Forever alone, forever making beautiful things. The nomadic life of Jenya Gorbunov continues apace after russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. More and more I feel Gorbunov’s path is similar to that of Marc Chagall’s, though I would never wish the real-life trials of the latter on the former. For all our sakes.
But like Chagall, Gorbunov has a way of holding on to an innocence in his work, or at the very least, a way of happily if temporarily tuning out of reality despite its insistent, often terrible implications. Gorbunov’s wry humour, that of the artist in exile – also similar to Chagall, who once drew himself walking with his house on his back – is made manifest with his new record’s title, Tourism. An ironic title, of course: seeing the sights and soaking up other cultures, whilst dodging wars, mafia-like regimes, and crippling bureaucratic impositions that could spell the end of you.
The choice of title is also an admission of sorts, and a commentary on the “toxin of words”. On one level, his quirky name for the project as a whole (a play on the Intourist organisation) has come back to bite him. Of Siberian-Jewish ancestry and living in Moscow, Gorbunov’s way out of russia was to secure passage to Tel Aviv, a nominally liberal city based in a country and region where now other wars, mafia-like regimes and crippling bureaucratic restrictions play themselves out to the world’s horror. As to (the Georgian) Mayakovsky’s ‘toxin of words’: it makes one wonder, how we, outside those zones, whose lives are ostensibly set up to be good, and who can freely and loudly castigate ourselves for our own privileges, should approach a record made by someone whose choices seem on the surface to be problematic, if unavoidable. The individual against the regime. It’s a constant niggle.
Gorbunov doesn’t openly address these quandaries in Tourism. Rather, like all his work for Inturist and Glintshake, matters are dealt with obliquely and ironically, through the application of a grande masque of shifting sounds and wordplay. Some of the track titles alone (now in English rather than Cyrillic) should give you enough of an inkling: ‘Nothing Personal’, ‘Black Screen’, ‘Absolute Majority’, ‘No Expectations’, ‘Weak Currency’…
But needs must: the artist can only work with what they have to hand. Tel Aviv’s flea markets provided a broken tape recorder and a mixer through which all instruments found their path. Post-production was out of the question, so what we have are snapshots, without filter, of the moment of recording. From the opening track ‘Troika’ onwards – itself a wonderful, dusty, glide through various moods – we get a series of quizzical, thinly clad takes, some slightly off centre, others blurred or that feel cut off. All impart the quirky, bovine clumsiness of the outsider trying to blend in, though there is also a feeling of curiosity and maybe some form of release. Gorbunov’s eyes have always looked eastwards rather than westwards, and on Tourism he draws succour from the sounds and atmospheres that he senses emanating from the wider SWANA region.
Technically, it’s fair to say that one sound leads and imparts a mood. The plodding bass and twanging, treated guitar that comes on all Clangers on ‘Individualist’, the mirage of effects built up by the echoes of looped guitar, set against the soft, sighing synths on ‘Reminder’, or the spacewards bleeps and blurts of ‘Ivan The Arabian Horse’ and ‘Weak Currency’. The beautiful and laidback ‘Birdwatching’ is based on a looped flute-like synth coda and ghostly taps of percussion. These elements allow a further synth melody to impart an overwhelming feeling of melancholy: it could be primetime Cluster. The cut off at the end is brutal, but adds considerable force. Humour is always there – are those noises meant to be sampled burps on ‘Fruit Trading Fraud’? Last track ‘No Expectations’ is a marvel of discombobulated synth sounds that returns as a very odd, ghostly workout.
All Inturist records are worth your time. Gorbunov’s itchy muse spans a proggy jazz that finds echoes in Soft Machine and Henry Cow, and a post-punk of the Aksak Maboul variety. And this new one is no exception, though these signature sounds are only rarely heard here (as on ‘Nothing Personal’). But those who love Ariel Kalma’s zen-like meditations, Cluster, or the less bombastic of Eno and Byrne’s work on Bush of Ghosts will find this record addictive. To cynically impose the critic’s appreciation for good art coming out of suffering, it could be his best. So why break this particular butterfly on the wheel?
