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LP
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HHLTS 003LP
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$26.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/14/2025
Valentina Goncharova's work encapsulates a unique blend of innovation and tradition, providing audiences with an enthralling exploration of the vast possibilities within musical expression. Drawing upon her compositional skills honed during her academic studies, Valentina expertly manipulates the violin, seamlessly integrating it with synthesizers and drum machines. The result is a mesmerizing fusion of organic and electronic elements, characterized by slow, pulsating drone soundscapes.
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2LP
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SHUKAI 003LP
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2023 repress! Historically informed violin player, prize-winning street musician, new age experimentalist, chamber ensemble performer and conservatoire deviant. The career of Valentina Goncharova (b. Kyiv 1953) shares parallels with those associated with the broader new music movement of the 20th century and the dissemination of home recording technologies. Valentina's was a youth spent immersed in the world of classical music study under soviet rule, first in Kyiv and later in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) from the age of 16. With the supervision of professors M. Vayman and B. Gutnikov she learned concert violin and developed alternate playing styles alongside skilled pianists. The improvisatory nature of free jazz and then-budding experimental rock circles also intrigued Valentina. Departing from the rules of the conservatoire, she briefly performed in underground rock clubs alongside future members of the industrial group Pop-Mechanika (Popular Mechanics). This perpetual state of flux is central to the variety found within Recordings Vol. 1, though as opposed to any degree of uncertainty Valentina's practice is one in flux by way of earnest curiosity. Pushing further into an exploration of solo electro-acoustic sounds, she took to home taping on a modified Olimp reel-to-reel recorder. Intrigued by the manipulability of dubbing and the fresh sounds of DIY effects chains, Goncharova developed pickups alongside her husband Igor Zubkov. Her infatuation with the music of Stockhausen, Xenakis, Ganelin Trio, and Pierre Boulez channels through considerations of space and erratic sound design, the three movements of "Metamorphoses" embodying this textural approach to musique concrete. The compositional skills developed in Leningrad unfold in the romantic gestures of "Higher Frequencies", whilst manipulated cello combines with synthesizer keys across "Passageway To Eternity". The slow, pulsating drone soundscapes recall the likes of Robert Rutman's US Steel Cello Ensemble or even deep listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. The juxtaposition of written notation and improvisatory flare is central to Goncharova's sound world. This period of home recording documents a confluence of minimalism, free form and flirtations with new age tropes (including bell chimes and cavernous vocal mantras). Experimenting with unusual performance techniques, such as shouting into amplified cello strings, Valentina's home studio functioned as a place to foster full artistic and creative freedom away from any academic strictures. Relocating to Estonia in 1984, in a sense, the recordings on these discs offer only a glimpse into her lifelong body of work. Private experimental home-tapes unheard for thirty years.
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Cassette
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SHUKAI 003CS
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Cassette version, C90. Historically informed violin player, prize-winning street musician, new age experimentalist, chamber ensemble performer and conservatoire deviant. The career of Valentina Goncharova (b. Kyiv 1953) shares parallels with those associated with the broader new music movement of the 20th century and the dissemination of home recording technologies. Valentina's was a youth spent immersed in the world of classical music study under soviet rule, first in Kyiv and later in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) from the age of 16. With the supervision of professors M. Vayman and B. Gutnikov she learned concert violin and developed alternate playing styles alongside skilled pianists. The improvisatory nature of free jazz and then-budding experimental rock circles also intrigued Valentina. Departing from the rules of the conservatoire, she briefly performed in underground rock clubs alongside future members of the industrial group Pop-Mechanika (Popular Mechanics). This perpetual state of flux is central to the variety found within Recordings Vol. 1, though as opposed to any degree of uncertainty Valentina's practice is one in flux by way of earnest curiosity. Pushing further into an exploration of solo electro-acoustic sounds, she took to home taping on a modified Olimp reel-to-reel recorder. Intrigued by the manipulability of dubbing and the fresh sounds of DIY effects chains, Goncharova developed pickups alongside her husband Igor Zubkov. Her infatuation with the music of Stockhausen, Xenakis, Ganelin Trio, and Pierre Boulez channels through considerations of space and erratic sound design, the three movements of "Metamorphoses" embodying this textural approach to musique concrete. The compositional skills developed in Leningrad unfold in the romantic gestures of "Higher Frequencies", whilst manipulated cello combines with synthesizer keys across "Passageway To Eternity". The slow, pulsating drone soundscapes recall the likes of Robert Rutman's US Steel Cello Ensemble or even deep listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. The juxtaposition of written notation and improvisatory flare is central to Goncharova's sound world. This period of home recording documents a confluence of minimalism, free form and flirtations with new age tropes (including bell chimes and cavernous vocal mantras). Experimenting with unusual performance techniques, such as shouting into amplified cello strings, Valentina's home studio functioned as a place to foster full artistic and creative freedom away from any academic strictures. Relocating to Estonia in 1984, in a sense, the recordings on these discs offer only a glimpse into her lifelong body of work. Private experimental home-tapes unheard for thirty years.
