|
Ilya E. Monosov - Seven Lucky Plays or How to Fix Songs
For A Broken Heart (Language of Stone) Eric Nielsen
4.7.8
 Ilya E Monosov drops 10 songs on his new disc, Seven
Lucky Plays or How to Fix Songs For a Broken Heart.
One thing Ilya does know how to do is set a mood with
creaking attic sounds that permeate the lower
registers of ambience behind most of the tracks.
I met
Ilya when he lived in SD through a mutual friend,
Makoto Kawabata of Acid Mothers Temple. He was
working with Kawabata on some drones across the ocean
the same time that Kawabata was remixing and releasing
my band, Maquiladora's ep "White Sands".
We got together a few times to play a little music,
have some drags and talk about art. We never meshed
but I sensed some interesting ideas about song-making
from Ilya that made me very interested to hear this
solo disc.
The mood is thick like smoke from the
artwork, the instrumentation, and the lyrics. It's
heavy foreboding. I love some of the lines
and Slint sounding whispers of Tricycle, even though I
don't understand the relationship between the pieces that
well. I love the line "when I'm inside you" but I
don't feel the next line "I'm reminded of my
tricycle."
The artwork has Ilya looking really stoned
out, breathing out smoke on one shot and looking like
he's coming off acid or sleeping off the junk. I
think the pictures perfectly relate to the music.
There is a subtle gypsy influence in the sounds, with
mostly picked guitar setting the compositions.
Greg
Weeks and Jesse Sparhawk also play on the disc, which
doesn't always feel like a disc of songs. Wandering
between Waits scenarios, European settings, Slint
whispers, dreamy harps, and whacked stringed tweaking
this album gently trods a path through a magic forest
near dusk, basking in the last orange glowing moments
of day and dropping into early evening.
There is
hardly any percussion to make your march through a
weary trail of toil and travails that accompany you
while you listen and walk. Gentle and melancholy, you
should be on your way. Follow the stringed sounds
into the blackened midnight.
|
