Vinyl / Digital: BUY
PLYXY – Gloryland – LP
180 grams red vinyl, incl. instant download
Digital
Release date Nov 16th 2018
Originally issued by Ascetic House as a small limited-run cassette release in early 2018, PLYXY’s debut EP »Gloryland« will now be available on vinyl and digital formats by the Swiss imprint, Hallow Ground.
Haunted by the pressing question, »What if?«, the five compositions on »Gloryland« aim to create, in the words of the artist, Ros Knopov, himself, »a hyper-visual audio landscape of a world somebody listening can fall into and drown in.«
The term »nostalgia« originally referred to the longing for a place. The nostalgia that informs »Gloryland« is PLYXY’s longing for his cultural-geographic roots while feeling adrift in an alien environment. Born in Dnepropetrovsk, then the rocket-making capital of the USSR, Knopov immigrated to New York City as a child in 1989. In »Gloryland,« he dives deep into his uneasy childhood memories and their warped reflections. PLYXY marks the unreliability of his recollections by making it heard – the anthemic qualities of the five pieces are coated in an opaque layer of dream-like textures. From the elegiac opener, »It Will Be Beautiful,« to the blaring rhythmic noise of »March of Youth,« the greyscale picture painted by »Gloryland« becomes more and more refined below the surface.
PLYXY’s search for a past is, however, less a sentimental journey, and more a radical confrontation with the politics of memory and the materials that serve as mnemonic devices. »Gloryland« draws on field recordings from Knopov’s adopted hometown New York and Soviet films as well as performances from his collection of analog and digital keyboards, with the results filtered and re-textured through the producer’s modular synthesizer setup acting as the final editorial layer in the creative process. The result is lush and warm throughout, but also demure and distant. While »Gloryland« might thus easily be pigeonholed as a hauntological record, it is one only in the term’s most radical sense. After all, any »what if?« might turn into a »Why not?«
Tracklist:
A1) It will be beautiful (4:12)
A2) Gloryland (5:18)
A3) Ungod (4:51)
B1) KatYusha (6:05)
B2) March of Youth (5:27)
Credits:
Written, produced and arranged by Ros Knopov
Master by Taylor Deupree at 12K
Additional arrangement by Graydon Kolk (on KatYusha)
Photography by Priscilla Bargas
Design by Ruth Stofer and Greenpointless NYC
Released via Ascetic House/Hallow Ground 2018
Distributed by A-Musik and Cargo Records