Zhelezobeton (“Ferro-Concrete”) is a wonderfully-named Moscow industrial label, operating – in its own words – “as a producer and distributor of all kinds of experimental, noise-based, and industrial recordings. Put differently, we’re a venue for various types of unusual music. We also publish the work of our friends in small print-runs and distribute the discographies of other kindred labels. We are, in addition, responsible for a sub-label, Zhelezobeton-Film that handles video materials, and Muzyka Voln (“Waves Music”), which produces works in the general sphere of ambient and drone.”

As the artwork below suggests, these will be recordings designed not only to operate on the edge of established genres, but also to evoke liminal, transitory physical states as well.

Under the label’s overarching structure and brief manifestos we find, as one example of Zhelezobeton’s output, the work of Moscow outfit Sister Loolomie. They’ve been releasing works that correspond to Zhelezobeton’s general remit for the last six years.  At the current time, they define their interests and efforts as “grainy drone ambient with subdued and melodic guitar melodies.” The presumably accidental tautology in that phrase – “melodic melodies” – gives us some indication of where we’ll be heading with these recordings: nowhere in particular, since a lack of discernible rhythm gives these long tracks a general evocative quality, i.e., they produce a sense of various enduring states, rather than steps in any special direction.

Cyclical motion supersedes any kind of narrative “progress.”

Sister Loolomie, in even more specific terms, is a spin-off from the “emotional drone/ meditation project” known as Exit in Grey, also from the northern Moscow environs ofPushkino.  The town is more than 500 years old, and for several centuries was a preferred resting place for the Russian nobility. That sense of natural repose sought by a past elite is now replaced by the equally aimless, post-industrial drone of today’s youthful exponents of meditation. Working towards this non-urban, non-progressive soundscape, the members ofExit in Grey – “Sergei and Stas” – have spoken of their “hypnotizing field-recordings of city and nature.” It’s the former of these musicians who stands behind Sister Loolomie.

Below we can see both men at work, capturing the sounds of an atmosphere broader and older than anything man-made. Tellingly enough, the image appears to show them standing beneath a pylon, surrounded by silver birches; they’re standing on the very cusp between steel and forest, bounded city and boundless greenery. Somewhere along that same borderline there are philosophically beneficial images and noises to be found.

If their are any kinds of linear progression or narrative trajectories in these sounds, Exit in Grey describe them as “archaic and emotional.” These instrumentals, in other words, track a path further into the past, away from progress, and towards a more affective view of the world, i.e., away from language altogether. These are the sounds of increasing membership in a burgeoning collective of prior spirits and sensations, rather than a bold passage of lonely, empirical discovery and novelty. They move away from movement.

Such noises make a great deal of sense as we leave modern architecture behind, head out onto the centuries-old streets of Pushkino, and then further still into the timeless, looping or seasonal patterns of the Russian countryside. It’s a passage orchestrated to the sounds of what one of Sister Loolomie’s labels has called “ambient, meditative, and sedative music.”

The soundtrack to a voluntary self-erasure.

The most recent release we have from Sister Loolomie is the five-track, 49-minute LP called “Signals.” All five compositions are offered in this post. Before we even encounter the LP’s sound, though, the running-order speaks of a dreamlike, fluid, and often illogical state: “No Final Decision Here,” “About Corpuscles,” “Prelude and Part about Pink Dream,” “Sleep Before the Alarm,” “Light and Cold.” For all the apparent drama of these titles, the musicians claim to be striving for a “digital sound that nonetheless maintains a warm and comfortableaspect.” Within faceless, ahistorical nature, there is – it seems – a better sense of comfort and belonging than one might find in peopled places.

A final piece of preparatory text, en route to these ideas, reads: “Sergei [of Exit in Grey] uses both a guitar and electronic instruments, together with a radio and computer-based editing tools, too. These are all used to make soundscapes that are simultaneously abstract and emotionally informed. The compositions sound both leisurely and calm in nature. Their loops operate as spirals, pulling our attention into themselves, dissolving our [conscious] perception in their textures. Trembling waves of various signals and light, plus generated scratching sounds conjure an airy atmosphere. Within that space, a discharge of digital interference is sometimes heard. Radiant, barely melodic melodies [once again!] bring a clarity and gentle, contemplative melancholy to the proceedings.”

