FRIDAY JUL 05, 2019
529 & Irrelevant Music Presents:
Kedr Livanskiy
Pyramid Club | Sarah Swillum | Matthew DeLoach | Public Records (dj set)
Kedr Livanskiy
Kedr Livanskiy’s second album, Your Need, is a celebration of life and rebirth. It’s about a fighter’s spirit, and if you will, a little audacity and courage. DJ’ing and early forms of dance music inspired a furious burst of creative energy after months of melancholy, sadness and reflection to record the album in only a matter of weeks.
After her first album, Ariadna, Kedr felt lost with her identity and was searching for the direction of her next chapter. For a while she felt trapped by her own image and needed quite some time to resolve this internal dissonance – to grow, to evolve.
DJ’ing was the main catalyst to pull her out of this rut. The art form shifted her inspiration to mainly old school styles of dance music: ghetto, house, breakbeat and UK garage. For the prior year and a half she was listening to ambient, kraut-rock and more experimental genres – one can hear the brighter, more energetic influence of early electronic music in the songs on Your Need versus Ariadna.
One day she was talking with her friend Flaty (Zhenya), a very talented artist from St. Petersburg who’s signed to the GOST ZVUK label, and they decided to do a single together. He came to visit her in Moscow, but they ended up spending 10 whole days writing music together, from dawn to dusk.
They vibed off each other’s musical ideas perfectly and understood each other even without speaking. Zhenya is a beatmaster and pays attention to even the smallest details of a track. He brought incredible richness to the composition and Kedr considers him her teacher in this area. Kedr was in charge of the melodies and vibe of the tracks, and the vocal elements.
Your Need is like a chapter of life. It’s a story that illustrates different scenarios and moods that our mythical hero experiences, living in an urban jungle. From lost love to a bad trip on the dancefloor, from euphoria to deep introspection. Our hero sometimes feels bold, lost or devastated, but also tender and full, like all of us at some point in life. The ending is joyful and bright. The last song gives hope and faith that a new day will come and wash away the old. You can feel like new every day.
Your Need reflects an array of genres and a mix of cultures -- a harmonious combination of differences. Everything Kedr loves about ghetto music, in the traditions of house, dub, breakbeat, 90s electronic music and modern sounds – she’s embraced and expressed it all throughout. Your Need is Kedr’s ode to music from different eras and changing periods.
Kedr Livanskiy’s second album, Your Need, is a celebration of life and rebirth. It’s about a fighter’s spirit, and if you will, a little audacity and courage. DJ’ing and early forms of dance music inspired a furious burst of creative energy after months of melancholy, sadness and reflection to record the album in only a matter of weeks.
After her first album, Ariadna, Kedr felt lost with her identity and was searching for the direction of her next chapter. For a while she felt trapped by her own image and needed quite some time to resolve this internal dissonance – to grow, to evolve.
DJ’ing was the main catalyst to pull her out of this rut. The art form shifted her inspiration to mainly old school styles of dance music: ghetto, house, breakbeat and UK garage. For the prior year and a half she was listening to ambient, kraut-rock and more experimental genres – one can hear the brighter, more energetic influence of early electronic music in the songs on Your Need versus Ariadna.
One day she was talking with her friend Flaty (Zhenya), a very talented artist from St. Petersburg who’s signed to the GOST ZVUK label, and they decided to do a single together. He came to visit her in Moscow, but they ended up spending 10 whole days writing music together, from dawn to dusk.
They vibed off each other’s musical ideas perfectly and understood each other even without speaking. Zhenya is a beatmaster and pays attention to even the smallest details of a track. He brought incredible richness to the composition and Kedr considers him her teacher in this area. Kedr was in charge of the melodies and vibe of the tracks, and the vocal elements.
Your Need is like a chapter of life. It’s a story that illustrates different scenarios and moods that our mythical hero experiences, living in an urban jungle. From lost love to a bad trip on the dancefloor, from euphoria to deep introspection. Our hero sometimes feels bold, lost or devastated, but also tender and full, like all of us at some point in life. The ending is joyful and bright. The last song gives hope and faith that a new day will come and wash away the old. You can feel like new every day.
