Gost Zvuk Russian Federation Vinyl & CDs

Review: It's not always easy to keep up with the output of the relentlessly prolific Flaty, a core tenet of Moscow's Gost Zvuk as well as pursuing his own endeavours. From hard-edged experimentalism and dub-scuffed glitch to oddball ambient and wayward techno, he's a truly original spirit, and his new album continues that trend with yet another dimension to his sound. Intuitive Word is imbued with a strong pop and RnB slant which bleeds into the sample sources and the strong sense of melody, but still this remains a leftfield, compelling release for those with an experimental appetite. Quite how Flaty has squared off these contrasting forces is hard to express, but take a listen to 'Intension' with its tripped out beat and synth arrays shot through with vocal licks and you begin to get the picture. It's dope as hell and oh so sweet on top, like nothing else out there right now.

Review: Jagged textures, ghostly tones and frenetic notes are omnipresent on "Filterealism", a highly experimental 9-track odyssey of warbling, jittering, metallic sounds that's quite possibly going to be like nothing you've heard before. Or at least that's the case on "Aluminium Dub", where tribalism meets futurism, or "Kosmaj", which could be read as an exercise in spatial awareness - a series of echoed synth stabs and whirring sounds where gaps say as much as the keys. Elsewhere things are less mind-bending, although only slightly. "All This Is Not A Dream", for example, might be an experiment designed to see what happens when freeform jazz meets feint touches of jungle percussion. "Continental Outcome" chugs without dropping a real beat, "Photon Garden" treads close to a prototype of electro while remaining staunchly eccentric.

Review: Many people's first taste of Nocow was amid the second half of the dubstep era - a time when boundaries between established genres and more explorative, contemporary and adventurous beats were blurring, feeding directly into the beautiful mess we see before us today in the dance music scene. Since then, he has graced us with a raft of excellent work which, much like the ethics of the time he emerged from, never really stand still or regurgitate. The difference between Odinocow and 2017's Ledyanoy Album is a case in point. Whereas then we were going through sounds that owed much to 1990s ambient techno, IDM, and associated noises, here we take a very different path, with a haunted R&B undertone running throughout the work, and plenty of nods to polished beach house, trance, and chill wave.

Review: Roma Zuckerman investigates the intriguing idea of 'The Phenomenon of Provincial Mentality' on his new EP for Gost Zvuk. As is often the way with techno from Russia, this is evocative, sparse material with fizzing lo-fi details and hints of distant transmissions from long-lost worlds. 'Nightmare Forms' gets things underway in dubby and rolling fashion and elsewhere you have warped mind melters like 'Arzt' with their pulsing sonar signals, more crunchy and off-grid workouts like the trippy 'I Play Everyday'. There a more frozen techno landscapes like the icy '4CH005I' to complete what is a bold double album.