Search - Coh :: Strings

This is Stockholm-based Ivan Pavlov's (COH) fifth release for Raster Music. Born in Russia, Ivan Pavlov lives and works in Sweden. He is an inimitable acoustic sound researcher, with a decade of work that combines beautifully minimal electronics with surrealist, abstract humor. Strings is primarily an attempt to reconcile the aesthetics of digital sound with that of more traditional musical instruments and to enrich their respective domains with certain qualities that each singularly possesses. On a larger scale, the album targets the stereotypes in today's perception of music, trying to smooth out the borders between academic and popular, traditional and contemporary, serious and amusing -- all in favor of music. The choice of instrumentation on Strings (piano, guitar, saz, and oud) follows COH's own experience in music: from his years of piano lessons as a child, to playing in a heavy metal band during his teenage years, further to his most recent years of work in the area of digital sound and composition. Part I uses recordings made with a Yamaha grand piano in 2001, part II uses an electric guitar purchased in the USSR in 1988, and part III was first recorded as a quadraphonic installation piece and is inspired by the improvised recordings of saz and oud played by Andrej Abu Kolesov.