Romania has given the world a distinct variety of spectralism, music that built on the foundations laid by composers like Iannis Xenakis, La Monte Young, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Olivier Messiaen. Romania’s exploration of drone was pioneered in the 1960s by composers like Corneliu Cezar, Octavian Nemescu, Lucian Metianu, Costin Cazaban, Stefan Niculescu, Aurel Stroe and Nicolae Brindus Simultaneously, the likes of Horatiu Radulescu and Iancu Dumitrescu were pursuing an improvisatory style that recalled the sounds of something ancient.
Today, the country’s composers can draw from that strong heritage in avant-garde and contemporary music. Web publication The Attic might also cite it as their reference point. “The idea was to create an online magazine covering various music genres and investigating worldwide cultures,” says Dragoș Rusu, one of the people who co-founded it a decade ago. Through reports, features, podcasts, reviews, and interviews with various artists, composers and ensembles, its goal is to provide sociocultural and historical context specific to some geographical regions, analysing music on a level beyond its status simply as artistic output.
Rusu’s community were also behind the Outernational Days festival, which lasted from 2016 to 2020. “I transformed a utopian idea into a reality and something palpable,” he says. “We connected different non-Western cultures and music onstage, located at the periphery of the hegemonic cultural circuit, but also addressed (through concerts and panel discussions) some serious issues concerning institutionalised racism in Romania.” Now, he’s a part of Melodiy, a new platform dedicated to exploring the Romanian independent music scene through concerts, songwriting workshops, discussions, and residencies that focus on artistic niches underrepresented in the local cultural space.
Although musicians with whom I spoke for this column say this is not an easy time, I’m dazzled as I listen to their music, finding everything from electronica and trap to free guitar music and noise. However, though relatively easy to record, this is challenging music to present in the country, where the centre of activity for experimental music is in the capital, Bucharest. “Capitalism is constantly trying to appropriate any form of culture, even the so-called “alternative” culture, and any form of independent organising is viewed with scepticism,” says Dan Michiu, a guitarist with Jah Cuzzi and the founder of Beach Buddies Records. “Bucharest is not immune to this global phenomenon; it is a fast-gentrifying city, and this saw a decline in the last few years in terms of venues and art spaces available.”
Countrywide, however, clusters of unique musicians keep finding ways to persevere. Crucial spaces and events that remain in the capital include Zadar, a bar in the city centre open to outsider music, Control Club, Club Guesthouse, Platforma Wolff, and Rokolektiv Festival. Also worth mentioning are now-defunct initiatives such as Sâmbăta Sonoră, Rezidența21, and JADD. Outside Bucharest, there’s the Simultan festival in Timișoara and the LMA collective who are active in Cluj.
A number of labels release Romanian and international music, such as the aforementioned Beach Buddies, Orgone Dealers, The Cristea Institute, Mnemosyne Recordings, and New Romanian Weird. One of the most crucial is Future Nuggets, which have released four instalments of a compilation called Sounds Of The Unheard From Romania. They describe themselves as being “informed by the past but made for the times to come”. As co-founder Ion D. tells me, “Future Nuggets aimed to invent a scene in Bucharest, navigating without set directions or goals due to the absence of a local network for alternative expressions.” He continues: “We stood from [our] genesis for non-chronology. At the periphery of the Western music industry, in the international realms, times are constantly coming yet never coalescing in a stable present. Time is never reliable.”
There is also the Semi-Silent platform, founded by artist Anamaria Pravicencu, which is dedicated to radio art, sound art, and field recordings. Underground and experimental cultural mini-scenes depend on some state funding, which is often very hard to secure. Music is constantly forced to move, with shows taking place in art spaces or galleries.
Dan Michiu argues that the Romanian musical landscape is now isolated. Some may argue that this is because of the country’s enormous territory, crumbling public infrastructure, and the way its cultural life is concentrated mainly in a few bigger cities. The issue might also be blamed on a lack of interest and organisation. However, maintaining what connections they can with like-minded people, musicians, and Eastern and Central European labels is essential. “Our common cultural and geographic context puts us in contact by default,” says Michiu. “If you want to book a tour that will get you to the West, you have to establish connections with Hungary, Bulgaria, and Serbia, for example, from then on Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Austria. Those connections lead to a mutual exchange of information, ideas, tapes, records, shows, and contacts.
