Lâ''ascolto di dischi come questo è compito affascinante e allo stesso tempo rischioso, giacché parliamo di musica di oltre confine, altra rispetto a tutto ciò che rientra in modo più o meno rigido nei canoni dellâ''industria musicale.
Licenziato dallâ''etichetta Pax, di San Francisco, specializzata in questo genere di proposte, â''Crashing...â'' è stato realizzato da tre artisti provenienti dalla stessa area: Lx Rudis è un artista multimediale con una lunga esperienza nellâ''ambito musicale (ha collaborato, tra gli altri, con i Tuxedomoon), che da più di un decennio ha focalizzato la sua attenzione sullâ''uso dei computer quali strumenti di intrattenimento, e nei credits di questo disco risulta occuparsi del Matrix 12, che supponiamo sia proprio un computer; André Custodio (sezione ritmica, tra Tom Tom e apparecchiature elettroniche) è un polistrumentista non alla prima collaborazione col terzo membro del â''gruppoâ'', quellâ''Ernesto Diaz Infante, alle corde, chitarra e violino, e alla voce, i cui ultimi lavori (uno in coppia con Chrys Forsyth, lâ''altro a nome Rev.99, entrambi usciti su Pax) risalgono appena allâ''anno scorso.
I tre danno vita ad un lavoro scabro e contorto, al quale gli effetti del computer danno una connotazione quasi aliena, mentre la chitarra, ora freneticamente brulicante, ora dilatata e dissonante, gli fa da contraltare con la sua â''fisicità â''.
Il tutto è condito da rarefazioni di sapore â''ambientâ'', â''scaricheâ'' elettriche, â''rumoriâ'' assortiti (per esempio quello di una moneta che cade), e una voce che interviene solo episodicamente, ( e in maniera, lo si sarà  intuito, nientâ''affatto â''tradizionaleâ'').
Il tutto per poco più di unâ''ora, il lavoro organizzato formalmente in trenta tracce senza titolo, le prime tre raccolte sotto il nome di â''Three College Radio Ready Editsâ'', le rimanenti sotto quello di Overthruster; e queste sono le uniche unità  dâ''ascolto individuabili, il disco concepito come un unicum, le diverse fasi del quale si accavallano prescindendo dalla scansione in tracce.
Ascolto che spiazza e inquieta, ma che fino alla fine stimola la curiosità  per â''quello che viene dopoâ''.
Arte? Si, se per arte si intende il modo in cui un musicista esprime le proprie idee, libero da qualunque pressione esterna, o vincolo di mercato; avanguardia? Forse, ma bisogna stare attenti a non usare un termine ormai svuotato dallâ''abuso utilizzato troppo spesso per bollare frettolosamente tutto quanto non sia concepito per soddisfare gli appetiti del pubblico di massa (indotti dalle tattiche di marketing dellâ''industria discografica).
La Pax continua dunque nella sua opera di divulgazione di idee fuori dallâ''ordinario, in un anno 2002 che si sta rivelando peraltro prolifico: mentre scriviamo sono già  stati editati altri due lavori: aspettiamo con curiosità , per viaggiare di nuovo in altre dimensioni.
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La musique jouee sur Crashing the Russian Renaissance prend une option resolument differente en privilegiant un jeu electronique sur lequel se greffe des interventions d'Ernesto a la guitare preparee. Ce trio est compose de Lx Rudis, artiste interdisciplinaire base a San Francisco et d'Andre Custodio, bruitiste hors pair. Le resultat ne pouvait qu'etre de qualite. L'album est divise en deux parties. Overthruster se presente comme une longue suite de pieces courtes, 26 au total, sur lesquelles les musiciens experimentent des collages sonores les plus varies. Three College Radio Ready Edits presente trois morceaux plus travailles qui demontrent l'etendue du talent de ces trois musiciens. Ernesto Diaz-Infante est devenu en l'espace de trois/quatre ans un musicien majeur de la scene americaine. En acceptant de jouer sur deux des poles les plus actifs du pays, la cote ouest et NYC il multiplie les approches et les rencontres. On se demande meme parfois ou le musicien va chercher toute cette energie.(Sé.M.)
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A brand new release from Pax Recordings in California is always an event per se; never have they disappointed me, the music connoisseur, but each and every time surprising me with utter and sheer ingenuity and on-the-fly creativity, dispersed with the ease of a soaring Swift in dazzling kamikaze dives between the rooftops of the tenement buildings of summer!
Also, when the name Ernesto Diaz-Infante appears on the record jacket, the guarantee of a serious experience is rock bottom certain! This guy, in my mind, is positioned, by virtue of his musical significance, side by side with oracles like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Terry Riley and Conlon Nancarrow! I’ve experienced Diaz-Infante on numerous CDs, by himself as well as in a wide assortment of collaborations; one even with a sound artist from remote Eskilstuna of Sweden, not so far from this here reviewer’s rural hometown (on a CD which is about to be reviewed here at Sonoloco Record Reviews in a short while).