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Cassette
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SHUKAI 006CS
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Cassette version, C45. Following the unpublished works of the Ukrainian/Estonian musician Valentina Goncharova, Volume 2 of Shukai's archival project sits in direct contrast to the solo works of Vol. 1. Vol. 2 1987-1991 completes Shukai's dive into the sound world of an important yet overlooked artist working within Soviet era electroacoustics. This long player of duets casts a light on Goncharova's experiences with early free jazz, democratic improvisation and introductions to pure electronic sound. Where Vol. 1 explored her home studio experiments and flirtations with musique concrete and new age, this volume seeks to give audience to similarly DIY recordings developed in collaborative environments away from the conservatoire. Properly documenting sessions revolving around smoky jazz cafes, art galleries, salons and theater venues across Riga and Tallinn, these seven pieces add to the historical narrative of the Soviet-era avant-garde and show the broader spectrum of Valentina's work. It begins in Riga with an adapted score for a delicately unfolding violin drone, voice and saxophone performance produced by Valentina and Alexander Aksenov. Valetina's bond with the multi-instrumentalist and theater director Aksenov led to decades of close friendship and several demo recordings such as "Reincarnation II". Across the rest of the disc are collaborative duets with Sergei Letov and Pekka Airaksinan respectively, the three tapes with Letov an example of recordings as a "rehearsal process". Atypical violin/saxophone techniques and light, difficult to place percussive textures interplay across the three duets with Letov, the sense of spatiality alluding to the very nature of the recordings. They strike ultimately as private, freeform experiments with sound, never intended for the listener but documenting a practice which explores the dichotomy of improv's "non-professionalism" and its potential freedom from trained performance. They are included as a deliberate variance to the tapes with Pekka Airaksinen, an already well-regarded composer, early synthesizer fanatic and Finnish radical. At their time of meeting, Pekka had diverted his attention from punk-indebted noise and free jazz groups to a pursuit of spiritualism via contemporary electronic technologies. Already familiar with the Buddhas of Golden Light LP, Valentina found in his work an attraction to the sacred and, after an encounter at a 1988 Helsinki festival dedicated to futurist art and literature, she prepared to visit his studio. After a failed attempt to record a joint album, fragments of the tapes are presented here, highlighting Goncharova's first real experience of electronic music making in a compositional sense. Fragmented guitar and additional keyboard patterns push and pull through delay units in unison with Valentina's two violins, at times mimicking the howl of the wind or even the human voice.
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2LP
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HHLT 001LP
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2023 restock. Valentina Goncharova's double-LP fundamental conceptual musical work released in full uncut form as part of Hidden Harmony Lost Tapes series. Restored and mastered from the original 6.3mm analog tapes. A large-scale work comprising eleven parts of varied, brooding, mystical reflection in which the author alters the instrumentation to fit both programmatic and musical character of each section.Ultra deluxe archival release from Hidden Harmony Recordings, based in Tallinn, Estonia. 2x12" 200-gram vinyl records in poly lined inner sleeves, 33RPM, black vinyl. Thick old style tip-on gatefold outer sleeve. Includes a 12-page booklet, which detailly explain the album conceptual basis, background and creation context, and provides insights into unique sound recording and technical solutions adapted during album recording in 1988. Created and written with direct involvement of V. Goncharova and I. Zubkov.
