Born and raised in Obluchye, some 8,000 kilometers from Moscow on the border with China, Max Ananyev is a Russian composer and sound producer based in St. Petersburg. Having made music under the monikers of AMVI and Tree Bosier, he is also quite a fine classical guitarist and that is the instrument at the heart of his new solo album Communication to be released under his own name on Preserved Sound.
At the heart of Max Ananyev’s music is the idea of the variation of dynamics and lack of a stable tempo in composition that mimic the unpredictable processes that occur in nature. “There is so much rhythm and tempo in our daily lives,”says Max, “it sometimes seems to me that our metronomic lifestyles deprives us of a certain freedom and means of expression.” – Preserved Sound
This thoughtful 6-minute documentary video filmed by Natalya Poluyanova and entitled “Nature as Teacher” features excerpts from the upcoming album while Ananyev quietly drives home its central message, a gentle reminder to not let the sterility of a mechanized, technogenic society, with its relentless emphasis on predictability and productivity, blind us to the beauty, harmony, and complexity of nature and what we can learn from being attuned to it.
As can be heard in the video, throughout Communication Ananyev uses his pristine guitar lines to evoke pastoral sounds, but nature as presented here is not entirely bucolic or simply a pleasant urban escape. It is vibrant, complex, and bustling with life and overlapping rhythms. It is resplendent, stately, and even playful. Autumn is a perfect time to go on this invigorating sonic journey and then take up its thought-provoking invitation to go outside with eyes, ears, and mind wide open and engage in one’s own dialog with nature.
Communication will be released on November 21 by Preserved Sound on limited edition CD (150 copies). Pre-orders are now available on their Bandcamp site (link below).
Pre-Order: https://preservedsound.bandcamp.com/album/communication
Stationary Travels 