Baku: Symphony Of Sirens

Original documents and reconstructions of 72 key works of music, poetry and agitprop from the Russian avantgardes (1908-1942).

CD1: The Symphony of Sirens. In 1922 Arseni Avraamov composed and conducted a visionary public sound event, activating the entire port city of Baku: its factory sirens, the ships horns of the entire Caspian flotilla, two batteries of artillery, several full infantry regiments, trucks, seaplanes, 25 steam locomotives, an array of pitched whistles and several massive choirs. Constantly referenced but forever lost, this extraordinary event is here painstakingly reconstructed and spatialised to approximate the original experience. Plus 39 other priceless sound works, including the legendary Victory over the Sun and other lost documents of Malevich, Dziga Vertov, Nikolai Foregger & his Orchestra of Noises, Sergei Prokofiev, El Lissitsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Ivan Ignatyev & The Ego Futurist Group, Mikhail Matiushin, Alexei Kruchenykh, Georgi Yakoulov, Konstantin Melnikov, Igor Severyanin, Vasilisk Gnedov, Vladimir Kasyanov & The Futurist Circle, David Burliuk, Elena Guro, Olga Rozanova, H2SO4 Group, Simon Chikovani, The Nothingists, Vasily Kandinsky, Danil Harms, Igor Terent'ev, Mikhail Larionov, The Psycho-futurists group, Vasily Kamensky, Varvara Stepanova and Roman Jakobson. 

CD2: Enthusiasm! The Dombass Symphony (1930) is possibly Dziga Vertov's most revolutionary achievement: a symphony of abstract industrial noise for which a specially designed giant mobile recording system was constructed (it weighed over a ton) in order to capture the din of mines, furnaces and factories. For Vertov, the introduction of sound film didn't mean talkies, but the opportunity to collage, montage and splice together constructions of pure environmental noise. In addition, this CD collects together for the first time a definitive library of original sound documents from the Russian Avantgarde: contemporary recordings of Alexander Mossolov, Julius Meytuss, Roman Jakobson, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lili Brik, David Burliuk, Sergei Esenin, Vasily Kamensky, Semen Kirsanov, V.I. Lenin, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Alexandra Kollontay, Leon Trotsky, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelshtam, Ilya Ehrenburg, Marina Tsvetaeva, Naum Gabo, Noton Pevsner and Dmitri Shostakovich.

www.boomkat.com:

An incredible artefact from ReR, this double-disc release comes housed in a beautifully detailed book, all dedicated to the pioneers of the Russian avant-garde in the early twentieth century. The first disc captures a modern-day reconstruction of Arseni Avraamov's Symphony Of Sirens, a public sound event originally conceived in 1922, made up from factory sirens, military regiments, steam locomotives and choirs, all representing the lively sonic signature of the port city of Baku. In addition to that there are 39 short-form sound pieces, reproduced from original works by the key experimenters of the era, including Dziga Vertov and Sergei Prokofiev. The second disc is probably even better, kicking off with Dziga Vertov's Enthusiasm! The Dombass Symphony from 1930. This is an original recording by the Man With A Movie Camera director, and it's an epiphany for any fans of early electronic/noise music, featuring painstaking, laborious documents of the clamour heard in mines, factories and furnaces. Further to that, the disc rounds off with a library-like collection of shorter sound works captured around the same time, including recordings from Alexander Mossolov, Leon Trotsky, Boris Pasternak and Dmitri Shostakovitch. The accompanying book is crammed with explanatory text and photographs, making this an invaluable item for anyone with an interest in Soviet-era art and music.

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www.insound.com:

These two CDs and 72 page clothbound book offer the most comprehensive presentation of the experiments and innovations in the exploration of sound by the historical Russian Avantgardes ever attempted. This publication is based around the sounds themselves. Though much was not documented at the time, and some has been lost, what remains is collected on the second CD, which centers around Dziga Vertov's prescient environmental sound composition for the 1930 film Enthusiasm...The Dombass Symphony - and also collects together for the first time 22 original recordings of Mayakovsky, Mossolov, Jakobson, Khlebnikov, Lenin, Lunacharsky, Kollontay, Trotsky, Pasternak, Meytuss, Akhmatova, Mandelstahm, Naum Gabo, Shostakovich and others. But what makes this collection doubly valuable, and unique, are the contents of CD1, which consists of 40 painstaking reconstructions - made by the Laboratorio de Creaciones Intermedia, Dept. of Sculpture at the faculty of Fine Arts in Valencia, Spain - of documented sound-works that have subsequently been lost, above all the now legendary "Symphony of Sirens" at Baku, by Arseny Avraamov.

This massive open air composition, for two artillery batteries, several full infantry regiments, all the foghorns of the Caspian flotilla, several sea-planes, twenty-five steam locomotives, multiple choirs, arrays of pitched steam whistles and all the city's factory sirens can now, for the first time, be approached as a physical event through this careful and accurate spatialised audio reconstruction (using original contemporary source materials) as well as 39 other priceless lost works, including the legendary Victory over the Sun and other works by Vertov, The Orchestra of Noises, Prokofiev, Mayakovsky, El Lissitsky, The Nothingists, Jandinsky, Malevich, Rozanova, Larionov, the Psycho Futurist Group, Kamensky, Jakobson, and others.

• Baku: Symphony Of Sirens - Sound Experiments In The Russian Avant Garde (2009) - 192 Kbps

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