The fifth solo album by Artemiy Artemiev applies a dense mist of sound, making you fumble your way through rich landscapes of unknown territories. The dynamics are extended, as compared to other Artemiev soundscapes, and maybe the title of the CD hints at the composer’s intentions; to let us loose in this world of sensed horizons, probably harboring many an undetected being, be it earthly or of heavenly origin. There is something of a fantasy novel about this texture, like in some late books by Astrid Lindgren, the writer who, by not receiving the Literature Nobel Prize, has rendered that prize meaningless, without stature…

I remember a film from my youth, where a cruel and deadly people lived below the surface, in caves and tunnels, and where an innocent and beautiful, but intellectually dormant people resided up in the daylight. I think the film was based on Herbert George Wells’ “The Time Machine”. I recall how this highly symbolic – on many levels – film impressed me then, and this Artemiev music on Mysticism of Sound gives me similar feelings. It’s distant, probably distant in time – I mean very distant, and a whole new human race inhabits the worlds.

The title of track 1 – “Pictures of Bosch & P, Bruegel” – furthers this impression of a timeswitch, taking into consideration these painters’ pictured worlds, of good and bad, heaven and hell and the eternal dilemmas of human existence.

Track 2 – “Mysticism of Sound part 1“ – brings other characteristics into the soundscape – more electroacoustical, more complex, more in the vein of sound poetry, with fast moving sounds on top of the slower sweeps, giving you the impression of voices, like they might have been heard on the reel-to-reel tape recordings of 1960’s spirit-chaser Friedrich Jürgensen in Mölnbo, Sweden. Harder, rougher electronic attacks associate this piece with the classical electroacoustic composers of today, like Pierre Henry, Åke Hodell and Jacques Lejeune, to name a random few. This is an interesting development in Artemiev’s electroacoustical methods, bringing a deeper artistic aspect to the music, no doubt, making it viable even to those who prefer the traditional, classically experimenting electronic music.

Track 3 – “Cataclysms of the XX Century” – brings this home even stronger, taking on a shape, even, of musique concrete, which has been nurtured especially by composers in France and Canada. I can only congratulate Artemiev on this directional choice, and recommend him to keep on working in that direction!

Track 4 – “Mysticism of Sound part 2” – keeps the musique concrete character up, in a grand way, almost bordering on the subterranean Romanian spectral music of Iancu Dumitrescu and Horatiu Radulescu, utilizing what comes through as a Japanese koto! This is great music for the aficionado of sounds and electroacoustics, and I’m impressed at the development that Artemiy Artemiev has gone through in these short years since his first compositions showed up on CD. Keep on keeping on!