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ZGA’s
abstract instrumental music could be seen as an aural description
of everyday Soviet or post-Soviet life. The sound is dominated
by cold metal, and its logic seems mostly absurd, at least initially.
Founded in 1984, ZGA is Russia’s oldest experimental music
group. The only remaining original member Nick Sudnick (pictured)
started to build the instruments he calls zgamoniums 15 years
ago. They can be coil springs from cars and machines which are
beaten with small metal hammers, plates of steel which are stroked
with medieval-looking miniature whips, strings stretched into
large metal frames, or a number of other things. Last year’s
Avanto witnessed laptops night after night but this year the most
popular instrument may well be the turntable. Like Otomo
Yoshihide, Janek Schaefer and
Es, Sudnick too utilizes record players
in turntablist style.
ZGA's new CD, Flight of Infection,
is due out soon in the USA. It was preceded by three CD’s
on British musician Chris Cutler’s celebrated Recommended
Records, the label whose small re-presses of German krautrock
classics have kept, for example, Faust albums in the shops long
after the 70's kraut boom subsidised. ZGA’s musical links
with the experimental jazz-rock/prog/kraut scene around Cutler
remain intact. The group’s drummer Ekaterina Fiodorova will
come to Helsinki straight from Britain where she’s been touring
with Faust - now global stars of experimental rock.
The historical roots of ZGA’s music
go back a lot further than the 70's. In the beginning, as citizens
of the isolated Soviet Union, they hadn't really heard any of
their industrial music-making western contemporaries, in spite
of sounding like them. The origins of industrial and noise music
are usually traced back to the early 20th century Italian futurists
and the noise instruments and “art of noise” theory
they developed. However, another significant cradle of industrial
art was the Soviet Union where the idealization of heavy industry
and factory work was taken to almost religious dimensions. Noise
music was produced there in the 1920's, and although there’s
nothing left of it apart from eye-witness reports, the tradition
has lived on. In ZGA’s case, the industrial aesthetic isn’t
quite as crucial as with some other present-day Russian noise
artists, but it forms a natural part of their music. No wonder
these days, when on the one hand, the Soviet spiritual heritage
is under revaluation, and on the other it is claimed that the
concrete rebirth of the Soviet Union has already begun. AN
Saturday 10.11.2001 - Gloria
21:00-3:00 - Avanto Club - ZGA live
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