Simina OprescuSound Of MatterHallow Ground
As a child, Simina Oprescu was fascinated with church bells from Transylvania. During her studies at Berlin’s Universität Der Künste in sound studies and sonic arts, she did research that included a study of 15 historical church bells at the Märkisches Museum and the Stadtmuseum Berlin, built between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. She first presented the result as a multichannel installation, then decided to translate their sounds – which vary according to shape, material, and density – into the language of electronics using Max/MSP. On Sound Of Matter she has recreated the harmonic tone of the individual bells, however we do not hear a deafening pounding but an afterimage; reverberation stretched to the limit in a way that recalls Kali Malone or Sarah Davachi. Subtle tonal shifts build up material that’s minimalist in form but maximalist in sound, divided into two tracks whose warmth envelopes. It’s a dignified work that induces a state of reverie.
Jah CuzziPanic! At The ConservatoryStoned To Death
This is guitar music based on improvisation, drawing both on the motoric nature of krautrock and spacious psychedelia. Forty minutes of slow, somewhat desolate sound unfurls over two sides of vinyl. Keyboard drones provide the backdrop, while lashing guitars are accompanied by almost static, steady drums. Misty psychedelic suspense comes in the form of droning guitar walls and rising synth passages. There’s no explosion; instead there’s a hanging weight that constantly lingers, until at the finale the improvisation finally succumbs to chaos. The musicians don’t serve up straightforward rock riffs, however, but build upon each other with multi-layered hallucinations. Added value comes from overdubbing that infuses this expedition in reverb with an extra psychedelic dimension.
Lala MisosnikySunstrokeNew Romanian Weird
Although this is an album release, Lala Misosniky has been working in the borderlands of the arts for more than a decade, through installations, performance art, and experiments with formats and the potential of sound. One of the fantastic projects she co-created was Knots, organised in the city parks of Bucharest, in which visual and sonic interventions were used to bridge the gap between humanity and nature. Sunstroke is a peculiar sound environment in which field recordings, elements of musique concrète, and electronic and quasi-organic strands interweave to create a colourful soundtrack with an extensive sonic palette. Two tracks reach 12 minutes, another 19, disrupting the album format, stretching it to its limits. It’s a dramatic, immersive piece that’s part sound installation, part imagined radio play.
Diana Miron, Tijana StankovićParralaxBeach Buddies
Sonically, Diana Miron and Tijana Stanković’s remarkable experiments in voice, viola and violin remind me of the work of Jessica Pavone’s ensembles. They, however, are even more radical in their search for sonority, almost stripping their instruments of their characteristic qualities, plucking and pulling strings, straining the sound, diluting, focusing on details and repetitions ad infinitum. They explore the voice on the one hand through a method akin to Maja Ratkje, and on the other hand through whispers, but also by using chants that recall a more abstract Mariam Wallentin. The first side shows a deconstruction of the viola, violin and voice, and the second tends towards drawn-out playing reminiscent of Širom’s ‘post folk’ and even the aesthetics of opera.
Dan MichiuPithecanthropus CarpathicusMolt Fluid
Dan Michiu started out listening to hip hop, moved through punk and electronica and then to the avant-garde activities he is involved in today. He studied guitar but decided to quit school in favour of building his own musical language. He explores psychedelia as part of the aforementioned Jah Cuzzi, but also breaks down the sound of the instrument in his work elsewhere. Here, the guitar can be heard as afterimages on deteriorated tapes. It’s partly reminiscent of hip hop sampling methodology, but more so the endless loops of Philip Jack or William Basinski. There’s a roughness and density to it but it’s also multi-layered, an exploration of the various timbres and textures that can emerge from a thicket of noise. Despite everything, it sounds clear and organic, a peculiar meditation.
