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Cyclotimia
CD (ltd. 500) |
Cyclotimia is most probably the only project in the world which has chosen the creation of a soundtrack to "globalisation" and life of the "consumer society" as their concept. The project members more than anyone else are immersed into the magic of finance and probably therefore has their creative intuition allowed them to compose the main part of "Music for Stockmarkets" with its unforgivingly precise name "Wallstreet Requiem". Today the whole civilised world is listening to this requiem the first cords of which were played on Wall Street itself.
The "Music for Stockmarkets" album with its radically experimental nature stands out in the extensive discography of this Moscow project. The 64-minute album includes 32 tracks divided into three conceptual parts: "Wallstreet Requiem" (25 minutes, recorded in 2004-2007), "Trivial Pleasures" (26 minutes, recorded in 2002, this part was the only one released as a seperate CD in 2003) and "Financial Glossary" (13 minutes, recorded in 2003).
The music material itself is nothing like the one heard in the previous records of Cyclotimia. There is no apocalyptic soundscapes of "Wasteland" times, no cybernetic hi-tech and media madness of "E$chaton", no cosmic downtempo of "Celestis: Space Ceremonial Music"... Minimalism, academic sterility, surgical accuracy and meditative ataraxy prevail on "Music for Stockmarkets". Then again it is not the familiar "idm", "glitch", "noise", "clicks and cuts" and not "minimal techno"... The sound of the album is chrystal-clear and warm at the same time. "Vintage" lovers have a wonderful chance to listen to the masterpieces of Soviet music production (such as Rhythm 1, Rhythm 2, Aelita, Formanta UDS, Formanta EMS-01, Polyvox) in pure sound, unprocessed by effects.
And here is how the musicians, who have celebrated the 10th anniversary of their project, intoduce their new album:
"Free market and global money movements shape the political and social reality of today, and thus, the people's minds and the culture they create.
Curiously enough, the English word "clerk" derives from "clericus", the Latin for "man of God". This word was used to refer to the clergy in Mediaeval Europe. "Office", apart from beign a key notion in today's reality, also stems from Latin, where "officinum" denoted "ceremony", "ritual".
Today's global money movements, sequences of 0s and 1s, virtually form a nonmaterial, spiritual substance - the Holy Spirit, presuming which, the stock exchange turns into a temple for the worship of the new religion, and the music presented on this album can be regarded as liturgical background for the sacred business procedures."
Reviews
'Music For Stockmarkets' is 'most probably the only project in the world which has chosen the creation of a soundtrack to 'globalisation' and the life of the 'consumer society' as their concept', Zhelezobeton tells us, which might be entirely true. Cyclotimia is from Moscow and has quite a number of releases already, which I don't think I know. Cyclotimia uses old vintage Soviet synthesizers to play no less than thirty-two tracks on this album, divided in three main pieces, 'Wallstreet Requiem', 'Trivial Pleasures' and 'Financial Glossary'. Its hard to pin this down to a specific style (why should I?), but in general lots of things from the world of electronic music drop by: click n cuts, techno, ambient, pop even, but everything is too short to keep the interest. Most pieces are quite miminal and revolve around one or two themes inside a track, which makes this altogether a bit of tiring listening thing. In a small dose quite nice actually.
MUSIC FOR STOCKMARKETS is the Cyclotimia release I prefer so far. Divided into three parts titled "Wallstreet Requiem", "Trivial Pleasures" (already released in 2003 on CD by Monopoly Records) and "Financial Glossary" and composed during the 2002/2007 period, the album contains thirty two tracks which span from semi analog electronic improvisations (see "Mr chairman" and the following "Moneycast"), electronic synth retro atmospheres, synth analog soundtracks to cold marketing procedures and few short industrial electronic tunes (see "Market experts" or "Negative territory"). On this one the Russian project succeed into giving a functional sound to modern greediness. The high frequency bleeping sounds make me recall the old 70's needles printers and the hypnotic atmosphere of the tracks lead you toward a world made of rituals where there's nothing human but the feeling of survival. Cold as a clinical cut but at the same time warm as blood.