These sounds are accompanied – on the Exit in Grey site – by some telling pictures, taken from the kind of humbling vantage point to which this music aspires. The more philosophically successful the music, in fact, the greater one’s sense of modesty. Once more, these are sonic evocations of retreat and self-erasure in search of a superior (smaller!) worldview, maximally distant from urban arrogance.

The recording has received some interesting reviews in the Russian press. One webzine recently wrote: “The new album by Sister Loolomie, a project from the edge of Moscow, fits very well into their definition of ‘comfortable music.’ It goes without saying that each and every person will interpret that kind of terminology in his or her own way, but I do hope that the 250 people who – sooner or later – will buy the modest run of these CDs will agree with me.”

The Russian reviewer goes on: “Both the warm depths of some static ambient and slowly unfurling spirals of endless, rumbling guitars operate as the backdrop to a multitude of ‘Signals.’ They come from analog equipment, radio receivers, and other bits and pieces in the musician’s arsenal. We managed to listen to the album more than once. It doesn’t necessarily offer anything new, but at the same time it seems that overt novelty wasn’t the project’s goal in the first place. Rather than wander back and forth between styles or some kinds of innovation, what we get instead is a very ‘vivid’ and mobile kind of sound. On one hand, itdoes have certain contemporary aspects, with enduring elements of nostalgia on the other.”

As the location of Pushkino suggests, with its sleepy, verdant side-streets, this is a place where linear, goal-driven passage slips away into the always-nostalgic environment of trees and fields that still constitute the calming views loved by pre-Revolutionary nobility. This is a town where “capital” progress comes to a happy end.

A final passage from the Russian press: “Some deliberately ‘vintage’ melodies, created with huge reverb, create the sort of atmosphere you’d expect from Soviet fantasy films… the kind of things you might see in old movies about robots or artificial intelligence. They emerge towards the end of the recording, where we finally descend into a slow, constantly widening whirlpool of unexpected sounds, rustling, and some crackling reminiscent of old vinyl.”

These are the sounds, in other words, of a run-off groove, where songs and stories end, handing over their structure to repetitious cracks, pops, and hiss caused by the natural surface of the vinyl, rather than any fading “fantasy.” In this light, it’s worth pointing out thatPushkino was also the home of Soviet poet Maiakovskii’s dacha. The same poet, shown below on a now wobbly pedestal, would visit Pushkino in order to escape the increasingly manic dimensions of socialist “progress.”

Initially the Revolution’s great champion, he would one day commit suicide. Somewhere between early hope and eventual despair were various summers spent in this leafy town – a liminal location and possible exit from heartless progress.

In closing, then, we have before us five new (and slow) instrumentals from a Moscow collective working together with a label whose very name speaks clearly to the traditions of industrial music. In Russia, however, especially at the start of the 21st century, the noun “industry” has a rather melancholy overtone. It no longer refers to large, nationwide processes of goal-driven construction, but instead to the effort(s) involved in a qualitatively different type of activity. For the one or two members of Sister Loolomie, work is better directed away from places marked by asphalt and anxiety. Rejecting any notions of sociopolitical permanence, they find instead a more “comfortable” and consoling sense of lasting membership in the sounds of places that existed before Moscow even took shape.

As we can see below, Sister Loolomie’s hometown offer many opportunities – at a minimal distance – to walk away from modernity against the backdrop of “hypnotizing field-recordings of city and nature.” That same sense of hypnosis, mirrored in the “whirlpool” of sounds we have here, emerges thanks to the repetitious cycles of the natural world or “enduring elements of nostalgia.” It was a sense of nostalgia felt by vacationing families centuries before Sergei and Stas, and even by the most ardent supporters of the Revolution. It is, in a word, an enduring state, replete with all manner of comforting, consoling, and meditative “signals” that have outlasted even the loudest declaration from downtown.