VARIOUS ARTISTS : 'Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music)' - first ever release outside Russia of ANS synthesizer recordings by Soviet era composers | OUT 28.02.25
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Электронная Музыка АНС
(ANS Electronic Music)
a compilation of rare recordings created on the ANS synthesizer by four Soviet era composers
EDUARD ARTEMIEV | STANISLAV KREITCHI
ALEXANDER NEMTIN | SÁNDOR KALLÓS
CD | digital
out 28.02.25
(Cold Spring)
Bandcamp
includes
EDUARD ARTEMIEV, STANISLAV KREITCHI
MUSIC FOR THE FILM ‘COSMOS’
Bandcamp audio
Recorded in 1969 but available for the very first time outside the former USSR, ‘Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music)’ features six experimental tracks performed on the legendary ANS synthesiser by Soviet era composers Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi, Alexander Nemtin and Sándor Kallós.
As with the ‘Musical Offering’ collection reissued by Cold Spring in 2023, this album demonstrates a machine unlike any other, and one that has long fascinated modern day electronic composers such as Coil and Adi Newton of The Anti Group Communications/Clock DVA. Both have released recordings utilising the ANS.
Invented by the Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin between 1937 and 1957, the technological basis of the ANS was the method of graphical sound recording used in cinematography (developed in Russia concurrently with the USA) that made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave, as well as to realise the opposite goal of synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound spectogram.
The ANS houses five rotating glass discs with 144 tones hand printed individually by Murzin on each. Light is projected through the discs onto a photovoltaic cellbank that converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS's amplifiers and bandpass filters. Fully polyphonic, it can generate all 720 tones this way and - unlike a human musician - play them all simultaneously.
Murzin named his invention in honour of Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872-1915), the composer best known for 'Poem of Ecstasy' and a renowned early exponent of colour-sound theories (synesthesia). Fans of Russian cinema will be familiar with recordings made on the ANS by Eduard Artemiev for films directed by Andrei Tarkovsky that include The Mirror, Stalker and, most notably, 1972’s Solaris, in which the ANS was used to abstract, sci-fi effect akin to ambient music. He also used it on the soundtrack to the 1979 Andrei Konchalovsky movie epic ’Siberiade’.
‘Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music)’ has been remastered by Martin Bowes at The Cage and is presented in a CD digipak with stunning new artwork designed by Abby Helasdottir.
Электронная Музыка АНС
(ANS Electronic Music)
TRACKLISTING
1 EDUARD ARTEMIEV, STANISLAV KREITCHI Music From The Film ‘Cosmos'
(12:17)
2 STANISLAV KREITCHI Intermezzo (2:24)
3 ALEXANDER NEMTIN Chorale Prelude In C Major (J S Bach) (2:33)
4 ALEXANDER NEMTIN Tears (4:45)
5 SÁNDOR KALLÓS A Northern Tale (5:41)
6 STANISLAV KREITCHI A Voice Of The East (2:04)
