Monday, April 2, 2012

Group: Tunguska Electronic Music Society

The cover of the first album:
Chillout Grooves
The Tunguska Electronic Music Society is a loose-knit group of mostly ambient and electronic artists, that was started in Russia. A quasi-netlabel in its own right, the Society has now published over a dozen albums through Jamendo.com, and continues to publish new music to this day.
The first album, Chillout Grooves, gives an excellent sense of the project. The first track, Tunguska M by Bigfoot is a bit more rock-oriented with electric guitars, drums and keyboard setting the stage for the rest of the album.
Euphoria by MoVoX is a much more experimental piece, with complex timing and wild electronic effects that are almost theremin-like.
Vacuum Fields by Aquascape is a very traditional style of relaxing ambient composition with the addition of electric guitar.
Overall, the album plays as expected of a high-quality, modern electronic project, anywhere in the world.
The most recent album, Craters: Romeiko seems to be taking on the native North American musical traditions, attempting to forge a modern re-interpretation of the classic tribal rhythms. There's more vocal work on Craters than the earlier work, and for a Western audience this might be a problem, but for my money, a good foreign vocal is just an extra instrument.Grust' Devushki by Panna Cotta is a lovely trancy number with a beautiful female lead vocal track that's mesmerizing in any language.
Craters is currently the most popular album on Jamendo.com, and in my opinion, that status is well-deserved.
There's so much more to go into, and I probably will write individual reviews of each album if I have time. But for now, why not go down load an album or two and see what you think?