Suce FragaLofi Mood SwingsSelf-Released
Andreea Baciu jumps between genres, taking in hip hop, R&B, trap, and experimental electronic sounds. There are no compact song structures here, but rather a dreamy, free-flowing aura, which can already be heard in the opening “ha ha ha” which emerges from a mixture of noise and bass. This character persists throughout the album, lasting 25 minutes. She cedes sound, declaims, adds reverb, sometimes raps, and sometimes relies on simple patterns of beat and bass. Exploring the spaces between the emotional and the social from a queer and feminist perspective, she manipulates her vocals, creating a slightly unstable mood, then twists things into a broken no wave sound full of pulsations, snatches and spat-out sentences, such as in the bizarre ‘Flux’ or the processed vocals of ‘Se Lucreaza Grew’.
Somnoroase PăsăreleAUTO[2]Mahorka
Not a year goes by when Gili Mocanu does not release more music under the name Somnoroase Păsărele, a moniker taken from a famous line by Mihai Eminescu, considered to be the most important Romanian poet. Mocanu is also a visual artist; in his work, he combines explorations of image and music, expressed in the form of collages, stark motifs, and a particular unbridled energy. AUTO[2], like the rest of his work, is captivating, thanks above all to its meticulous use of samples. The rhythm is sometimes reminiscent of obscure techno (‘AUTO 8’), and sometimes of an imagined synthetic folk (‘AUTO 43’).
Radical Din CalSunete Din Casă (1996-1998)New Romanian Weird
Post punk and new wave band Radical In Cal was formed in the mid-1990s outside of the capital, in Timișoara, but survived for only a few years. Abstract, surreal and sonically condensed, their name itself was dadaist and provocative. Translating as ‘square root of a horse’, it was later changed to Radical Din Val (‘square root of a wave’) when the band was reactivated in 1999. Their compositional ideas are noteworthy because of the pro-transformation mood of mid-90s Central and Eastern Europe, which their music captures. After putting out a number of self-released records, their performance at one of the Romanian scene’s most essential events, the Underground Timișoara Festiva was documented, and they also featured on a 2004 compilation Dark Romania, which evoked the scene’s then-increasing sense of turmoil.
Rodion G.A.From The Archives 1981-2017Ace
This year’s compilation from the Rodion GA archives is a complement to earlier reissues of Rozalia and The Lost Tapes by Future Nuggets. Founded by Rodion Ladislau Roșca in the 1970s, the project was inspired by music listened to on Radio Luxembourg, combining rock & roll, krautrock, and fuzzy feedback. Roșca first recorded everything himself – cosmic rock guitar parts on reel-to-reel tapes combining with an early Vermona drum machine, with some sampling and looping added. Working at a power plant, he met Gicu Fărcaş and Adrian Căpraru (the G and A of the group) and formed Rodion GA for concerts to present their increasingly popular music). In the 1970s and 80s it was the opposite to mainstream Romanian rock under the Ceausescu regime, but also – after the country’s opening up to the West – was embraced. There were times when he was listened to by millions, and he even played at the country’s official New Year’s Eve party. It’s great that he’s still remembered decades later.
Iancu Dumitrescu, Ana-Maria AvramAt The GRM Paris (Performed by Stephen O’Malley)Ideologic Organ
Spectralists focus on adding a fourth dimension to music besides pitch, volume, and duration – depth. One of its representatives who became an essential figure on the world stage was Iancu Dumitrescu, creator of, among others, the Hyperion Ensemble, described as “a multimedia group dedicated to experimental music”. He was married to another vital composer from the movement, Ana-Maria Avram. On the road with the Ensemble a decade ago, they crossed paths with Stephen O’Malley, and he performed their work at the Groupe De Recherches Musicales in Paris in 2012. The two pieces (one lasting 50 minutes, the other 20) resemble structurally free, abstract forms, taking in recordings of sounds and conversations in the background. They are lavish constellations of heavy sounds that seem to have no beginning and no end, but linger in the suspension of a cosmic space full of reverberations, even when they take on a slightly heavier and denser character as in ‘MetalStorm’.