Cyclotimia is a project from Russia and have created some very good and interesting albums. Albums like ‘Same Time Same Place’, ‘Wasteland’ and ‘Celestis’ are a combination of spatial ambient and IDM glitch, aided with the use of lush synthesizers. The music often times is very deep and free interpretable. A recurring theme for this project is the world of stockmarkets.
With this new album ‘Music for Stockmarkets’, stockmarkets is the essential theme and motive. Though the album ventures into the typical Cyclotimia topics, it doesn’t sound at all like the former albums. Well, maybe in some places, but its most of all a totally different experience. Gone are the deep soundscapes as the music is stripped to its bare essential. With a fast listening, it reminds me of music created in the Amiga era, but upon closes inspection, the music is rather layered and there is a lot to be discovered here. The album consists of a lot of bleeps and clicks and cuts, but there is also room for the occasional (piano) melody, together with different sampled sources. The great thing about this album is that it’s very subliminal and can sometimes have a rather disturbing feeling to it. A lot of tracks are very clinical in its approach, but it is interspersed with more layered tracks and deeper sounds. This is really an album which should be listened to with headphones and requires your full attention. If listened to rather superficially, the album can seem somewhat boring, because all the details are missed, which is the essential of this interesting work.
It is music that can be difficult and cryptic, but that’s also the beauty of this album, which turns the music into a piece of art. The music therefore isn’t for everyone, because it’s not a ‘fun’ album. It’s maybe more academic, but with a more human approach. Hard to describe, you just have to listen to it. The artwork is also very nice and really makes the experience complete. The album gets a high recommendation because of its originality, but only to the more advanced listeners of experimental music, but a great album nonetheless.
Bold release by Petersburg label Zhelezobeton Cyclotimia - Music for Stockmarkets appeared at the end of 2008 and took at once his place in my top-10 of 2008. The end of material world is not far off, any subculture musician can feel it. Though few of them will be able to draw conclusions and all the more to record the appropriate soundtrack to voice the present economical processes and also to perform these processes on the non-material level.
Cyclotimia is a serious professional project which already had experience with valuable albums, they have what to say and it's worthy to get acquainted with their discography and listen to their music. But Music for Stockmarkets differs from all music recorded and released by the team earlier. It's the work of another level, it has another ideas. As it is written in the press-release to the album, here reign minimalism, academic sterility, surgical accuracy and meditative estrangement. And in fact it's really so. By the way, all is painted with light tones, no black shades, there is no reason for sadness – sad are those who have what to lose. I'd like to add that if you listen attentively you will hear how in Music for Stockmarkets little time clocks tick – the end of capitalism epoch is not far away and it's an obvious fact. Sometimes it's very pleasant to watch on TV the fussy London, burning Strasburg and America choking in the mass of useless green papers...
Music for Stockmarkets consists of three parts - Requiem, Trivial Pleasures, Financial Glossary. Wallstreet Requiem is for me the most charming and breathtaking part of this significant trilogy, it transmits the information most accurately (as music is none other but information, though of another sort). It is the information about the processes around us, often invisible ones. Music in the album is just and instrument, that's impossible to imagine other variants. The thing is that everybody has his own instruments and means of communication with the surrounding world, in this question Cyclotimia is a sharp, spirited and, the most important thing, intellectual sound project authentic to our time. The album lasts for about an hour but that's absolutely enough to deepen into the world filled with conceptions, mathematical figures, exchange indexes used with usable terms and so on. Just read the titles of the album's compositions: "Investor", "Secret Markets", "Global Economic Forum", "ID Number", "NASDAQ", "Office Comfort", "Negative Territory", "Oil", "Cashflow"... Have you seen or heard something of this kind in electronics?
So, if Music for Stockmarkets doesn't kill capitalism, it means, it will be killed by something else.
Cyclotimia have long ranked among Russia's better known industrial artists, and I have been sporadically following their career for many years. Somehow it has always felt like they are just about to realize their full potential and bloom, but always fall just a little short.
