It’s not uncommon that the initial release from a new netlabel is by the musician who founded the netlabel. It was the case with recently with Davin Sarno’s Absence of Wax, and with Dave Seidel’s mysterybear, and is now with Tukuringra (tukuringra.wordpress.com), which the Russian musician Kirill Platonkin named after a mountain range in northern part of the eastern region known as Amur. In a brief liner note, Platonkin compares the new release with his earlier Our Eternal Alarm, which appeared last year on the Dark Winter netlabel. Platonkin says that Stampede, the new album, is, like its predecessor, “of drone ambient style with field recordings,” but this time around, as he puts it, “Alarm turns to action.” Given the stoic content of Stampede, an eerie stasis that brings to mind the permafrost of Platonkin’s home region, it’s clear that “action” is a relative term in the region of music called drone.
Stampede is three tracks of extended length, ranging between eleven minutes and close to half an hour. Each (“Halo,” “Volatilization,” and the title track) varies widely once it gets going. At any instant, a Stampede track will seem static, but from a 35,000 foot view, it is as varied as could be. The title piece, for example, opens with a buzzy orchestral effect and closes with a choral one, complete with doomy bells, but in between there are shifting scenes of glistening chiming and haunting whorls. The accomplishment is Platonkin’s ease at moving between these scenes without ever letting a seam show.
Get the full set of three MP3s at tukuringra.wordpress.com. (They’re packaged in a way that doesn’t allow for streaming here.)
There are countless forms of musical collaboration, and one of the most intimate would be the situation when one musician processes, live, the sounds of another. Such activities date back at least as early as Brian Eno’s role during live performances by Roxy Music, and today flower in the realms of microsound and the electronic fringes of free improvisation. To take one musician’s sonic emissions and, as they occur, reshape them is something akin to being a live-action dramaturge: interpreting in real time. Back in November of last year, British musician Simon Whetham, who has a specialization in field recordings, was preparing a performance at the adventurous Prague gallery Å kolská 28. Scheduling and shared interests put him in touch, thanks to the gallery’s director, MiloÅ¡ VojtÄ›chovský, with Michael Delia, a U.S. musician who resides at times in the city. Their performance, which was recorded and later made available for free download as an 
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