Nick Sudnick

Promenade

Long Arms Records Nikolai Sudnik began in one of the centers of the Soviet avant -garde rock and Andergune - Riga. Cassette albums of the Sudannik group with the most successful name for our rock with the name “Zga” (you don’t need to know English well in order to feel how much is lost in translation: the “Iskra” is called the “Iskra” abroad), the founder of the entire alternative record of Chris Katler was promoted before perestroika. The “ZGI” plates were released under the brand of his company Recrommeded Records.

The “ZSU” of the Riga period could be attributed to industrial rock, if not for the fact that most “industrial” sounds, Sudannik did not extract from electronic instruments, but from rusty springs of different sizes: from the bed to the details of car brakes. Then he became interested in the history of noise music and founded the project “Vetroophony”, in which, according to the descriptions and manifestos of Italian futurists and Soviet constructivists, he recreated the “Symphony of Big Cities” from the sounds of streets and cars.

Unlike the "windophonia" the Promenade disc ("walk") is like a landfill of musical sounds. It seems that the homeless people living in the landfill are played: the gypsy on the violin, then the Kabatsky saxophone, then the thieves and patriotic plays on the hoarse accordion are reached us. At times, this even resembles some avant-garde like Alfred Schnita or Yannis Xenakis. And everything develops into another urban symphony.

Lovers of the classics startle, seeing the name "Promenade"; This is really a reference to the famous “walk” from “pictures from the exhibition” of Mussorgsky - a musical theme, modifying which, the composer, as it were, comments on the drawings of the artist Gartman. Only the Sudannik on the liner to the disk instead of “pictures” depicts modern icons. Twenty -two drawings, surprisingly reminiscent of real road signs in circles and triangles, serve to designate all the plays “Promenade”. The first icon is a question mark in a triangle, the second is three exclamation marks (a person was born !!!), the third is a crossed out “smiley” (unhappy childhood?). And so to the last gravestone and mathematical symbol of infinity. Gorky sarcasm: one of the last signs, very similar to the “Road Work” sign, is a funeral march. Dmitry Ukhov