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Wire
Kotra is ukraine musician Dmytro Fedorenko whose past endeavors have included playing bass in a jazz/noise group, being one half of noise duo Zet and playing alongside such fellow soundshifters as Kim Cascone, Andreas Berthling and Andrey Kiritchenko. The 21 pieces of Dissilient can be heard separately or as a whole. Each is a characteristically different shard of experimentation, loosely held together by Fedorenko's guitar feedback explorations which, as they progress, become more complex. Titled either "Minus", "plus" or "Plus/Minus", each section is a finely cut and polished jewel of noise.
(Edwin Pouncey)
Indieville
Kotra's Dmytro Fedorenko has background in noise bands and mathematics, but even knowing that I wasn't prepared for the experimental soundart that comprises Dissilient. On these twenty-one brief compositions, the listener is confronted with all sorts of noise, sometimes harsh, sometimes unbearably strident. The experience is often frustrating, but something interesting lies under the surface; these pieces are, in fact, strangely hypnotic. If you let yourself lie back and listen to this in the dark, you'll notice how well the sounds come together. Amidst the abrasive noise and the high-frequency screeches, there is a definitive sense of precise order; though random, these sounds work together to produce an atmosphere that's at once mechanical and human. It's hard to define what makes this "music" so enjoyable - indeed, I doubt I'll be compelled to listen to Dissilient too often in the future - but there's something about Fedorenko's soundscapes that, if given the chance, could really change the average listener's perception of music.
84%
(Matt Shimmer)
Splendid
The salary, health care, and retirement accounts available in the field of reviewing music (which ranges from the indie/mainstream to the almost unfathomably obscure) are fantastic, but many of us enjoy working 40+ hour per week jobs on top of it. Naturally, in workplace gab sessions, the subject of our super-hero identities as reviewers occasionally comes up. Once people have looked at the site, they usually ask the following: "So, what's the (worst/weirdest/most memorable) thing you've reviewed?"
My stock answer for "weirdest" album has long been Magali Babin's Chemin de Fer, which consists almost entirely of the recorded sound of pieces of metal interacting with other pieces of metal. I actually kind of enjoyed Chemin de Fer, but I have listened to it maybe once since I reviewed it.
With that in mind, I'm pleased and amazed to announce that I have a new winner in the "weird" category. I've experienced albums based on formless electronic noise before -- but I've never heard one that was so decidedly listener-unfriendly. Kotra definitely has a vision, and it's easy to see that Dissilient came out precisely as intended. It's just hard to imagine why he has distributed copies of it to others.
In addition to the fact that Dissilient consists entirely of sounds that most mainstream listeners would go out of their way to avoid hearing, it contains so little modulation, and such an apparent lack of purpose or structure, that it almost seems designed to put off adventurous listeners as well. The first two thirds of the disc (all tracks titled "Minus") consists almost entirely of different interactions between an almost unchanging, high feedback tone and other, incidental noises. After the silent "Zero" track, the "Plus" tracks emerge, with a sonic palette that might sound richer, but only to ears already dulled by the earlier tracks. There are other, exceedingly minor variations, but the album closes in the same aggressively unvaried form in which it began.As some sort of experiment in audience provocation, Dissilient might be sort of interesting...but only to an observer in a soundproof booth.
(Brett McCallon)
Vital
The man behind Kotra is one Dmytro Fedorenko, who played bass in a jazz-noise band, had a noise duo called Zet and has worked with the likes of Kim Cascone, Andreas Berthling and Andrey Kiritchenko. Here he plays twenty-one tracks in just over thirty-four minutes. When I started this CD, I thought my opinion would be ready after 2 minutes: noise, generated through feedback and processed digitally. But as this CD progressed, and the sound remained almost similar throughout, I realized that I was not listening to twenty-one tracks, but to one work broken up in twenty-one different pieces. As the piece evolves more sounds are added, even a guitar can be heard, and the whole thing is broken up with smaller sound particles. Although noise is in general the thing I am no longer concerned for, the conceptual approach is something that I like very much. Given the concise and precise dealings with Kotra, I am all for it. That's the way to do it.
