Hattifnatter - Barometrizm

I feel somehow lucky and blessed by invisible powers, whether it is by nature or by fate, that have entrusted me with the ability to perceive messages transmitted through experimental music. I have learned a certain lesson while interacting with different people that such ability is far from being common; the sounds which are so pleasant to my ear become, to say the least, truly strange and even treated quite offensively by my surrounding. But despite this regrettable fact, I continue to feed my brain every day with a new portion of the finest avant-garde, experimental industrial music, obediently accepting the status of a “white crow” between my friends. And today I absorb the new material arriving from the well-known Saint-Petersburg based Zhelezobeton label which is responsible for many hours of my imagination’s travelling during the last few years.

Hattifnatter is a product of a collaboration between two talented musicians, Evgeniy Savenko (Lunar Abyss, etc.) and Artyom Ostapchuk (Kryptogen Rundfunk), both of them are responsible for dozens of different records which contain the whole spectre of various sound manipulations in the field of experimental industrial music. The collaboration started in 2007 to meet the goal of free-form exploration of the psychoactive electroacoustic ambience and today, eight years later, the project “grew up to the table” of having enough mature material to fill up the first full-length album under the name “Barometrizm”.

If I understand the cross reference right, the project takes its name from the word “The Hattifatteners” (Swedish: Hattifnattar, Finnish: Hattivatit), the creatures in the Moomin books and comic strips by Tove Jansson. The Hattifatteners are tall, thin, ghost-like creatures, resembling long white socks. They have round neckless heads with two round eyes. Below their heads on either side are four or five finger-like projections that resemble hands. They are silent and serious, having neither the ability to talk nor to hear, but in contrast, their sense of feeling is extremely acute, and they can sense even the most minor tremblings of the ground. They communicate seemingly by telepathy, and their eyes change colour with the sky. They also seem to be melancholic characters.

Adopting the role of Hattifnatter creature definitely helps me in understanding, and more importantly, in feeling the depth of this unusual record. “Barometrizm” welcomes me with “Barometrat”, a very meditative introduction track which is full of different accidental sounds and scratches over a floating background melody, a whispering chanting voice paves the way for the spirits of the Earth into the world of mortal beings. They burst with a full power in “Ieram” with a deep background pulsation and guitar-formed ambience creating a wide atmosphere for the listener to immerse in, and this composition sets the bar really high for the next tracks right from the beginning. There is no absolute time, no absolute space for creatures when the only thing that interests them is reaching the horizon – and once they reach it, they continue on their journey when a strong, mysterious shamanic singing accompanies them on their roaming.

While the album is perceived as a whole, each of its components possesses its own attributes. As “Ieram” fades away, “Echolotus” takes its place with its drifting, hypnotic sound presenting some kind of a deep ocean experience, integrating expansive guitar soundscapes into a dense analogue hum. “Echolotus” evolves slowly into “Lutump” that puts more emphasis on a slow psychedelia full of field recordings and a growling, creepy voice chanting mysterious words in unknown language. Multiple layers of field-recordings, electronic percussion, various pulsations and scratches in “Floksary” generate a truly otherworldly atmosphere in my room.

As quickly and inexorably passage of time while Hattifnatters draw upon the last composition “Renasyr”. Yet, as a matter of fact, there is a pervasive feeling that chaos is engulfing their world while sharp and lingering sound of a siren tears apart the connection between spiritual and physical worlds.

Fifty minutes of hypnotic journey passed in one glimpse, and I am sure that our small creatures can consider themselves more than satisfied from the way that Russian residents captured their gentle sensuality. I only want to wish them a safe and pleasant travel to the edge of this world and beyond to the tunes of their favourite melodies. I am sure that we will meet them in the future, especially when two such creative artists are responsible for transmission of Hattifnatters’ adventures through the sound of their instruments. Waiting forward to hearing from them again. Dec 17 2016