Music for Stockmarkets is at least an interesting concept, loyal to Cyclotimia's trademark themes of business, consumerism and religion. The promotional text for the album tells us that the world of stockmarkets and corporations is a direct heir of the catholic church, and economic fluctuations are actually spiritual currents. Is this view an honest one, or one of ire and criticism? The band's own opinion becomes a secondary issue, true to industrial traditions. 32 short tracks represent a very minimalistic and light style, even for Cyclotimia. Synth sounds play the main part and the extremely simple compositions combined with the records "worldly" theme strongly reminds me of Kraftwerk, and, as always, there are some Vangelis-influences as well. Unfortunately Cyclotimia's synth sounds are digital, thin and plastic to my ears. First impressions fail to stir emotions - and are probably not even meant to, if the record?s statement is that the world is plastic and superficial. And yet, somewhere in on 24 Hours of Non-Stop Consumption, an immense paranoia awakens - a creeping feeling that something much greater is swelling beneath the surface of ones and zeros.
Music for Stockmarkets is like pop art for the 21st century: it is an intellectual and indifferent statement about the world, a concept more than an aesthetic experience. On one hand, it is a very dull and uninteresting record, on the other, it might be closer to the original mission of industrial music than 99% of records released today. Musically must still say that Cyclotimia have still not reached their full potential.
Cyclotimia's Music for Stockmarkets is an inordinately curious collection on multiple counts. Firstly, the Moscow-based duo of MK and LM has produced tracks for the album that sound both old and new. Many of the sounds on the album, such as vintage drum machines and analogue Soviet synthesizers of the kind one might have heard an outfit like Tangerine Dream use in its earliest days, hark back to the dawn of krautrock and synthesizer music. Yet the music's overall production is pristine and glossy, suggesting that current technologies have been used to assemble the components into their final form. Secondly, the album fits thirty-two tracks into its sixty-four-minute running time, with most in the one-minute range, making one (“Customer Lifetime Value”) seem like a veritable epic at eight minutes; more precisely, Music for Stockmarkets is split into three sections: “Wallstreet Requiem” (recorded in 2004-07), “Trivial Pleasures” (recorded in 2002, issued as a separate CD in 2003), and “Financial Glossary” (recorded in 2003). Finally, as will be obvious by now, the Russian duo conceptualized the album as a soundtrack to “globalization” and the “consumer society.” [...]
Of course, being wholly instrumental, the listener can choose to draw connections between the material and the song titles and album concept, or ignore the extra-musical dimension altogether and listen to Music for Stockmarkets as a constantly shape-shifting collection of largely synthetic sounds presented in various styles. Certainly the title for the opening section, “Wallstreet Requiem,” is well-chosen, given the oft-mournful tone of its ten tracks. In “Land of Prosperity,” for example, a lonely Theremin-like warble floats alongside a mournful piano melody, and “Customer Lifetime Value” exemplifies a requiem character in the somber melodies that drift through its synthetic funeral parlor and in the percussive pounding that suggest nails being pounded to seal a coffin lid shut. As different as the musical and the conceptual materials might appear on paper, it is possible for one to draw connections between them. “Quick Quote,” for instance, is hyperactive and bubbly, as if to mimic the light-speed transmission of money throughout the global market, and one confidently guesses Cyclotimia's position regarding mass consumption when a distorted voice croaks unintelligibly during the menacing “24 Hours of Non-Stop Consumption.” Not surprisingly, the tone of “Stock Talk” isn't gleeful and euphoric but instead gloomy and portentous. Nevertheless, it's an arresting release—there's definitely no shortage of ideas in play and the range of sounds and styles is plentiful—even if it is an oft-strange one.
Cyclotimia is the brainchild of Max K. and Leonid M. from Moscow. The prolific duo has been releasing material for about ten years and is billed as one of 'the best recognized, well-known Russian projects in the electronic scene today'. Their catalog is nothing to scoff at with nearly a dozen releases to their credit on almost as many labels.
