In our culture, music is in every moment and place of our day. In fact music is rarely just a sound organization over a limited period of time, and is almost always an art form of expression; that’s the core which structures MONVOL’s sweet-sounding productions. Hailing from Latvia, in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, home to gorgeous castles, cliffs and lakes, MONVOL is the duo of Nastya Volkova, Russian DJ and producer and Anton Monk, well-known Latvian electronic music producer, both live performance artists.
Peculiarly, they have been crafting unique sounds and delivering captivating live performances as a combination of deep synthetic sonority, having a touch of live recorded instruments and seasoned all along with meaningful vocal paths. And, furthermore, playing with build-up and release, twisting the cult sounds of 70-80th within present-day electronic grooves. That’s why we can’t put them in a box, surely, their fearless perspective is that creativity should be free and that’s why they mix different genres.
The Latvian duo has produced several unreleased tracks, although their first work is now only released. Their debut EP ‘Vardi’ goes for a mix of energy, meaning and groove, but not being necessarily dancefloor-oriented. Between the lines, the duo confesses that each track includes a background story, through the tracks MONVOL does not not only keep an eye on the content of speech, but also the act of speech as a phenomenon of communication, as a ‘process’ of social meaning, taken music as a multiform subject which is in close connection with other forms of expressive culture.
Including three tracks and using by essence goose-bump inducing arrangments, the EP contextualizes somewhat untried sounds, musically it leads to shrewd tracks, keeping it quite simple the majority of the time but throwing a variety of electronic elements. The opening-track ‘Vardi’ means ‘words’ in Latvian language and is powerful and subtle, expresses the adorable idea of words being heard worldwide; by its personal composition the track evokes a trance-therapeutic mood. “Screen of Cams” is about being present and satisfied with what we have, it’s technically breezy yet emotionally outspoken, as in the lyrics fragment “Standing in the line which never ends […]”, which is a metaphor for wasting our time for the things that won’t enrich our lifes. “Next Time” was inspired by a web post coming from a girl who wrote about packing the stuff after her mom passed away, in that process she finds a lot of things in unused conditions, so the track goes as sort of monologue, an up-and-down between consciously contextual questions to fiercely electronic atmospheres, luring the listener in and locking the door behind.
After all, producing electronic music has never been as easy as today, however, ease does not ensure creativity and innovation. Viewing the bigger picture, we sympathized with this performatic-hybrid style, the key difference in MONVOL’s compositions is a keen interest in holding their cultural-personal-emotional perspective, beyond globalizing the world at the sound level to summon states that feed body, mind and soul.
credits
released October 1, 2019
Credits\
Artwork, Music, Mastering\ All produced and created by Nastya Volkova and Anton Monk.
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MONVOL\
Booking\ monvolinfo@gmail.com
Facebook\ fb.com\monvolmusic/
Instagram\ www.instagram.com/monvol_official/
Soundcloud\ soundcloud.com/monvol
