The importance of Kontext

Russian producer Kontext, aka the Scrabble winning-ly named Stanislav Sevostyanikhin, unleashes his debut album on Bristol's Immerse label this month, and what an album it is.

Taking in a ton of genres, churning them up with a post-nuclear holocaust ambiance and spitting them out as eleven deep, dark, kinetic and prickly wedges of bass driven music, Kontext manages to somehow simultaneously paint both a rich, organic world and an abstract, digital one at the same time.

We caught up with him to talk about the album and, in turn, St.Petersburg architecture, Soviet-era Russian synths, dissociative journeys and radioactive fish...

So, tell us about the album, how long it took, how you recorded it and where; its influences etc?

I have written a number of albums under different guises, seven in total. But Dissociate LP is my first one on vinyl with worldwide distribution. It is a serious step in my musical career. Thanks to Immerse Records for trust. This album took me around 2 years, during which time I also was engaged in other projects. Dissociate LP includes some of the tunes that were already released before and will available in full digital version and 6 exclusives on 3x12” vinyl version.

The bleakness, desolation, abstractness, glitchy, nuclear fall-out soundscapes – what is it about those sounds you like, and are they influenced by your environment at home at all?

St.Petersburg is a city with a very graceful architecture in the centre and a poor industrial districts in suburbs. There’s a huge difference between those sides, like if we compare Paris and Detroit. I always lived in ugly square blocks, but worked and spent a free time in the historical centre. So if we can speak about environment influences in my music than combination of grace and ugliness is the general thing.

How do you get the prickly sounds so crisp and clear on tracks like ‘Convex Curved Mirror’?!

Those percussions are crisp and clear because they synthesized manually using Polyvox. It's an analog synthesizer manufactured and marketed in the Soviet Union between 1982 and 1990. One of the most ingenious inventions of Russian engineers, imo.

Where does the title come from? Is it a ketamine reference at all!?

Dissociation is the psychic mechanism at which point a human starts to conceive everything that happens to self and everything that is not self, another entity. It is a mental process that severs a connection to a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. That’s what some titles from an album about: Impossible Being, Ocean in the Bathroom, Searching for Transcendental etc. A man can enter into this state of consciousness not only by means of psychoactive drugs. There are lots of another ways: holotropic breathing, deep meditation, hypnosis. It can also be a response to trauma, for example. In this album I’ve set to myself a problem to create a kind of soundtrack to various dissociative journeys. And even if some listeners haven’t ever felt this state, this music should slightly open a curtain.



There’s a pocket of dubsteppers leaning toward techno for inspiration but I wouldn’t say your album does – is that a conscious thing and what, dub aside, do you listen to and get turned on by?

If we imagine an album as salad its recipe will be like this: twist of shuffled 2-step garage beats and deep sub basses filled with dub-tech chords and field recorded soundscapes, seasoning from glitchy IDM percussions and a few classic electro synths.

There are breakbeats, 90s Andy Weatherall style electro as well as dub influences in your music I’d say – how did you get into these sounds, what music did you grow up around and is there a scene in Russia we don’t know about?

I have a very wide outlook on music. As an electronic musician I grew up on Warp, Ninja Tune, Bristol sound from Portishead and Massive Attack plus drum&bass from such artists as Photek, TeeBee, Paradox, Polar and Matrix. Lately I have seriously taken a big interest in Dub Techno that have strongly affected my today's sound.

As for electronic scene in Russia I think you don’t know much about it. But I have my own local heroes like Messer Fur Frau Muller or New Composers.

And you used to record as Dissident making d&b and ambient – do you still? If not, why did you tire of those sounds and move on to what you produce now? What made the change come about?

I still make and play drum&bass music as Dissident. Also run my own label Opposide. My latest release is a 12” on Leipzig based Alphacut Records. I’m also preparing my new album that is going to be out later in 2010.

Anything else you’d like us to know?

Now astro-physicists speak about existence of other Universes outside of our visible Universe. They are like “bubbles”. I think there’s a set of the "bubbles", one in another. The biggest, most external bubble quantum-mechanical "appears inside" the small, most internal. Similar to surfaces of Moebius, being final number of the Universes.

Finally: there’s a nuclear disaster and its soundtracked by your album, you survive along with three of your possessions – what are they and why?

I don’t think there will be an electricity so no laptops etc. The things are my favorite book from Pavel Pepperstein, a ball to play and fishing tackle to hook a giant radioactive fishes and unknown creatures.