Andrey Kiritchenko – Misterrious – CD – Spekk

www.spekk.net

Kiritchenko’s second outing for Spekk sees a natural continuation of the pieces on True Delusion. Misterrious is an altogether more restrained affair, still focussing around the piano as a key element, and with Kiritchenko’s idiosyncratic lightness of touch, he weaves engaging and delicate moments from a limited armoury of instrumentation. Within this economy of means, Kiritchenko also invites percussionists Jason Kahn and Martin Brandimayer to enter his world, contributing an almost improv-sounding percussive element to Kiritchenko’s piano and glockenspiel tracts.

High points of the collection for me would have to be Evening Light Wrap Me Softly, with its glistening central refrain and a dusting of percussion, and the warm, evanescent glow of glockenspiel and piano. Untitled Inquietudes also reveals itself as a minor masterpiece with a sharply focussed piano theme, resonating around field recordings, and the incessant jingling of a bell (or at least something metallic). With various creaks and groans, this is quite breathtakingly magnificent. Once again, Kiritchenko’s work effortlessly manages to resist convenient categorisation, and as Spekk appear to specialise in minimalism, I would even challenge that convenient tag – as Misterrious is far from minimal, with often highly charged, and densely layered pieces, intersecting with eerie half-lit presences, and ethereal atmospherics.This is the work of a genius composer in the making, rivalling and eclipsing the works of luminaries such as Max Richter, or Craig Armstrong… and please remember where you heard it first. Highly recommended. BGN