(FdW)
loop
This is the most recent release from the Ukrainian label Nexsound from which we have already review some releases [the compilation V/A, 'Rural Psychogeography' and from The Moglass Ukraine trio]. A new album by Dymytro Fedorenko, aka Kotra, a mathematician from Kyiv who studied classic guitar and started making music as a bass player in a jazz-noise band. He was part of the Zet duo and participates in performances along with visual artists and video makers. In 1988, he decided to start his own project Kotra. Since then he has released six albums and several compilations appearances published in the USA, Europe and the Ukraine. Fedorenko has worked with important sound artists such as Kim Cascone, Andrey Kiritchenko [Nexsound's founder] and Andreas Berthling. On 'Dissilient' we attended a long session of digital noise in which also glitch and skips are noticed. Some noises oscillate in a dynamics of low rank until reaching highly inaudible extreme levels. Granular synthesis is also part of the techniques used in this album since there're tiny sounds which are processed and edited in a random appearance.
noize
Dmytro Fedorenko ist studierter Mathematiker in der Ukraine, an der klassischen Gitarre ausgebildet und offenbar ein eigentlich recht kreativer Thirtysomething. Seine musikalisch-kunstlerische Sozialisation fand in noisigen Jazzgefilden, Videokultur und der aufkeimenden, interaktiven Web-Art statt. Sein Solowerk firmiert seit bereits sechs Alben unter den Namen Kotra und bietet auf diesem vorliegenden aktuellen Output digitale Langeweile der schlimmsten Sorte. Die Tracklist setzt sich, wie originell, dem "Null Eins Ja Nein" Gedanken entsprungen, aus 21 Titeln zusammen, die lediglich die Namen "Plus", "Minus", "Zero", "Plus/Minus" und "Minus/Plus" tragen. Dahinter verbergen sich elektronisch generierte Tone bis zur Unertraglichkeit, dass man fast furchten muss, ein Abspielgerat konnte diese als Programmbefehle missverstehen. Scheiben dieses Genres sind per se schwierig uberhaupt zu bewerten. Erkennt man aber wenigstens einen Hauch Inspiration, eine wie auch immer geartete Idee, kann durchaus ein Reiz an solcherlei Klangmontage entstehen. Sechs Punkte fur den Mut, sich in die Nische zu begeben, einen subjektiven halben Punkt des Verfassers fur die Umsetzung und unter Berucksichtigung des Randgebietes, in dem sich diese Scheibe abspielt: ohne Bewertung!
(Michael Kellenbenz)
hybridmagazine
Larry: They are making the feedback feedback on teh feedback. This may be considered art...
Darrel: random squawks fcompiled for the sole purpose of destroying critics' ears. No one will buy it.
Daryl: Obviously the product of secret Soviet medical experiments.
Dick: Look at the cool stamps from the Ukraine!
WMUC
This is noise-it's annoying but then again it's supposed to be. It features loud electronic blasts & piercing sound that will annoy you & your neighbors. It isn't constant noise-so you might think there's actually some kind of musical pattern-but you'd be wrong-it's noise. Points of Comparison: Merzbow, Masonna
(J Max G.)
Cracked
High pitched frequencies cutting into your neuro-electronic system, destroying any conditioning available and tuning you into a sender that comes from within your core and from the depth of the universe at the same time. Personally, I prefer bass-noise, heavy and thundering subwoofed bass-sounds. Kotra prefers making run chills up and down your spine and into the back of your neck like syringes being stuck into your central nervous system. "Dissilient" takes some getting used to, but as soon as you're hooked, you'll be hooked for good. If you found Alexei Borisov and Anton Nikkl¤ as too peaceful and harmonious for your taste and Kaffe Matthews a little to less lively - and I have heard of such judgements - then take the next step to Dmytro Federenko aka Kotra, who will definitely give you a good massage of the eardrums that is more to your expectations. Of course, "dissilient" is not about being rude or harsh for the sake of being rude and harsh to your hearing, after all this is not a death metal record. The art of Kotra is about expanding your ways of hearing sounds and music and of widening your auditive perception to new and yet unheard of ways of frequencies interchanging. With a carbon-steamdrill, if necessary, I should add. Warning should be given to anyone who is prone to experiencing nausea when confronted with high-pitched frequencies that smoulder and feep your senses, cut up and intermixed with white noise, static and interferences that come from experimentations with electrical current on an almost primordial basis. The titles of the tracks - called either "minus", "zero", "plus" or "plus / minus" give away the electro-magnetic background on the purely technical side. If you get past the feeling of "that is what it must sound like when a radio falls into your bathtub" you'll reach a wide world of truly fascinating auditive out/input. Our brains function on an electric basis mainly, with neurons acting as connectors. The same way these sounds reach the limbic system and will give you a transcendent hallucination, sickness or both. Where does that take us? Is there a place or an imagined garden of Eden in which sounds like these will be perceived as beautiful and harmonious by the majority of the people? Or is "Dissilient" designed to drive cracks into the floor of this false paradise that betrays its inhabitants by comforting them with a cotton layer of mainstream pop music? Or is it just the lonely fascination of one strange mind that has gone over the top and fallen into an obsession with noise? "Dissilient" offers a dangerous yet fascinating aural landscape, like watching old Sci-Fi-Movies on mangled and broken VHS-tapes on fast forward. The deeper forward you dare to get into the world of Kotra, the more complex and the less irritant the measures and motions of the sounds start to be - or the music gets less exhausting and strenuous towards the second half of the record, where some tracks offer some kind or rhythmical structure to support our hearing and perception crawl along the lines of Kotra - and the next thing is that for milliseconds the beauty of noise flashes up, then for a little longer, until you've reached the point of true wholeness. Then new wisdom will flare into your mind like a firework. Or so I imagine, because up to now I haven't managed to reach that point. To me the milliseconds of vocal samples (or what may sound like it in my now mangled perception) embedded in a pounding digital noise beat and constructed around more high frequencies (I didn't know there are so many different aspects of high pitch) are a relief.
