| Artist: Andrey Dergatchev Album: The Return Released: 2 May 2006 | 
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Andrey Dergatchev's soundtrack for the film The Return takes on a whole new meaning when listened to outside its context in cinema. The 17 tracks on The Return (50'28") deliver more ideas and power in their three or four minutes each than do many pieces five or ten times their length, and their arrangement provides fascinating transformations between mood, color and hue. The album progresses in a dreamlike fashion as its meandering narrative transitions between profound and oddly different themes and musical forms. Dergatchev's diverging compositions range from the very basic: excerpts of the film's occasional dialogue (in Russian) and recorded sound, to the very moody: static sub-sonic drones and somber resonant synth-metal miniatures, to the hi-tech: sampled scraps of old Georgian folk tunes over digital glitches and vinyl pops, to the ingeniously accessible: soft dance rhythms and electronic pads beneath breathy duduk solos - an intriguing confluence of the acoustic and electronic, traditional and contemporary, cerebral and kinetic. With all its peculiar twists and transformational turns, the effect of listening to this music while daydreaming is surreal, yet The Return is also rewarding upon contemplation and close examination.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 25 August 2006 | |
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