Kolpakopf – «mono no aware»

Cat.# … DNA 199
Release Date … 13.10.2017
Genre … Dark Ambient, Drone Ambient
Type … FLAC Lossless

Mono no aware is an artistic concept typical for Japanese culture in Heian period (794 – 1185 AD). It’s translated as «sad empathy to things around» – very roughly. Mono no aware is a state of your mind when you feel yourself in harmony with the things around. It appears when your subjective principle joins and comes in fusion with objects around you. For Japanese, it’s something calm and sofisticated. Your mono no aware can happen every time you meditate and listen to birds’ chirping, or rain, or brook murmur.

Kolpakopf’s new work isn’t as calm as the Japanese tankas but sofisticated as usual. His «mono no aware» appeals to sad autumn feelings, contemplation, reflection. High-frequency drones clip sounds from outside and make room for subtle loops of short stagnated melodies, vibrating ultra-low-frequency drones and elementary field recordings guiding you from lingering autumn rains to crackling of the fire between tall pines propping dark heavens as first snowflakes melt on your face.

The lines at the back of the cover aren’t tracklist but the tanka by Sarumaru no Taifu: «High in the mountains, a wandering deer cries in maple forest and I feel so sad as Autumn comes».

Tracklisting:

  1. Kolpakopf – Untitled (14:40)
  2. Kolpakopf – Untitled (05:25)
  3. Kolpakopf – Untitled (12:45)
  4. Kolpakopf – Untitled (07:22)

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Kolpakopf – «Между (Between)»

Cat.# … DNA 196
Release Date … 27.06.2017
Genre … Dark Ambient
Type … FLAC Lossless

There is something between dream and reality. There is something between sanity and madness, between light and darkness, between life and death. Probably there is an edge between two opposites, strong like a friend’s hand or thin like a thread. Can you feel the edge? And where is the edge? And if you feel the edge between two opposite sides, do you know on which side is good and there is evil?

New Kolpakopf’s work called «Между (Between)» is about it but it does not offer any answers, neither does it ask any questions. This is something like a sound fingerprint of borderline state where you feel yourself placed in a vast empty space and in a tiny dark room simultaneously.

Tracklisting:

  1. Kolpakopf – Untitled (39:40)

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Kolpakopf – «Ink»

Cat.# … DNA 189
Release Date … 01.03.2017
Genre … Dark Ambient, Drone Ambient
Type … FLAC

Sometimes Kolpakopf impresses with sound experiments but this time he just put you in thick boiling mass of drones where dark ambient soundscapes, distorted bells ringing, dissonant pipe organ and piano, and contorted chants sink and float. Echo-like splashes of repetitive drones, hysterical high-frequency loops, frantic hums’ spasmodic pulsations can’t hide unstable layered constructions made of various sound materials with imperative atonal combinations. On the background of local peaks of sound pressure, each piece increases intensity and progress eventually to emphatic apogee before emotional discharge in catatonic final. And there you find Kolpakopf’s usual anxiety, personal phobias initialization, and isolationist mood – as always though.

Recorded in 2016.

Tracklisting:

  1. Kolpakopf – Untitled (16:32)
  2. Kolpakopf – Untitled (19:09)
  3. Kolpakopf – Untitled (15:42)

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Kolpakopf – «Escapism»

Cat.# … DNA 186
Release Date … 09.11.2016
Genre … Dark Ambient
Type … FLAC

Sullen Kolpakopf keeps pressing with his original dark, heavy and a bit claustrophobic ambient. Kolpakopf’s «Escapism» reveals not a final point for escapist but the process of reaching that point.

Saturnine soundscapes, catacombs pathways, illegible voices through hum and noises and unceasing mental stress. Black-and-white vision, walking on the edge, electric lights instead of sun and rare scrappy images of escapist relaxation at the peak of psychic burnout.

Recorded in 2016.

