Premiering "Turntable Blues" by Artjom taken from "Funny Place" out on July 29th via Plot Toy

Bandcamp: https://plottoy.bandcamp.com/album/funny-place

Plot Toy is proud to present its first installment by Vienna based musician Artjom. Within the course of 5 tracks Funny Place takes us through sonic complexity and alienated lyricism that incorporate spoken word/rapping, turntableism and Artjom’s signature composition style.
Plot Toy is a Vienna based transdisciplinary imprint that focuses on publishing music and promoting exchange between (trans)national artistic efforts while picking up various tools and formats as means of presentation and expression.
Artjom Astrov (b.1989) is a musician based in Vienna. His eclectic composition style incorporates both produced and found sound, digital processing and songwriting. Astrov’s use of voice (spoken word, rapping) can be characterised by a sense of alienated lyricism. As a sound designer for various contemporary performance productions, Astrov has developed a distinctively minimalistic approach that relies on spatial and conceptual properties of sound.
As Benzokai, rin la and, most recently, simply as Artjom, he has released several EPs for record labels such as Quantum Natives, Baba Vanga, Trash Can Dance and Serious Serious, an imprint he himself initiated. Founded in 2016 and featuring anything from fashion garments to recordings of street music, Serious Serious documents and showcases a variety of artistic practices, contributing to a collective vision of a music underground.
Astrov’s ongoing collaboration with the choreographer Ruslan Stepanov has led to staging of several philosophical performances – humorous and serious, these pieces reflect on contingency, absurdity and metaphysics while at the same time addressing the gravity of life in a post-Soviet environment.
   Bandcamp
 https://plottoy.bandcamp.com/album/funny-place
 
Since 2020, together with artists Michaela Kisling and Till Megerle, Artjom Astrov is part of the project “Guiding Light”. It started as a series of videos and later developed into a band practice that can be defined as “deep hanging out” that is neither predetermined nor random. In their performances, the band plays with extremes and contradictions such as “realness” and “artificiality”, both as visual and performative tools in order to continually question the essence of their work.

Cover photo by Aziza Harmel
Cover by Artjom Astrov

Artjom
@rinla https://soundcloud.com/rinla
Plot Toy
@plottoy https://soundcloud.com/plottoy

Funny Place

bandcamp

[Premiere] Artjom - Turntable Blues (Funny Place out now via Plot Toy)

Premiering "Scha" by Kisling taken from "Old Life" out on July 26th via Serious Serious

Bandcamp: https://kisling.bandcamp.com/album/old-life

Distant resonances of what we had. An uncanny notion of what might come. KISLING’s release Old Life surfaces memories and foreshadows an eerie future. Carried by warming guitar samples that inject glimpses of a familiar past, this music bestows both hope and gloom.

At a notable turning point in history where geopolitical, social and ecological issues press into our daily lives, KISLING invokes a feeling for what might be at loss. Seeded deep in our bodies, the vibrancy of spiritual song, the afterglow of campsite music, or the tunes of a millennial youth clash against a numerical grid of audio spectral analysis that distorts the memories of an all too idealized
past. 
KISLING’s composition method, highly informed by digital processing, and meant for contemporary DJ equipment, subtracts and morphs live recorded guitar samples into concrete snippets that propose a ‘new real.’ KISLING arranges and distorts her tunes on a set of Pioneer CDJs, enriching this musical experience with the immediacy and spontaneity of mixing techniques. This gives way to an imaginative material that scrutinizes the limits and promise of music.

Liner notes by Lona Gaikis
Guitars, violin by Artjom Astrov Mastered by Andreas Harrer
Cover photo by Horst Dobnig
Graphic design by Florian Pfaffenberger

ALBUM LINK: https://serious-serious.net/SRS16
BANDCAMP: https://kisling.bandcamp.com/album/old-life
INSTAGRAM: @123kisling @seriousxserious

Old Life

[Premiere] Kisling - Scha (Old Life out now via Serious Serious)

Päiv mureline lännü jo,
öö võitnu pimmega.
Ilm tumman rahon hääleto
om jäänü magama.

Viil ehästetü ämärüs
ja heljoman üts viis,
üts unistus, üts igätsüs
ja kõik om vaiki sis.

Silm angus une-sõba all
ja hengen raho vöö,
ning otsatusen üleval
om valge tähti öö.

- H. Visnapuu

õdango laul

lahendage ära

Toto - Africa
TED Talk - How to Speak so That People Want too Listen
mixed by Kristel Zimmer

there´s nothing wrong with a bit of silence

Tunnel (Release April 2016)
SRS1

Performed by Savva Terentyev
Produced by Artjom Astrov

Recorded in Tallinn Freedom Square Underground Tunnel, December 2015

Serious Serious 2016
serious-serious.net

Tunnel, Excerpt 2 (SRS1)

Grete Klein-Vari

Archive from my radio show Pli.

About this show:
Who needs answers when you have the right questions? Lucrecia presents a mix of songs about existential thoughts, doubts and curiosity.

Lucrecia put together a collection of pieces that ask essential questions such as, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “Is Guava a Donut,” “What Are You Doing with the Rest of Your Life?” and of course, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” A collective, desperate and existential call for attention in the form of a one-hour mix, if you will. Wait, what?

Image by Aina Climent.

there´s nothing wrong with a bit of silence

Kristel Zimmer

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