Your Need reflects an array of genres and a mix of cultures -- a harmonious combination of differences. Everything Kedr loves about ghetto music, in the traditions of house, dub, breakbeat, 90s electronic music and modern sounds – she’s embraced and expressed it all throughout. Your Need is Kedr’s ode to music from different eras and changing periods.
Pyramid Club
In music, darkness often devours itself. Those who nosedive down into synthpop’s more perverted forms — industrial, coldwave, darkwave, and all subgenres in between — tend to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the shadows. But that’s precisely what draws devotees in, both the machinists and their audience. The deconstruction of humanity into objective parts, autonomous beats, vocals smeared into alien sneers — these were the tools that proto-industrial types like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle employed to separate themselves from the punk rock ego, the explosion of self. Even in that light, Pyramid Club aren’t just followers of this self-negating cult. Indeed, both members of the clandestine duo have helmed their own projects — Chris Daresta with the cold techno of Anticipation, Matt Weiner with the chrome-clad but buoyant TWINS — and together they run DKA Records, international purveyors of murk. So while “Stay Behind” oozes with all the subversive sludge that devotees to the dark might expect, the Pyramid Club machine burbles and pulses in an uncommonly Technicolor display. The suave gear shift in the middle affirms the expert engineering at work here; Daresta and Weiner may be taking cues from their muses, but they’re clearly spiraling down a tunnel of their own design. -Immersive Atlanta
In music, darkness often devours itself. Those who nosedive down into synthpop’s more perverted forms — industrial, coldwave, darkwave, and all subgenres in between — tend to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the shadows. But that’s precisely what draws devotees in, both the machinists and their audience. The deconstruction of humanity into objective parts, autonomous beats, vocals smeared into alien sneers — these were the tools that proto-industrial types like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle employed to separate themselves from the punk rock ego, the explosion of self. Even in that light, Pyramid Club aren’t just followers of this self-negating cult. Indeed, both members of the clandestine duo have helmed their own projects — Chris Daresta with the cold techno of Anticipation, Matt Weiner with the chrome-clad but buoyant TWINS — and together they run DKA Records, international purveyors of murk. So while “Stay Behind” oozes with all the subversive sludge that devotees to the dark might expect, the Pyramid Club machine burbles and pulses in an uncommonly Technicolor display. The suave gear shift in the middle affirms the expert engineering at work here; Daresta and Weiner may be taking cues from their muses, but they’re clearly spiraling down a tunnel of their own design. -Immersive Atlanta
Matthew DeLoach
There’s a muted inertia to Mannequin Lover’s new track which pressurizes the song with dark, brooding energy. Matthew DeLoach’s vocals waft around the sequenced tones and break up the expansive song into neat sectors of danceable magic. Overall, it exposes a more focused side to his surreal acid pop while invoking diverse influences; everything from the early Berlin scene to ’90s French house to DFA contemporaries Shit Robot. “Beat It with Chain” might not break new ground in the world of dance music, but it’s a clever fusion of sounds and evidence that DeLoach’s style continues to evolve in new directions. Mannequin Lover has been his solo project for over three years now and he continues to display a wide variety of inspiration, even though his overall output has been relatively sparse. Listening here, it’s not hard to see how DeLoach made the jump from pop to house, considering the razor-sharp organization behind all his tracks. But compared to the dreamy bedroom jams he was writing just a few years ago, “Beat It with Chain” is a powerful musical statement that begs to be turned up. -Immersive Atlanta
There’s a muted inertia to Mannequin Lover’s new track which pressurizes the song with dark, brooding energy. Matthew DeLoach’s vocals waft around the sequenced tones and break up the expansive song into neat sectors of danceable magic. Overall, it exposes a more focused side to his surreal acid pop while invoking diverse influences; everything from the early Berlin scene to ’90s French house to DFA contemporaries Shit Robot. “Beat It with Chain” might not break new ground in the world of dance music, but it’s a clever fusion of sounds and evidence that DeLoach’s style continues to evolve in new directions. Mannequin Lover has been his solo project for over three years now and he continues to display a wide variety of inspiration, even though his overall output has been relatively sparse. Listening here, it’s not hard to see how DeLoach made the jump from pop to house, considering the razor-sharp organization behind all his tracks. But compared to the dreamy bedroom jams he was writing just a few years ago, “Beat It with Chain” is a powerful musical statement that begs to be turned up. -Immersive Atlanta