EXIT IN GREY - SHADOWS of STILLNESS
CD (ltd. 300)
MV-VIII
1. The Sunset Dust in our Hands
2. Shadows
3. Speaking with Silence
4. So Beautiful and Quiet Place
release date: November 23, 2013
label: Zhelezobeton
Exit in Grey is one of the main musical incarnations of Sergey [S] from Moscow-area town Pushkino, who is also known for many other projects including Five Elements Music, Sister Loolomie and labels Still*Sleep and Semperflorens. Starting from 2004 Exit In Grey has released over a dozen of albums on CD-Rs and cassettes, mainly on his own label Daphnia Recordsand also on such labels as Mystery Sea, Abgurd and YAOP. His first factory-pressed CD "Perception" came out last year while"Shadows of Stillness" becomes the second album released in this format.
Exit In Grey has quickly developed it's own recognizable style - very calm, a bit melancholic drone ambient with gentle melodies and rugged textures made of found sounds. Four compositions of "Shadows of Stillness" follow the same path: harmonious currents of droning guitars and reed organ are framed by slow waves of resonances dissolving into each other, signals and loops crafted from field recordings, sounds of a Polyvox synthesizer and very long frequency radiowaves from the Earth's atmosphere and space bodies.
Something which I perhaps understand much better, is the music of Sergey, who calls himself [S] most of the times and who works also as Five Elements Music and Sister Loolomie, whole running labels as Still*Sleep and Semper Florens. Since 2004 he is also working as Exit In Grey, and has released a whole bunch of cassettes and CDRs, and 'Shadows Of Stillness' is his second CD release. The differences between his various projects are small, I think. Sister Loolomie is at the harsher end of drone music, but between Five Elements Music and Exit In Grey the differences seem quite small. Both of these projects deal with highly atmospheric music and the difference might be that Five Elements Music is a bit more abstract and Exit in Grey is a bit more melodic. Maybe! [S] uses guitars, effects, harmonium, Polyvox, field recordings, VLF radiowaves of Earth atmosphere and space bodies. Four pieces, somewhere between ten and fourteen minutes, of these dense atmospherics. Dark perhaps, but as dark as Sal Solaris or Bardoseneticcube does get, and there is always an element of melody in this music. Sometimes perhaps a bit buried in the drones, but sometimes more upfront. That adds a nice texture of light to the music. Light shimmering in the morning, carefully popping its head around the world. You see night becoming day. That is what I feel with this music. Nothing here that you haven't heard before of course; Mirror is something that comes quite close to this, or Aidan Baker, but so many others may count a s well. Exit In Grey stands in a long tradition of drone based music, but is sufficiently 'unique' to stand out, finding his own voice. Now here's someone who should be as big as Baker, Troum or Mirror, I'd say.
(FdW)