Today we take a Fourth World journey with the St. Petersburg-based synth experimenter X.Y.R., the project of Vladimir Karpov. The musician is readying his Pilgrimage LP for release on September 4th via the Los Angeles-based label Not Not Fun. Comprised of two cuts clocking in at 20-minutes, the LP finds Karpov and fellow Russian musician Alexey Krjuk piloting us on a trip deep into the realms of the sonic imagination.
X.Y.R.’s track “Middle of Nowhere” appeared on Optimo Music’s esteemed compilation Miracle Steps (Music From The Fourth World 1983 – 2017), a collection which also included some of Fourth World’s central pioneers like Jon Hassell and Ariel Kalma. On Pilgrimage, Karpov’s auditory raft of dreams continues its travels to Nowhere in particular sailing down a tranquil river of the imagination.
Using synthesizers, sequencers, percussion, microphone, and field recordings, X.Y.R. evokes the joy of the journey itself as ambient tones invite deep repose. But, if relaxation is the order of the day on a track like “Black Monk In The Dunes,” it is only to better appreciate the diverse terrain here, as the ear becomes a frequency analyzer for weaving sound currents into phantom limbs of perception attuned to the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feel of Pilgrimage‘s lush inner world.
