Koan - When Invisible Becomes Visible EP (Otium

[Klaxer]

news from russian non-commercial internet label http://www.otium.ru.

 

number: OTR024

artist: koan

title: when invisible becomes visible EP

date: 15.12.2004

style: ambient

cover: violet

 

you can get this release in two variants: mp3/wav in .zip arhive

enjoy: http://otium.ru/en/releases/?id=32

 

 

less then a year since koan chill-out and downtempo project of daniel roeth and vladimir sedov (they are also known as participants of tecnho-psy project vacuum stalkers) released their debut talking stones. album was out also at otium label. now koan release their next pair of tracks with ep when invisible becomes visible.

 

since their previous work guys turned their style to more traditional sounding. while talking stones was full of asian influences and oriental natural scent new work shows their interst to new music direction. still enchanted with east harmony and features tracks sounds more saturated and crispy. but koan still ramains faithful adepts of expressing various national and ancient music traditions. leaving indonesian and philippine features behind they decide to incarnate some of chinease and peruan motifs and do it with pair of great tracks.

 

.....nasca lines

 

"the nasca lines are an engima. no one has proof who built them or why. since their discovery, the nasca lines have inspired fantastic explanations from ancient gods, a landing strip for returning aliens, a celestial calendar created by the ancient Nazca civilization -- putting the creation of the lines between 200 BC and 600 AD, used for rituals probably related to astronomy, to confirm the ayllus or clans who made up the population and to determine through ritual their economic functions held up by reciprocity and redistribution, or a map of underground water supplies."

 

with this track koan try to attract our attention to ancient inca culture. it starts with distorted voice echo that sounds from far away and with breakbeat-like but soft drums. nice delicate melody performed with combination of synthetic and guitar-string sounds. it untwists and then fades away. and again... at about 4:00 there is a pause in track developing but then melody again becomes a leader. at 6:00 new sound appears. it is deep and vibrating bass note.

 

.....mai's crystal bridge

 

this track provides a connection between koan's album talking stones and their 'new style'. here you can learn how drumwork can easily turn from asian influence to more traditional european sound. authors removed most of bells and bongs themes and leave only base drums that brings taste of their music closer to some bluetech's tunes. chorus in the begining continues with rather fat beats. nice melody with very touching atmosphere in it spreads in the track and dies away at about 3:00. then new chorus echoes brings new variation of the melody part and whole atmosphere seems to be "reborned" with this move.

 

im very happy to note two things with this release. first of all it is crystal now that russian electronica do not represent only mad and sick moods and states of mind but also connected with natural and chill sounds... and the second is that otium have now an expirience of releasing 'high-quality music in high quality'