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Like most of you I have no idea what the term "freak folk" is actually suppose to mean, and since it's not a term artists embrace I'm tempted to throw it aside. But... Ilya Monosov's recording "Seven lucky plays, or how to fix songs for a broken heart" *is* rather freaky: "When I am in you, I am reminded of my tricycle" ("Tricycle"), "some of us are bound to suffering, and Others are just flying invalids" ("Ms Desolate"). And it's hard to dismiss that the basis of the music is folk (of one sort or another).
But it's also so clearly NOT folk. Folk is extroverted, it announces things to an audience. Folk music declares things (usually about love), describes social ills or is insistent, folk is generally poetic but it is usually surprisingly unsubtle. If "Seven lucky plays..." is anything it's subtle, almost understated. The instrumentation is intentionally spare (there's a lot of room for your head and ears to move around in each song), but it's never sparse. Ilya never vocalizes much above a whisper. It's seductive and encourages us to move closer to the speaker, to turn up the volume so that the music, however quiet, fills the room. This is not background music.
Much of the instrumentation is easily pegged as folk: acoustic guitar, recorder, cello, harp, mandolin but there's also synths and Fender Rhodes ELECTRIC guitar. And there are occasionally traces, rumors (whispers) of Russian folk music found on these songs. But folk says "PAY ATTENTION!", Ilya murmurs "here's something I have to say".
The bulk of what he has to say is about love, the rest is about lust. Reading the lyrics to this collection is like browsing through somebody else's love letters. They words are well composed and evocative but we're still outsiders, we'll never be quite sure what events lead up Monosov writing "Happy Song" but we can be glad that he did.
The album's tone is melancholic (as befits the recitation of memory) and it's pace is laconic, yet no song overstays it's welcome. Ilya knows when a song has reached it's potential and he never pointlessly drags them out, a trick many self described folkies should learn. This is an insidious album, just as it's ending you're already getting up to put it back on.
This is a wonderful experience of a record, but it's too extroverted, too perverted to be real folk. Thankfully.
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Ilya Monosov:
http://www.myspace.com/ilyamonosov
Language of Stone:
http://www.languageofstone.com/
http://www.myspace.com/languageofstones
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