The Industrial Twilight: Rajfajh - "Ambient Collection" [2011]

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Rajfajh - "Ambient Collection" [2011]

Artist: RAJFAJH

Title: Ambient Collection

Genre: Dark Ambient, Industrial, Noise

Country: Russia
Year: 2011

Track List:

Technogen
Nastika (pt.I)
Fatum
Plato
Psychedelic Holes

RAJFAJH claim to be one of the oldest Russian experimental music projects in existence. The project was founded on 29th January 1991 in St.Petersburg by Dmitry and Victor (although they knew themselves at least since 1989). Dmitry did some experiments with noise even before that, using a reel tape recorder and all the other hardware that was available to him back then, but it's unclear if these recordings will ever be released to public.

The first demo, recorded in 1991, was named "Радость Покойника". The band members claim it to be black metal; it'll make Rajfajh the very first black metal band in USSR, if true. However, I seriously doubt it, especially since not a single track from this demo is available anywhere. So far, the earliest black metal demo from Russia to my knowledge is "Unholy Glory Of Ancient Rossa" by Winter Majesty (1994). The members of Satarial claim to be playing black metal as early as in 1989 (under the name A.M.S.G.) - but then again, there are no proofs for that, and the band itself has quite bad reputation, so I don't think these claims are trustworthy.

This compilation, released in 2011, is a selection of industrial, noise and dark ambient tracks recorded by Rajfajh during 1995-2009. They actually tried quite a lot of different genres - grindcore, black metal, doom metal - but I consider their industrial and ambient works to be the best, and not only because I prefer industrial over all other genres. If you're more interested in metal, I'd recommend to check out their latest full-length album, "Cult of Cthulhu" (2013). It's black/doom metal, quite good, but nothing particularly outstanding. The current lineup of Rajfajh consists of Dmitry Evgenin (the only original member), Alisa Rozanova (guitars/keyboards since 2006), and Dmitry (their new drummer since this year). They're also an active live band, and have toured all 3 Baltic states in May 2011, but I have no idea if they're ever going to tour anywhere in the Western Europe.

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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).