The Russian sound artist Zurkas Tepla came to our attention last year with the release of his Occasion Smell LP on Klammklang Tapes. This month Tepla contacted us to report that he has started a Moscow-based label called CANT Records. Imagining himself as more of a “courier” than a label boss, and CANT as a “pick-up point” rather than label-site proper, Tepla will “deliver you different kinds of inventive and honest ideas by respectful artists and thinkers.” But that’s only if you’re curious, of course!
The label kicked things off in 2019 with Ivan Zoloto‘s Compass LP and will follow up with another offering from him entitled Ghosting due out on limited edition cassette with handmade covers on June 25th. The first in a trilogy of releases from Zoloto on CANT in 2020, he tells us this about his inaugural release:
“This sad wet tape is dedicated to Noise. Noise is the sound of loud. It comes from throwing pots and pans at your husband…”
The tracks on Ghosting were created over the last seven years, and they provide an interesting snapshot into Zoloto’s itinerate life. Created in places as diverse as Lincoln, Nebraska and Yekaterinburg, Russia, with stops along the way in China, Denmark, and more far-flung destinations around Russia, it also finds Zoloto collaborating with Li Huihui (aka Arrebato), formerly a member of the Chinese harsh noise outfit Torturing Noise, as well as the Belgium-based musicians TG Gondard and Ernesto González of Bear Bones, Lay Low.
Below, you can watch a video for Ghosting‘s sixth track, “Potential.” A foreboding sense of doom surrounds it as leaden pads blare out in two notes of dismay. Negative space allows the tones to reverberate with anxiety before looping audio of a woman despairing the state of the world adds to the track’s raw emotion. If Noise is, as Zoloto tells, “the sound of loud,” here he proves with a subtle approach that it is also about confronting the listener with what is difficult, but necessary, to hear.