Liner notes: "My task is to allow the listener to penetrate deeper into the music. The music is wholly improvisational. It has no concept in the rational sense of the word. Its concept is purely intuitive. It presumes The Law of Analogies: 'As above so below. Man is the same as the Universe. The Universe is the same as Man.' ('Emerald Tablet' by Hermes Trismegistus). This intuition is a kind of rephrased logic which uses many more symbols which contain not only philosophical but also imaginative meanings/visionary interpretations. This music is a stream of consciousness in its purest form: not an imitation of a stream, as in the 'suggestive poetry' of the 20th century, but a stream where one flow is superimposed on another (a multilateral passage of recording). And, if we think this flow of music will be better understood under the influence of a verbal flow, then the verbal flow should also be more intuitive and associative, as objective for this short write-up you are currently reading. Ocean did not appear within the coordinate system of logical scientific thinking of the last four centuries. It can be said that it is based on an intuitive concept of representations of the world which are captured in music figuratively. Similar to how myths were created in time immemorial with only partial support from verbal associations. Ocean is an experience of passing the human, soul, and mind through the different states of the material world: birth, development, and achievement of perfection, transformation at the points of 'The Way' and 'Silence', the manifestation of the harmony of the world (Om), which until then had remained in a latent state. It is averse to both mainstream contemporary physics and fringe scientific research. It exists outside their explanatory power. Ocean is the source of all forms that can receive their life within time and space. Here it is. It has everything: beautiful and terrible, good and evil, self-sacrifice, and betrayal. Boundless love and inspired creativity. But contact does not happen immediately. The memory of a bygone civilization is still fresh, and of the dearest things left with it."
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Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
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LP
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SHUKAI 006LP
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2023 restock. Following the unpublished works of the Ukrainian/Estonian musician Valentina Goncharova, Volume 2 of Shukai's archival project sits in direct contrast to the solo works of Vol. 1. Vol. 2 1987-1991 completes Shukai's dive into the sound world of an important yet overlooked artist working within Soviet era electroacoustics. This long player of duets casts a light on Goncharova's experiences with early free jazz, democratic improvisation and introductions to pure electronic sound. Where Vol. 1 explored her home studio experiments and flirtations with musique concrete and new age, this volume seeks to give audience to similarly DIY recordings developed in collaborative environments away from the conservatoire. Properly documenting sessions revolving around smoky jazz cafes, art galleries, salons and theatre venues across Riga and Tallinn, these seven pieces add to the historical narrative of the Soviet-era avant-garde and show the broader spectrum of Valentina's work. It begins in Riga with an adapted score for a delicately unfolding violin drone, voice and saxophone performance produced by Valentina and Alexander Aksenov. Valetina's bond with the multi-instrumentalist and theater director Aksenov led to decades of close friendship and several demo recordings such as "Reincarnation II". Across the rest of the disc are collaborative duets with Sergei Letov and Pekka Airaksinan respectively, the three tapes with Letov an example of recordings as a "rehearsal process". Atypical violin/saxophone techniques and light, difficult to place percussive textures interplay across the three duets with Letov, the sense of spatiality alluding to the very nature of the recordings. They strike ultimately as private, freeform experiments with sound, never intended for the listener but documenting a practice which explores the dichotomy of improv's "non-professionalism" and its potential freedom from trained performance. They are included as a deliberate variance to the tapes with Pekka Airaksinen, an already well-regarded composer, early synthesizer fanatic and Finnish radical. At their time of meeting, Pekka had diverted his attention from punk-indebted noise and free jazz groups to a pursuit of spiritualism via contemporary electronic technologies. Already familiar with the Buddhas of Golden Light LP, Valentina found in his work an attraction to the sacred and, after an encounter at a 1988 Helsinki festival dedicated to futurist art and literature, she prepared to visit his studio. After a failed attempt to record a joint album, fragments of the tapes are presented here, highlighting Goncharova's first real experience of electronic music making in a compositional sense. Fragmented guitar and additional keyboard patterns push and pull through delay units in unison with Valentina's two violins, at times mimicking the howl of the wind or even the human voice.
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