Octopus
La tendance des musiques electroniques experimentales actuelles est de solliciter les tympans a renfort de sinusoides (cf. Sachiko M). Si certains excellent dans cet art bruitiste et strident, Kotra se perd souvent dans un eparpillement desorganise. Dmytro Fedorenko est habile dans la creation de frequences percantes, dans le faconnage de sifflements metalliques, mais < Dissilient > laisse un gout d'inacheve dans l'assemblage de ces sonorites extremes qui semblent n'avoir ete ici que des pretextes a des babillages pseudo-noise. Un disque qui fait tache dans la production jusque-la soignee du label ukrainien.
Industrial.org
As much as I enjoy clicks n cuts and similar glitch based difficult music, it has occurred to me that this style of sound could be considered a contemporary equivalent to progressive rock. It is almost by definition self-indulgent and for some folks likely just as hard to take seriously as Rick Wakeman's ill fated "Myths and Legends of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table" on ice debacle. I'm not sure who prog-rock was actually for (before my time) but geeks could easily be accused of being an elitist demographic and therefore the genre directly analogous to the complaints that partially led to the birth of punk rock. Now while this has struck me from time to time, it certainly doesn't stop me from enjoying collections such as this one from Kotra regardless of whether sets of blips and blats is something most folks do not want to hear sputtering out of their stereo. That said, "Dissilient" veers dangerously close to endurance test in some sections with out much accompanying catharsis to compensate for the occasional excesses of art for art's sake.
This is more of an EP really since 34 minutes is only a full length album if you are AC/DC. The tracks are all named as mathematical offsets which is as good a choice as any for a series of sounds that taste like the end of a probe plugged into a function generator. While all of the sounds are digital in nature if not in actual execution, there is an analog type approach to the feedback and distortion appearing here which finds repetitive beeps and modem squawks getting wrapped up in themselves to the point of bumping their heads on the dynamic ceiling. This is not always pleasant and the first few minutes are likely to lead to removal of headphones or at least volume reduction unless you are completely deaf already. It is quite unique sounding it should be noted, just perched at a frequency akin to screaming babies in the seat beside you when stuck on a public bus in a traffic jam that spreads around you as far as the eyes can see.
Some rhythmic structures comparable to 8 bit beatbox appear mid disc and of course this is the most approachable section since the beats (if you can call them that, more like gating effects) help provide some momentum past the more nasal and shrill feedback bursts. There is also a wide variety of little bitty cutups that sound less like data files in a wave editor and more like a modem suddenly breaking into a solo. The kind of music that makes you yearn for an oscilloscope and data analyzer. At its best the varied trace can be quite captivating, like the smoke trails from a soldering iron or watching vials of blue fluid being mixed together.