Tracklisting:

  1. Kolpakopf – I (11:48)
  2. Kolpakopf – II (15:40)
  3. Kolpakopf – III (13:42)

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Kolpakopf – «Indivisible Triplicity Of Death»

Cat.# … DNA 182
Release Date … 26.05.2016
Genre … Dark Ambient
Type … FLAC

It’s Kolpakopf again, and again his work touch on the subject of death. And again the work is inspired by literature, and again Kolpakopf get inspired by mystical Jorge Luis Borges.

In «Indivisible Triplicity Of Death» philosophical reflections about significance of death in the human perception metamorphose in chaotic waves of low-frequency noise swamping lifeless and deliberately minimalistic sound caverns. Arised there and sewn together in an anxious canvas, consonances, pieces of phrases and similar sets of anthropogenic sounds slowly emerge into a wall of noise and then disjoin at the peak of their intensity. Later they appear again in another form to arise and to fall eventually.

It looks like those changes in situations and in points of view in Jorge Luis Borges’ stories wherein half-words and allusions spawn layers of implication and force to overinterpret probable development of the action. And doubtless it force to continue author’s fantasies in someone’s own way. As Borges’ stories, Kolpakopf’s «Indivisible Triplicity Of Death» offers a few of detailed patterns and provoke to interpret them before the piece develops enough to show author’s original idea.

Recorded in 2015.

Tracklisting:

  1. Kolpakopf – Untitled (24:22)

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Kolpakopf – «INFERIAE»

Cat.# … DNA 174
Release Date … 22.04.2015
Genre … Dark Ambient
Type … FLAC Lossless

This time Kolpakopf brings us to the edge of underworld. His new work «INFERIAE» sends to ancient grave rituals of bringing sacred offerings to the beings of underworld – to the spirits of the dead. Arisen from the depths of time, these rites transformed to sacrificial practices, from horrible Phoenician human sacrifices to harmless Christian oblations.

What is the essence of these practices? What does it mean for people who donate now and offered blood sacrifices in the past? What the difference between a savage who brings grains to the dead and a modern man who lays a wreath on a grave? And is there a difference?

Kolpakopf doesn’t offer any answers. His «INFERIAE» just helps to keep the doors half-open, helps to descend to your own inner underworld, and helps to see the roots of those rituals, to see obscure paths from the present to the past.

Tracklisting:

  1. Kolpakopf – Untitled (41:53)

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Kolpakopf, Red Fog & lost-radio in Sadayatana Podcast #208

Tracks by Kolpakopf, Red Fog & lost-radio have featured in Sadayatana Podcast #208 «Mysterious States» (February 02, 2015).

Listen and find there:

Thanks to John Tocher.

Sadayatana Podcast #208 «Mysterious States»

Kolpakopf – «ХРОNOФАГIA»

Cat.# … DNA 165
Release Date … 21.01.2015
Genre … Dark Ambient
Type … FLAC Lossless

ХРОNOФАГIA means chronophagia in Ancient Greek. When naming his work with such word, Kolpakopf was inspired by «J. H. Obereit’s Visit to the Time-Leeches», a mystical story by Austrian expressionist writer Gustav Meyrink. In his reflections about nature of time Kolpakopf turned to this short story about weird journey in the world beyond where all people are distortedly reflected in some time-leeches. These disgusting creatures are devouring «time», a mystical essence of life sucked from respective people when these people are in expectation of something to be happened in their lives. The idea of the story is that every expectation or hope experienced by people leads to leaking that «time essence» from them and this constant leakage just like a bleeding eventually kills people because their lives are clots of thickened time.

Kolpakopf talks about that journey to the world of chronophages in his usual manner of meditative dark ambient whose coldness and transparency are emphasized by hand bells samples running all through the work.

So welcome to the world of time-leeches. Hurry to banish your hopes if you want to visit once your own gravestone and see that strange motto «VIVO» engraved there.

Tracklisting:

  1. Kolpakopf – Untitled (31:58)

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