While their newest release, "Music for Stockmarkets", has 32 tracks, it is by no means, a long player, clocking in at just 64 minutes in length. As a general rule, this reviewer is apt to write off albums with an excessive number of tracks as patronizing and slightly pretentious. That being said, it is, after all, a concept album in three parts and quite deserving of fair audience. The artists seem rather obsessed with financial affairs and indicate in promotional materials that the record is intended to be, 'regarded as liturgical background for the sacred business procedures'. All of this sounds rather serious and unsexy. But then, the realization dawns on this reviewer that the ebb and flow of the stock market has a sort of rhythm and pattern of its own that could potentially be tied down to score; programmatic language is present in both music and mathematics.
So what then, of the music? The artists admit that the album is a major departure from previous releases, that it is 'not familiar'. If you want a tag, I'm going with experimental ambient. It is a challenging soundscape which succeeds in creating a certain mood. In other words, it's the music I'd toss on the player for my epic rocket trip to outer space. While this may not be the most sustainable record in my collection, it does have some excellent moments of chill, dark electronica featuring the unique sounds of vintage Soviet equipment and field recordings. It's like the reserved, avant-garde cousin of Oil 10. The guy that sits in the corner somewhere on the edge of serenity and anxiety while everyone else is out back having a beer. Quirky time signatures, unique sampling, and lots of blips and bleeps make it seem more like a science experiment than a record, but don't let its difficulty keep you away for there is a certain tense beauty which can be unearthed if you listen carefully. Pick up this limited edition release if you can appreciate an ontological experience beyond the traditional definition of music.
Described as soundtrack to globalisation, Cyclotimia’s effort in creating an electronica infused album is strategically segmented into three distinct conceptual parts. Most of the tracks clock in at one or two minutes, which makes sense, since the collection contains thirty two tracks in total. Like the majority of the labels’ releases, Music for Stockmarkets is highly experimental and not catered towards the average mainstream listener.
The entirety of the first segment, titled Wallstreet Requiem comes off like level music in some archaic video game as seen on the Zelda-like “Quick Quote” whose name indicates the aural representation of a rapid value return of a stock price.
The second segment, Trivial Pleasures is a dreary addition that utilizes clicks and odd samples to garner a rather alarming effect. “Market Experts” consists of an electronic female voice repeating a phrase on loop, surrounded by samples derived from warning sirens.
The third section, Financial Glossary is decorated with several clips from financial news reports scattered amongst jarring beeps which rise and fall like on the forewarning “Oil” and the reverberating “Zero.” The remainder of the series is so foreign sounding, it feels as if it was recorded for a science fiction film with eery sounds and tension bulding repetitions. The pulsating effects of “Rebound” are so intense that the listener will be silly not to look over their shoulder to make sure that a monsterous creature is not lurking behind them, ready to attack.
As a concept album, the underlying premise on Music for Stockmarkets isn’t an uplifting one. Rather, the continuing thread that binds the collection together is a pessimistic look on international finance and its effect on a global and individual level. This view is spot on in terms of the dire consequences of decisions based on market expert reccomendations. While the album is experimental, it seems that each track is crafted to represent the physical reaction an individual would have to a certain phenomenon. Judging from some of the more incisive tracks, the reactions aren’t anything to cheer at, mirroring the current struggles occuring in the current economy.
Cyclotimia is one band I have followed for a very long time now. I have watched them develop and enjoyed many of their albums in the past so it's not that strange that I had high expectations on this album as well. This is from my understanding three albums put together into one creation. A grand total of 32 tracks or 64 and a half minute of theme songs for the stock market.
'Music for Stock Markets' seem to be an attempt to put sounds to the every day money transactions that are being made in the world. For the one who will buy the record (which I would recommend people to do) there is a great explanation in the CD-cover. Actually, I really like the design of the CD-cover.
To be perfectly honest I like the sound of this album, but it's starting to get a little bit too blip blop-ish for me. I think I prefer the older and more darker sounds that used to be Cyclotimia's signature. Still you can hear the somewhat melancholic sound though and that lifts everything up a great bit. The best track on this record is "Customer Lifetime Value" for sure. I'll play that along with some other songs Cyclotimia has made in the past. [6/10]
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