I guess it is part of the point (call me a wimp if you must) but my main complaints here are to do with how the frequency spectrum falls out - it almost hurts to listen to this at any sort of volume at all. While that may sound all bad ass on (virtual) paper what this means is that to hear the overall recording at a true discernable level you would need to sport earplugs in your own freaking living room. Raucous cacophony is welcome in these here parts but unlike a release like Dustbreeders and Junko's "Mommy Close The Door" which as their label suggests, "peels paint from the walls" this release does not offer enough fist in the air teeth grinding payback for its abuse of your cochlea. It is just too academic and stuffy most of the time which tilts the scales towards dry frustration instead of neuron driven arcing electricity. If the mastering had trimmed just a little from about 1kHz upwards this likely would be a glowing review because there are some very cool functions cavorting about the soundscape but it's so damned nasal and sharp that I feel like I am chewing on tinfoil while suffering a flu headache as well as feeling like I am being forced to adjust the volume at gunpoint. Unless you feel like remastering this yourself definitely only of interest to the most dedicated prog fans, er I mean difficult glitch converts.
Gonzocircus
Het jonge Oekra?ense label Nexsound charmeert me door te zeggen dat ze er extra zorg voor dragendat hun cd's niet alleen goed klinken maar ook (letterlijk) goed aanvoelen. In het geval van I/Dexwordt de kilheid van de ijle elektronica, glitch, melodieuze loops en minimale technogesymboliseerd door een glad digipack. Toegegeven, dit genre lijdt wat aan overaanbod, duswaarom zou je niet eens uit de band springen door met een onbekende inwoner van Belarus uit tepakken? Onhandelbare ambient in runenschrift, dat is Kotra. Terwijl mijn kat na dertig seconden opde vlucht slaat voor de wisselende hoge/lage frequenties, merk ik gerustgesteld dat Kotra hetgemiddeld zelf maar anderhalve minuut per track volhoudt. Vijftien tracks heten 'Minus', eentje'Zero' (had u geraden dat het een stiltetrack was - u bent waarlijk briljant) en drie 'Plus'. Door tweekeer de 'Plus' en de 'Minus' te combineren krijg je elektrische minimale techno. Natuurlijk is geenenkel rariteitenkabinet compleet zonder echte piepknor uit Oekra?ne, maar los van alle exotisme is'Dissilient' maar een mager beestje.
(pv)
Nueral
Sperimentazione estrema dalla fredda Ucraina, modulazioni stridule, feedback e dissonanze tonali per la Nexsound (la label di 'Rural Psychogeography') che questa volta si prende cura di Dmytro Fedorenko (aka Kotra), un passato in ambito jazz-noise e con il duo denominato Zet, fra il 1996 ed il 1998 attivo negli ambiti vicini a performance, video ed interactive-art (in quel di Kyiv), con diverse partecipazioni in compilation, sei precedenti album e collaborazioni di pregio (a fianco di Kim Cascone, Andreas Berthling e Andrey Kiritchenko). Un progetto questo di 'Dissilient' che nulla concede all'ascolto, senza mediazione alcuna ad agitare frequenze metalliche, distorsioni anche aggressive, assieme a microsuoni ed ispide emergenze. Sonorita volutamente poco comunicative, fin dai titoli delle tracce che sommano ben quindici incisioni denominate 'Minus' e tre 'Plus', piu una traccia muta di 32 secondi, 'Zero' ed altre due 'Plus/Minus' e 'Minus /Plus', giusto a render ancor piu indistinta la decifrazione di un codice sottostante (che gli studi in matematica alla National University Of Ukraine fanno pero sospettare). Integralista e coraggioso 'Dissilient' e un vero assalto alle sinapsi intasate dal pop (comunque di difficilissima fruizione).
(Aurelio Cianciotta)
Phosphor
Dmytro Fedorenko's project Kotra is already known among the insiders inelectronic music. Not just because he co-operated with Andreas Barthling,Kim Cascone and Nexsound label manager Andrey Kiritchenko, or because heplayed live at the Club transmediale Festival, the Kryptonale, Emaf orNetmage. Dmytro Fedorenko released six albums, which left quite animpression behind.Kotra investigates the possibilities of precise digital found sound. Heworks with short frequencies, most of the time high-pitched, which comeand go irregularly. Different combinations and lengths are tried and thesounds are manipulated.This way a noise palette is created. Some sounds remind of morse codes,submarine sonar echoes, or ticking clocks, whereas other moments can becompared with Tom Hamilton's London fix album.It's fascinating what Kotra does with his found noises. Each time he seemsto explore a different approach and technique, thus creating a differentatmosphere during the 21 short and slightly inaccessible tracks.Kotra has decided to head in a new direction, though this is just asinteresting as his material on previous releases, such as Stir mesh andFourfold symmetry.
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