about the cassette

The overlap between the organic and the synthetic is Vlad Dobrovolski’s stomping ground. Digitally organised sounds melt into squalling melodies that grow and stretch over and under each other like the fractal leaves of a fern, spiraling inwards and outwards into a tesseract of connective tissue. “The more carefully you listen, the more you hear,” explains the Russian-born sound artist. “No two moments are exactly alike in nature. The song is always changing. I find myself listening in ways I never have before. The scale of my perception has changed. Small, subtle sounds have become singular events. The space around me seems larger than I had realized.”

“Natursymphony No.1 — Spring Music” compiles fleeting waves of thought and feeling into sonic networks that embody the sinew shared by a sprawling forest, the patchwork quilt of human memory, or the post-organic logic of digital collage. Rays of rising sun and fresh air buoy this audio landscape, brimming as it is with synthetic tones and bitcrushed rhythms emerging from surrounding computer caverns. Field recordings are organized in harmony with processed acoustic instrumentation; gongs, flutes, and distorted percussive rhythms.

Probing our consciousness – or perhaps self and spatial awareness – propel forward the seven opuses of “Natursymphony No.1”, like the experience of an awakening itself. Stemming from an awakening of sorts for the artist himself, suddenly alivened in his ability to perceive his surroundings and create musical ecosystems, the nature to be found in this music is a parallel reality in miniature, with its own dusks and dawns, its own blossoming and extinctions, all delicately nurtured by an artist stumbling into a creator role.

Over two decades, Vlad has explored improvised and generative music, sonic collage, and released solo music under a variety of monikers and in various collaborative projects — such as his cassette tape soundscaping duo with Vasiliy Stepanov, S A D. The “Natursymphony” series comes following his personal landmark album, “Non-Deterministic Polynomial Poems” (Klammklang). Vlad has also participated in residencies and performances throughout both Russia and Japan.