Proxy - Revolution

Yesterday, Proxy, aka Evgeny Pozharnov, shared with Dummy some personal, and rather poetic, reflections on what it’s like to be a musician in Russia in 2012.

With the cover emblazoning a digitised hammer and sickle, Proxy’s ‘Music from the Eastblock Jungles, Part I’ seems interested in resurfacing some of his country’s Soviet past. With this in mind, the decision to name one of the album’s immediate standouts Revolution only becomes more loaded. But the connotations don’t just tell of historicised notions of Russian revolution. In his Dummy piece, Proxy spoke of modern Russia as a place of stark contrasts, where extremes of wealth and class clash in a manner that “is at once beautiful and repellent”.

It is contrast – shortly collapsing into full on collision – that most informs Revolution. The track begins with a thrusting robotic voice, one built on half-human phrasings and unsettling computerised outcries, which repeatedly returns with vigour. Set against this is an organic, altogether more human, palette of drum sounds – all breezy cymbals and tight syncopated beats. The two opposing forces continuously threaten to go to war, as Revolution buzzes along with explosive energy and gnarly gusto.