Friday 13 October 2017, 7.30pm
“And so it goes. Each track a beguiling mix of sounds, voices, languages and styles, a journey, a testament to the producer’s skill and a joy for the listener.” – Idwal Fisher on Staraya Derevnya's ‘Kadita Sessions’
The music of the international kraut-folk collective Staraya Derevnya resists any direct comparison. Rob Hayler (Radio Free Midwich) described their live performance as “psychedelic and truly dream-like in a way that so little art described as ‘surreal’ gets anywhere near … a glove-like fit for the hypnagogic experience of losing yourself”. They play an array of home-made instruments and sing in imaginary tongues, accompanied by primal live artwork. “The listener is taken on a journey that's perhaps best described as one third aural Alice Through the Looking Glass, one third experimental psych jamboree and one third impossible to describe." (Mark Whitby, Dandelion Radio)
What this band are like really can’t be done justice with a few pithy sentences. They’re genuinely like nothing you’ve heard before – and bizarre to the point of actually being quite disturbing: dwelling too long on their singular version Tea For Two can feel like you’re opening the door to a rapidly descending psychological staircase from which you may never escape. Heavy Vibes magazine had a good stab at defining the Krankenkabinet experience though – “Imagine yourself in a pre-WW1 German village where wooden children with mekanikal insides have taken over as they conspire to concoct the most demented Moog-driven kilng klang you’ve ever heard in your livenlife”. Lovers of Caroliner and last year’s sanity-tweakers Rubber O Cement will hear psychic parallels and there are rumours of shared personnel, clandestine though facts re Hans’ membership are. Whoever they are and whatever the hell they are doing though, this is going to be some kind of spectacle.
