Belarus is not a place necessarily known for its transparency, which is why Krope feels like such an unexpected and extraordinary psychogeographic ramble around a country largely estranged from the rest of Europe. Anton Anishchanka, field recordist and composer, was pleasantly surprised when he went along to the Institute of Art History, Ethnography and Folklore in Minsk around the time of the pandemic and found he was able to access an archive of field recordings from roughly 1960 to 2005. Thanks to the ethnographer and researcher Iryna Vasilyeva, who works at the institute, Anishchanka managed to retrieve Belarusian folklore songs from various regions, forming the basis of this strangely betwitching album.
There are specifically three folk songs here set among six tracks, three of them hypnotic instrumentals. The title song ‘Krope’ (meaning “dill”) brings together a traditional song performed by Marynich Hanna Vasilieuna in the village of Padlesse in the Brest Region back in 2005, recorded by the institute’s Vasilyeva and Tatsiana Rabec. The confluence of the authentic voice, Anishchanka’s vintage synth drones and the overlaying of field recordings that evoke nature, water and the countryside, creates something that’s both evocative and uncanny. Like much of the album, it has a sensuality and a tactility, imbuing listeners with a feeling of being there, even when it’s not clear where there exactly is.
Elsewhere the lambent crackle of a fire or the distant rattle of a train traversing the hillside helps to cultivate this sense of being present in the middle of the Belarusian landscape at some point untold decades ago. It’s an experiential phenomenon that’s done with deftness and subtly, allowing the imagination to make up the mileage rather than spoon-feeding the listening receptors with a binaural or Atmos mix. And then along comes another song, ‘Pałyn’ (or “wormwood”), a recording that was captured in 1972 in the Lyavonaucy village in the Vitebsk region by Vrubleuskaya Zosya Kaliksauna. Where the first song is a tale of matrimonial decisions, a paean to the agency of women, ‘Palyn’, according to Anishchanka’s notes, “conveys the bitter taste of separation and the ache of exile.”
Finally ‘Dubrovuška’ (“oak grove”) invokes the anxiety of war, with the woodland of the title groaning as a wife awaits news, in limbo in anticipation of a soldier returning to his family from war (only his horse returns). The performance by Gramovich Palina Mikalayeuna recorded at the Cerabau village in the Gomel region in 2005 is a haunting lament that has a universality to it. It feels timeless too, given the inevitability of conflict. These are remarkable tracks to get lost in and the album as a whole body of work is both a great listening experience and an experience in itself.
