DisAgreement Online

Once you read that Gravitsapa want to bridge the gap between underground and academia, plus the fact that they are on this live recording a “chamber duo with looper and Polivox”, you know you’re in for something quite strange sounding. The Ukrainian duo has been around for nearly twenty years. What started as a Christian alternative rock soon turned into angular math rock / post metal, but the journey wasn’t over yet. Today their music is very avantgarde, highly experimental, with the musicians taking influence from John Cage and experimental electronic acts like Zoviet France, although the more experimental Sonic Youth live albums might also be a point of reference.

The four tracks on Concert No. 1 (23-23) have been recorded on 23rd February 2023, one year and a day after the full Russian invasion of Ukraine. The moods relayed on this album perfectly fit the concept. The musicians perform on guitar, bass, drums and an ancient Soviet synth Polivox, but rarely, if at all, do they come up with song structures. Instead we get plaintive notes, wailing sounds and occasional broken vocals in the bleakest form imaginable.

This isn’t pretty, but then that was never intended. Instead we get fascinating sound sculptures that conjure the post-industrial ruins that can be found all too often in this war-torn country. I don’t know if the four tracks are songs or more likely improvisations, but as they flow freely one into the other, this concert is best listened to in one piece. War is often the inspiration for art, and the most captivating compositions are really easy to stomach. What Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps and Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody To The Victims Of Hiroshima were for World War II, is mirrored in Concert No. 1 (23-23) as an analogy for what is currently happening in Ukraine. The more I listen to it, the more it mesmerises me. I won’t give any grade, because that might be misleading, but those who appreciate music far off the mainstream should lend these guys an ear.