Drone Records

REVENANT - Zeltini

Format: CD

Label & Cat.Number: Unfathomless U05

Release Year: 2011

Note: fifth release in a new series by MYSTERY SEA, dealing with "spirits of specific places"; REVENANT is a project with changing / open membership around JOHN GRZINICH, these recordings were made in a dark bunker in Zeltini, Latvia (used for missiles during from the Soviet nuclear arsenal) playing only the objects & materials found at the specific space; lim. / numb. 250 copies

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"Maksims Shentelevs, Eamon Sprod, John Grzinich, Kaspars Kalninsh, Felicity Mangan

‘revenant’ is an ongoing project with open membership that focuses on site-specific acoustic actions. All sounds originate from materials found in-situ, and from interactions with the space itself.

There were some “dark” elements surrounding this session. It was mid-November in the Baltics which meant that it was cold, gray and the sun goes down early. By the time we entered the bunker and set up to record there was no natural light left to see. Trying to find a shared experience through improvisation among a group that is not familiar is hard enough, trying to do this in the dark in an unfamiliar place is even harder. Knowing we would be without visual and sometimes auditory communication because of the multiple spaces available I suggested to do a recording experiment, to each use our own equipment yet synchronize the timing at the start. If we were to get “lost” or immersed in our own experiences, it would be interesting to reassemble them later as a shared “fictional” space. This is indeed what we ended up with. Using only my ears and a headlamp to guide my way, I foraged through that unknown space collecting objects and playing them on the varied surfaces I discovered. I remember the old rags, the dust, broken pieces of concrete, pipes coming out of the ground and how I searched for ways to animate the space and instigate interactions with the others. Whether it was the quest for new objects or the need to stay warm I constantly moved around and even ended up outside toward the end. (John Grzinich)" [press release]

www.unfathomless.net

"An ongoing project with open membership, that is what Revenant is about. On their second (?) CD, we find John Grzinich again, but with four new members, Maksims Shentelevs, Eamon Sprod, Kaspars Kalninsh and Felicity Mangan. The five of them went to Zeltini, a former Soviet army base in Latvia and they looked for some stuff to create music with, as this is another angle of Revenant. Find material on the site, and play that as it were instruments, using the space as its concert space or studio. Again we are not told how this was recorded or edited, but for about fifty plus minutes we hear these five persons moving through the bunker space, toying around with the various objects they found in this space, like glass, stones and metal. This is done in a musical manner, through means of improvisation. Not a random scattering of debris, but listening and interacting with each other and creating music with non-musical objects. There are overtones to be found here, which are hard to place (wind? somebody blowing a pipe?), which add a nice textural tone to the proceedings. Maybe like the previous one, this is the natural element that is being used here. I am not entirely sure. The only reference I could think of is the recent work of Jeph Jerman - closely miked acoustic objects being played, but then in the large resonating bunker in Latvia. Not the most easy listening one around, but surely some great music has been captured here." [FdW/Vital Weekly]