Lx Rudis is presented in the label info as an interdisciplinary media artist in San Francisco. He has flipped between commercial and underground activities, and sold his soul for money to the video games market… He has in fact – oh child of our day! – taken part in the shaping of no less than forty video games… He has, however, also worked with the likes of Negativland and earlier with for example Tuxedomoon.

André Custodio is a native, down-home Bay Area multi-instrumentalist and sound designer. He has done collaborations with, to name but a few, The Splatter Trio, Tom Nunn and Ernesto Diaz-Infante. Currently Custodio is working with his most recent project, called “Nihil Communication”, which deals with recombined and reconfigured samples, digital processing, one-off “instruments” and also analog synthesis.

No need to say anything extra about Diaz-Infante. He has been amply introduced in various reviews on this site!

The CD begins with something these guys call “Three College Radio-Ready Edits”… The rest of the CD carries the title “Overthruster”, and I’ll leave you with that, as I cross over into the more hands on reflective listening management…

It’s a plucking, wheezing, steaming predicament, to start with. You are being attacked with showers of fragmented cut-ups, molded back together in haphazard guises of hazy moments, flickering by in the heat of summer like hallucinatory shadows moving across blind walls beyond the parking lots, bruising the horizon of contemporeana in jagged sawtooth audio… and ah… it’s like scraping a magpie (Pica pica) along the façade of a yellowish 1950s tenement building in small-town Scandinavia; that rough sense of battered bird in a tight grip against that uneven surface… the beak-streaks left on the wall after the quick, feathery maltreatment along the house…

A gasping sensation of being strangled or garroted overwhelms you, as you get entangled in guitar strings, which apparently are being used to sharpen knives… and there is something the matter with the delivery of electric current, Con Edison having fucked up seriously again, or is it just a lot of static inside your head, left and right brain-halves desperately trying to communicate, to get on terms, to arrange some kind of treaty, to finally dump this migraine in some unison action of the bicameral mind, huh? Anyhow, the crackling electric stuttering gives of ejaculative sparks of unintelligible morphemes, seeping out like atmospheric disturbances through your speakers.


This proletarian from a northern steel works
would have loved "Crashing the Russian Renaissance"!

The musicians are getting inside of the inside, throwing their findings back at you without even looking, like badgers digging their tunnels…

The jingling motions of track 3 open up mysterious factory halls - perhaps inside a Borg-like cube in space – glimpsing rattling chains and heavy machinery at work in unknown processes. The halls are vast, disappearing below distant horizons, in metal dust and alien sunlight, which seeps in diagonally, revealing dark, ominous shadows of unexplained structures.
The screeching metal faintly resembles forlorn human-like voices, echoing distorted out of a singular despair where the shadowy shapes are eternally lost in an immense world of giant tools and metallic weights. It’s lonely and forgotten, far away in space, far away in time, but there is suffering… and suffering is real.

Tracks 4 – 30 are all entitled “Overthruster”.
Spiders are crawling across their webs in the moonlight of silent islands in Scandinavian lakes. The treading of the spiders is amplified, rising out of the music like the plucking of guitar strings (Diaz-Infante!), vibrating with moonlight and little-known forest forces. Moonlight is spraying off of the trembling spider webs, falling like minuscule drops of silvery precipitation in softly arching trajectories through the dark nocturnal shadows of coniferous trees, and through the sanctuary of our perceptive minds.

A timbral softness behind the roughing-up of the circumstances leaves me honey-suckled and backlashed, the guitar wobbling like a glow-worm through its space-time protrusion.
We get lucky inside these murmuring interference homages, soil below mist, sky above crisscrossing auditory landmasses; continents moving in the dark…

The ever-changing stubbornness of these gleaming ingenuities of Rudis-Custodio-Infante makes this CD a welcome visitor in my laser box at any time and beyond!
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Prior to hearing this CD I'd not heard of LX Rudis or André Custodio but the two have an interesting resume. Rudis is described as a multi-disciplinary artist who has worked with Tuxedomoon and Negativeland, done media work for radio and television, and works in all areas of video game production being in the credits of over 40 video games. Custodio is a multi-instrumentalist and sound designer who has worked with The Splatter Trio, Tom Nunn, and Eddie Gale to name a few. His current solo project - Nihil Communication - combines reconfigured samples, digital processing and analog synthesis.

On Crashing The Russian Renaissance we have Ernesto on acoustic guitar, violin and voice and Rudis and Custodio contributing a variety of electronics and percussion to create a free-improv sound sculpture experience. Some tracks are heavy on ambience. Others are highly chaotic. And some accomplish both at once. My favorites consist of Ernesto's free-wheeling manic style that showcase his creative instrumental proficiency (the avant-garde free-improv equivalent of rock guitar shredding) as well as his ability to wrench all manner of odd sounds from his guitar. But supporting the guitar will be a banquet of electronic tones, noise, ambient sequences and percussive bits that nicely contrast and cooperate with each other. A sense of fun pervades through many of the tracks which sound like carefully constructed collages of loops and electronic patterns and textures that are both child-like and alien. I really dig the layers of spaced out electronics that dance about as Ernesto does his manic runs up and down the fretboard. Definitely a listening experience that reveals new treasures with repeated listens.
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