Artyom Ostapchuk used to be from St. Petersburg, but as of last year, he lives in a beautiful country called the Netherlands. A big move, but if “To Dream is to Destroy” is created in the Netherlands, the move is doing Artyom good. First, Base Station is a label reserved for releases by Kryptogen Rundfunk, as it is the name of his recording studio. Why not on Zhelezobeton, which Artyom also runs? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find out shortly. But having said that, let’s focus on this album first. After all, we are reviewing stuff here at Vital.
Six tracks with a total playing time of almost forty-five minutes on a CD will cost you twelve euro; That’s about a quarter per minute, and it’s all worth it! With deep ambient layers, drone pads, field recordings and found footage or maybe even manipulated radiowaves as sound sources directly, this album has it all. Cinematic isolationism in its textbook meaning. It’s not ambient; it’s too intrusive to the elements to be called ambient. It’s not drone either because way too much happens for that. It’s not noise either because everything done in the recordings has a meaning, a place, a cause and an effect. It reminds me of what someone said in 2001 when I played in the US: ‘Dude, you should label this power ambient. “To Dream is to Destroy” fits the label power ambient quite well, as the recordings are spacious. No, not the ‘overuse of reverb’ space, because I have no doubt Artyom knows precisely what he’s doing. There is an openness to the tracks; it’s subtle, it’s open, and in contradiction to Eno’s definition of ambient (as ignorable as it is interesting), this stuff is not ignorable at all.
After several further listens, I still learn about new things when listening. New layers, new sounds. As said, 0,25€ per minute. What are you waiting for? And as for my favourite track: There are more, but because of its title, I’m giving the honours to ‘Hypnotoad on Air’.
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