Bleep

For the second release on Nina Kraviz’s Galaxiid imprint we have a reissue of Solar X’s 1997 LP X-Rated. Like the first Galaxiid drop - a new edition of Species Of Fishes’ 1996 album Trip Trap - X-Rated is another curio from post-USSR Russia. As one might expect from a nation that had closed borders for so long, the electronic music that emerged from Russia in the years after Communism was a crossbreed of Western sounds and Soviet strangeness. Solar X’s X-Rated is one of the finest albums to emerge from this unusual epoch.

Many of the core styles here match up with other trends that had taken hold in the mid-/late-90’s. ‘Hot Cherry’ has a clear IDM influence, ‘Wicked And Beautiful’ splits its time between house and breakbeat, ‘Soft And Deep’ is a chirpy electro jam, and ‘Doom At The Dorm’ is an ethereal slice of downtempo.

However, there is something about the way Solar X (Roman Belavkin) approaches his craft that means these tracks don’t neatly fit into the genres they are clearly drawing from. It may be something to do with the Soviet synths Belavkin used to make these tracks, or his leftfield compositional choices (see the way ‘Wicked And Beautiful’ frequently changes tempo), or the fact that Russia in the 1990’s simply wasn’t getting as much exposure to these sounds as Western nations. Whatever it was, when heard now the charmingly idiosyncratic X-Rated goes some way to explaining why Kraviz’s TRIP imprint tends to favour the oddball techno that it does.

Complete with new artwork from Keiichi Tanaami, this reissue of Solar X’s X-Rated is one of the more unique records of 90’s electronic music that you’ll hear this year.