside out. Through improvised guitar and percussion, digital and
low tech noise editing, deconstructed muzak and recited vocals "Typical
Human Beings" aims to be the sound of zoom-adjusting standard perspective
into an impossible position and broken forms functioning as if nothing
happened.
Alexei Borisov,
who lives in
While Nikkilä
debuted internationally on the Touch/Ash International compilation
"Decay" in 1997, Borisov is a true veteran of the Russian music
scene, starting in 1980 as the guitarist of Center, the country's first new
wave group. Both have previously released two solo CD's, which have been
commented e.g. this way:
"Alexei Borisov is one of the most provocative sound artists to come out
of the Russian proto-Industrial scene." (David Keenan in his review of
Alexei Borisov's "Before the Evroremont", The Wire, October 2002)
"From the opener You Needed Me
warped guitar and sawing feedback stress that defying definition is at once a
new art form." (TJ
Norris in his review of Anton Nikkilä's "White Nights" on SoundVision
website, July 2002)