The Industrial Twilight: Lovozero

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Lovozero - "Zagovory" [2015]

Artist: Lovozero

Title: Zagovory

Genre: Ambient, Folktronica

Country: Russia

Release date: 2015

Track List:

Raspevy
Travy
Oberegy
Zagovory
Domoi

This project caught my attention because it's named after one of the biggest lakes in the European part of Russian Arctic and the centre of Kildin Sami culture in Russia. With such a name, it just don't have the right to be bad, and this EP indeed turned out to be pretty interesting.

Lovozero is an alias of Anastasia Tolchneva, who mixes the authentic folk music of the Russian North (the ethnocultural region that I absolutely love) with the ambient/new age electronica - basically, the Northern Russian folk tradition adapted for the modern hipster's taste. According to Anastasia: "It is not about cultural codes. These compositions are my intuitive responses to chaotic life scenarios". The "Zagovory" EP, described as "spells and electrical roundelays", is her most accessible release (at least compared to the subsequient full-length album "Moroka", which is much more experimental). Very beautiful music, just like the nature of the region where that folk tradition comes from. Enjoy:

No comments:

Post a Comment

About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).