After the decades of the cold war suddenly seemed to end with the fall of the Berlin Wall, a lot of people believed that the relationship between East and West may normalize in the lockstep of global capitalism. The end of history was being proclaimed in the face of the seemingly obvious collapse of all alternatives. Things look mighty different today though. The relations between the great powers appear to be more and more incomprehensible and fragmented. One sneeringly remembers George W. Bush’s claim to have looked into Putin’s eyes, seeing his soul. This turned out to be delusional pretty quickly and the endeavor to tame a Russia with increasingly imperial aspirations under the former KGB-agent has failed ever since. Obama’s geopolitical “Realpolitik” trying to incorporate Russian interest into multilateral coalitions was just another lamentable failure—as Putin was able to convey those interests single-handedly and militarily in Ukraine and in Syria, while the international community stood idly by.

And then there are those puzzlingly clumsy advances to Russia by the current US-president. They foster suspicions, that the Russian campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election—probed by special investigator Robert Mueller under the breathless and hyperventilating coverage of US cable news—was indeed happening with the knowledge or even the support of Trump and his dodgy and incompetent entourage. Putin meanwhile, who’s about to let himself be re-elected as leader for another six years in one more bogus election in about two weeks, is fantasizing about his reinvigorated Russia in his annual address to the Federation. Reinvigorated, of course, primarily by a renewed arsenal of nuclear weapons allowing his Empire to stand up to the West.

How fitting, then, that Ascetic House is about to release the EP Gloryland by New York based Russian native Ros Knopov. Hailing from Dnepropetrovsk, the rocket-making capital of the former Soviet Union, Knopov weaves manipulated field recordings and Soviet-era film samples through an array of analog Eurorack modules and samplers under the alias PLYXY. The results are heavy-hearted ambient compositions, interlaced with moments of nostalgia and noise. Our favorite of the five recordings on the EP was “March of Youth”: The track, starting off with a slightly menacing, ghostly tapestry of sound escalates to a rigid and noisey march in the end. So, as an exclusive foretaste of what is to come—and we remain hopeful this is meant in musical, rather than political terms—here’s “March of Youth” off the forthcoming EP Gloryland by PLYXY. Ascetic House has not announced a specific release date yet—we’ll keep you posted.

https://soundcloud.com/ascetikorps/plyxy-march-of-youth/s-WgO3T