{"id":10631,"date":"2016-04-25T11:24:09","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T14:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/culturedarm.com\/?p=10631"},"modified":"2016-04-25T11:36:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T14:36:47","slug":"culturedarms-songs-of-the-month-february-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/culturedarms-songs-of-the-month-february-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Culturedarm’s Songs of the Month (February 2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Matmos<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kedr Livanskiy \u2013 \u2018Razrushitelniy Krug (Destructive Cycle)\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prefacing her debut EP January Sun<\/em> \u2013 which arrived\u00a019\u00a0February\u00a0on 2MR, the label founded little over a year ago by Mike Simonetti, formerly of the Portland and Los Angeles-based synthpop and Italo-disco label Italians Do It Better \u2013 the\u00a0middle of January\u00a0saw Kedr<\/a>\u00a0Livanskiy<\/a> release \u2018Razrushitelniy Krug (Destructive Cycle)\u2019. The name of the project is Russian for \u2018Lebanese Cedar\u2019, and it is the work of the twenty-five year old Moscow artist Yana Kedrina.<\/p>\n

Kedrina\u00a0is passionate about electronic music, and has cited influences from Autechre and Aphex Twin to Inga Copeland<\/a> and Laurel Halo<\/a>, which cohere alongside an appreciation for\u00a0the noise of Death Grips and the mid-1990s, alternative rock, MTV leanings of Mazzy Star. She has studied at the Moscow School of New Cinema, while a couple of years ago, following a few gigs in Moscow and a trip to Yalta, she and a small group of friends established\u00a0the collective John\u2019s<\/a> Kingdom<\/a>, which functions as a DIY record label and an outlet for art and videos.<\/p>\n

She also shows a literary turn of mind, depicting reading Washington Irving as an adolescent in between listening to The Cure, while on January Sun<\/em> she quotes from \u2018Winds of May\u2019, one of the short poems that make up James Joyce<\/a>\u2018s Chamber Music<\/em>. While Joyce in Ulysses<\/em><\/a> elaborated on an anecdote connecting the title of his collection with the tinkling of urine in a chamber pot, the thirty-six love poems in Chamber Music<\/em> are characterised not by coarseness or by his later profusions of language, but by a youthful ardor and a classical delicacy.<\/p>\n

\u2018Razrushitelniy Krug (Destructive Cycle)\u2019 shares these qualities. Borrowing the skittish beats of Aphex Twin\u2019s \u2018Xtal\u2019, a throbbing warmth permeates the\u00a0heart of the record: the sound of circuitous walks along dark city streets lit by an inner flame and existing on an emotional threshold, as simple synth patterns bounce and linger against\u00a0Livanskiy\u2019s\u00a0echoing, encompassing, night time vocal. January Sun<\/em> closes on an a cappella version.<\/p>\n