VII is dedicated to Klammklang's seventh year of existence, and, coincidentally, this is also our seventh release in 2020. But rather than recollecting the past, this compilation is intended to be a statement towards our label's further evolution.

I. DEBUTS

The album starts with an electroacoustic etude pour saxophone, gong, bass guitar and field recordings by label's debutant Kolya Dykhne, a Moscow-based sound and visual artist who creates some outlandish musical objects, instruments, sculptures and paintings. We're also thrilled to present a piece by another young muscovite Diana Romanova, an upcoming neo-concrète composer with her special taste to subtle sounds semi-existing between the long periods of silence.

II. DUETS

It's already been more than two years since we've been working with Vlad Dobrovolski, and the man never fails to surprise. What he brought to the table once was this amazing composition Vlad made together with Sugai Ken, a renowned Japanese experimental composer. And thus, the duo's multifaceted blend of timbres, melodies, textures and found sounds has became the compilation's first building block. Another joint effort on VII is an edited fragment of live performance that was held in the studio of Berlin's Cashmere Radio. This one is a collaboration between two outstanding sound artists based in Germany's capital city: Hugo Esquinca (a part of Klammklang extended international fam) with his digital algorithms processing the inimitable vocal oscillations of Audrey Chen, a Chinese/Taiwanese-American artist discovering the possibilities of human voice. Last but not least, there's another debut backed by one Klammklang's key artists Nikita Bugaev, and also another attempt to set up a dialogue between a voice and software, where Nikita has designed a virtual space for an audiovisual artist Elina Bolshenkova's chants and uttered incantations.

III. DOCUMENTS

Documenting sound was one of our main courses for years, so we had no choice but to add a few here. First of all, there are some bits of Kirstine Elisa Kjeldsen's sound performance at the club Mózg in Bydgoszcz, Poland where the Danish-born, Berlin-based artist had showcased her very own, walls-shattering approach to processed feedback. VII's final track is a documentation of Egor Klochikhin aka Foresteppe's kinetic/sonic installation he made last year for an art exhibition in Novosibirsk, for which he utilised three reel-to-reel tape machines and a bunch of voice recordings related to the Soviet pastimes — from a speech of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, to an interview with the prominent literary scholar and semiotician Yuri Lotman.

IV—V—VI—VII. ... AND WHATEVER COMES NEXT

Three years after her brilliant debut record Zangezur, we are to release the new album by Lusia Kazaryan-Topchyan aka Margenrot — a Moscow-based artist and performer who puts together everything noisy, punk-ish and ethnical. Another Russian artist we proud to have on board is Zurkas Tepla; and while we're all patiently waiting for his new full-length to come in 2021, there's an archival composition demonstrating his trademark uneasy and alarming musical styles. The next year will also mark the Klammklang debut for Felicity Mangan, an Australian sound and composer based in Berlin and known for her in-depth research of biophonic and geophonic sonic entities. For VII she composed the short-yet-effective piece utilising the field recordings made by KK's Stas Sharifullin at Matovo village (Kaluga Oblast), Vlad Dobrovolski's secret summer hideout.

Artists links (in alphabetical order):

Audrey Chen — www.audreychen.com
Diana Romanova — soundcloud.com/diaromma
Egor Klochikhin — foresteppe.bandcamp.com
Elina Bolshenkova — soundcloud.com/elinabolshenkova
Felicity Mangan — felicitymangan.org
Hugo Esquinca — www.dekj.org
Kirstine Elisa Kjeldsen — www.kirstineelisakjeldsen.com
Kolya Dykhne — instagram.com/enhkyd.aylok
Margenrot — soundcloud.com/margenrot
Nikita Bugaev — neccss.bandcamp.com
Sugai Ken — sugaiken.bandcamp.com
Vlad Dobrovolski — www.dobrovolski.net
Zurkas Tepla — www.zurkastepla.com