After the simply gorgeous sampler ‘Musical Offering, ‘ which Jo and Justin of Cold Spring released in July 2023, this is the second album about the ANS synthesizer. I can’t tell you much about the ANS other than the basics I’ve written back then, so as an introduction, I’ll simply copy and paste my own words. ‘The ANS is a Russian synthesizer designed over 20 years (between 1937 and 1957) by Evgeny Murzin, and there is only one. It works with drawings on glass plates and devices that transform light into voltages, and those voltages create sounds. The glass discs spin; Wiki / YouTube is your friend here. Many artists have worked with the ANS, including Coil, The Anti Group Communications.’
The advice to check out YouTube and Wiki to learn more about this machine still stands if you are interested. Or maybe check the particular releases of the projects that worked with it. Some additional technical data from the promo sheet already dives deeper. Inside the ANS are five rotating glass discs with 144 tones printed (by hand) on each one. Light is projected through the discs and onto the photovoltaic cell bank, which converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS’s amplifiers and bandpass filters. The ANS can generate 720 tones this way and play them all simultaneously, unlike a human musician.
“Электронная Музыка АНС” is the original title because yes, this sampler is a rerelease from 1969 from Melodiya. And don’t tell me you have the original album; I simply don’t believe you! On this album, we can find compositions by Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi (with two pieces and a collaboration with Artemiev), Sándor Kallós, and Alexander Nemtin (twice). “Music For The Film Cosmos” by Artemiev & Kreitchi is a great soundtrack and fits the Russian cinema of the 60s. “Intermezzo” seems a bit carnevalesk; it reminds me of an organ player, but it would also fit an ice cream truck in a horror movie. Alexander Nemtin performs “Chorale Prelude In C Major” by Bach, and both of these tracks show that the ANS could also be used for ‘normal’ music.
The following “Tears” and “Northern Tale” show some of the more extreme sounds the ANS is capable of. Don’t forget we’re talking 720 voices that could be played simultaneously, so yes. This will rumble on a proper audio setup. The closing “A Voice Of The East” by Kreitchi is filled with weirdness again. No idea how or what, but it holds the midst between an experimental composition with a non-western scale and even has a bit of jazzy melody lines in there.
Closing statement: I love it. Many thanks to CSR for finding this gem. A must-have for people who like 60s experimentalism like White Noise (Vorhaus / Derbyshire), Wendy Carlos and/or Russian soundtracks and movies. Oh, and sound nerds and/or geeks. And if you fit more than one category, well… hint
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