After birds, the Russian/Israeli project Grundik + Slava now deals with frogs. Don’t have nightmares about Paul McCartney’s ‘We all stand together’ now, the watery creatures don’t play such a dominant role. With the help of renowned guest musicians Victoria Hanna, Igor Krutogolov and Vadim Gusus (Chaos as Shelter), an interesting electro-acoustic ambient creation has come to life. With a variety of instruments, fields recordings, live electronics, improvised vocals by Victoria and computer and computer manipulations, Grundik + Slava have created a very lively collage (or audio book as they call it) dedicated to the frogs and their environment.
I find this album less accessible than their previous album “…For Electronics and Birds”, which sounded more relaxing instead of improvised and eclectic. On “Frogs” there are meditative moments with subtle melodies, ongoing drones and atmospheric synths washing over you, but also tracks with experimental structures, jazzy improvisations and extrovert outbursts with many instruments on top of each other. The album is an interesting and intense exploration in which they try to cross many boundaties, but the whole sounds to improvised and chaotic too my taste. There are some excellent moments, in which the drones, textures and sounds organically come together, but in general “Frogs” is a little too fragmented for me.
A joint release between Auris Media and Topheth Prophet.
