BURAN is a joint international project formed especially for the recording session at V--A-C Foundation GES-2 Svody studio.

The music material of the album is varied from free jazz, and live electronics to traditional Japanese taiko drums and further.

BURAN project will continue as a performing group working with free improvisation, DIY electronics, highly dynamic percussions, and video art.

In August, the elegant Moscow-based label Kotä Records, specializing in experimental and avant-garde music, released an album by an international project assembled specifically for recording at the Vaults studio in the V-A-C Foundation’s art space GES-2. The recording featured Brom’s saxophonist Ivan Bursov, Russian industrial and electronic music patriarch Alexei Borisov, Japanese musician Hajime Kojiro, who plays Japanese taiko drums and electronics, and Varvara Alexeeva, responsible for effects processing and bass line on a Roland TB-303 on the recording.

Kotä states that "the release’s musical material is diverse." Japanese taiko drums that set a parallel wave-like rhythmic pulsation in almost all tracks, Alexeeva’s and Borisov’s electronics, Bursov’s saxophone sounding so differently — from sweet, long, languid melodies, sometimes lapsing into ecstasy, to bunches, sheaves of notes in the spirit of late Coltrane. The material is diverse not only in the metaplan, i.e. it’s not only about the rich genre thesaurus; the release is basically full of everything — interesting and non-banal, but at the same time sometimes almost sinematic rhythms, fragments of melodies in constant formation, harmonies, pleasant timbres. It is claimed that the record has "live electronics" and "free-jazz". But, of course, all this should not, as I think, be understood as different genres sounding on the recording. Here we are talking more about an organic synthesis of free-jazz improvisation, elements of academic music, or rather academic improv and electronic soundscapes. Free-jazz here is, first of all, created by improvisations on saxophone, sometimes restrained, sometimes going "off the rails" - tamed, domesticated. The saxophone does not try to destroy the flow of music from within, to deconstruct it. It harmonizes with Hajime Kojiro’s taiko, Alexei Borisov’s guitar and electronics. The musicians, no matter how trivial it sounds, have turned out to be just music, i.e. it is difficult (and even unwilling) to put it into certain genre frames.

The choice of titles for the songs and the album is remarkable in this connection. It’s simply the length of the tracks (6 minutes 24 seconds, 4 minutes 22 seconds, etc.) and the release itself — 49 minutes. The approach is both boring, faded and yet very appropriate and successful. The presentation of the music is cleansed of even minimal shards and fragments of programmaticity — nothing, as far as possible, will limit the interpretations and experiences of the listeners. The music itself would not be called a paragon of weirdness and quirkiness, although at times it seems to sound like the interplay of adorable, charming and other quarks in a quantum world, but these are original sonorous worlds that make sense to approach as distinctive rather than through a programmatic set of symbols and associations.

The musical and semantic center, which sets the integrity and continuity of the action here, is probably the taiko drums. From rhythms of heartbeat to rolling percussion waves, from accents to sighs falling down like hillsides — the percussion instrument sets the boundaries, the limits of auditory perception. The rhythmic spirals are layered with electronics, saxophone, electric guitar; the music is constantly evolving, growing in breadth, but paradoxically remaining equal to itself — more like spinning than running in place.

A nice feature of the recording is the work with dynamics — there are quiet, interesting details in the release, each instrument seems to breathe from piano to forte; there is no sense of constant clatter or wall of sound. The musicians dance and don’t step on each other’s toes. This is especially surprising since they have not rehearsed or prepared any program prior to the recording — and yet they subtly sense the musical flow, controlling it rather than uncontrollably allowing themselves to be carried away by its current.

Thanks to the ascetic treatment with effects (delay lines, delay, which is controlled by Varvara Alexeeva) and light, almost insensible tremolo, even the electric guitar played by Alexei Borisov sounds like a live, acoustic instrument. Sometimes its timbre and manner of playing evokes associations with electromechanical Fender Rhodes.

The album is perfectly listenable as a whole acoustic journey, but at the same time you can’t reproach it for monotony — there are lyrical fragments, and there are real storm and onslaught. Somewhere, it seems, just a little bit more — and a ballad will sound (beautiful intonations of western in the track 3 minutes 22 seconds), somewhere you start to expect glitchy minimalistic techno-electronica (opening track 6 minutes 24 seconds), somewhere hijinks, noize and industrial (beginning 5 minutes 40 seconds). However, the music is always one step away from taking a particular form — and infinitely away from becoming entrenched in it. It is more a living, emergent "here-and-now" speech, in which every "word", every sound, has its own weight, its own flavor, its own color, than a published, lengthy poem, emasculated by reason. The music constantly deceives expectations that are only partially realized, not fully realized, but this deception does not cause irritation or a sense of inorganicity, on the contrary, the changes are fascinating and keep the attention riveted; sounds and forms flow and change direction.

The album 49 minutes is varied but not motley; improvisational but without crowding or fuss. The music is not tiring at all, it’s not hypnotic, but the time with it flies by — I didn’t notice that I listened to the album from the beginning to the end several times in a row, which doesn’t happen to me very often.