From Moscow to Saint Petersburg, the Russian scene’s steadily established as one of the most intriguing poles for underground electronic music over the last two decades. Aside from providing us with world renowned headliners such as Nina Kraviz, AntonZap and Philipp Gorbachev, the country has seen its incredibly deep pool of talents flourish and prosper in recent times: Buttechno, Art Crime, Nocow, AL-90, Vtgnike, Kito Jempere, Locked Club… the list goes on.
Born in Siberia but now operating out of the Russian capital, Stas Sharifullin aka HMOT has been discreetly carving out a place for himself amongst Moscow’s finest sound experimentalists; stitching together singular mosaics of modular patterns, field recordings and crossbred audio-visual mixes through complex, intricately woven structures. His latest for Berlin’s oqko, ‘Permanent Imbalance‘, further pushes his music into what the label astutely describes as a “Gregor Samsa-esque metamorphosis“, “interrupting the ecstatic clubbing experience in favor of a contradictory reality“.
Premiered as a collaborative installation at Modular+ Space in Berlin, part of art event Vorspiel Transmediale, we’re glad to bring you the exclusive stream of HMOT and MASSA‘s eponymous visual piece – a dizzying 3D tableau blending disfigured virtual flesh and convulsive glitches, drawing out the Russian producer’s fractured, ectopic rhythms into an immersive realm of fear and trepidation where bodies collide, reel and disintegrate. Fractalized images deploy and spread as dissonant noises and menacing echoes – viral to the fullest – mirror “the crisis in which modernity resides – a state of life out of balance which now appears to be permanent as never before“.
Permanent Imbalance is out now via oqko, order a copy from the label’s webshop.
TRACKLIST
1. Permanent Imbalance
2. Dieback Machinery
3. No Innocence
4. Logos
5. Collapse
Discover more about HMOT and oqko on Inverted Audio.
