Latest album from the UK-Israeli collective Staraya Derevnya is Garden Window Escape (AUSTRALIA RAMBLE RECORDS RAM-195 / ISRAEL AURIS MEDIA AUM073LP) – I have a CD in a card wallet, but it will appear on vinyl from two labels, Ramble Records and Auris Media.
We’ve been hearing their unclassifiable music for about 5-6 years, and I’m always taken aback at the unusual qualities – lots of layers of music, everyone playing at once, short loops and phrases repeated in a queasy murk, creating a lurching organism of sound that is instantly compelling. There’s a slightly ramshackle DIY appearance, but the players are no slouches, and I think they’ve evolved this diffuse, open-ended method of performance through frequent playing together, plus oodles of experience and imagination. Mostly acoustic in nature, although there are also synths and feedback underpinning the scuttling excursions. Well, the team this time includes Gosha Hniu – main vocalist and I think one of the main creative engines – at any rate he’s also the producer and recording engineer, and the one who always sends me letters and messages. Plus there’s Maya Pik, Ran Nahmias, Grundik Kasyansky, Miguel Perez, Yoni Silver and Andrea Serafino. Feel free to check these names against personnel on previous outings, such as Inwards Opened The Floor.
As before there is lyrical content too, derived from the poems of the Soviet painter Arthur Molev and an enigmatic cover painting by Danil Gertman. I mention these as Staraya Derevnya are, to my mind, a 100% “art music” band, steeped in the notion of creating something new and personal, and crafting it by hand with the determination of a small-press publisher or an artist selling craft wares on Etsy. They’re also deliciously eccentric and opaque, dwelling in a private world whose language and workings are all but incomprehensible, but everything works on its own terms to an inner logic. This extends to the verbal communications of Gosha Hniu, which are probably not in English and are not very clearly enunciated, yet they contain volumes of truth. You can tell from the calm and insistent way he states and restates his short phrases on ‘Half-Deceased Uncle’ here, a personal favourite which I have no hesitation in recommending to fans of Mark E. Smith and Can.
An astonishing release…investigate immediately. From 7th March 2025.