EU

Biography

Champions of Russian IDM, European union (Elochnie Igrushki in Russian, meaning Xmas baubles) will be the brainchild of electronic music artists Alexander Zaitsev and Ilya Baramiya, child years friends from your St. Petersburg suburb of Lomonosov. Sketching more influence from your quixotic soundtracks from the Soviet film establishment than from DJ units, EU produce tunes rather than monitors, using a devotion to melody. Beats travel cleanly because the music drifts just a little above the digital medium, but remains down to globe. After their initial 1997 discharge, one track released with the St. Petersburg label Perforation Information, EU dedicated per year to experimentation with every obtainable technology, including a Computer, a Employer DR-660, and outdated analog keys within their house studio room. Their tweaking paid with two recordings in 1999: a self-titled cassette tape along with a divide cassette cooperation with Tenzor known as Rhythmic Manipulation. Leftover monitors were recycled to create their initial full-length album, European union_Soft, released on Moscow’s Art-tek. But European union were searching for something bigger compared to the prospective but nonetheless dinky Russian picture, and it wasn’t a long time before they were sketching bids from United kingdom labels and performing as digital ambassadors to European countries and beyond. Pause_2 released their initial vinyl one, 2001’s mini-album Reframing, and 2003’s full-length Warm Mathematics, a tepid pool of glitch and gratifying chord progressions. Lo Recordings also had taken notice, inviting European union to London to create some monitors for the vocalist Addie Brik and two compilations of Russian digital music: 2001’s Ru.Electronic and 2003’s Ru.Electronic Two. Beneath the moniker of Xmas Baubles, Lo also released their 2003 record, Xmas Baubles & Their Unusual Noises, the duo’s personal exploration of the improvisational aspect of digital music. They had taken a breather, redirecting their energies toward the rap task 2H Firm and cooperation with surprise poet Stas Baretsky. Both participated in EU’s following record, Dikie Yolochnie Igrushki (The Crazy Xmas Baubles), which presented the meaty uncultivated underside of the previous dreamy soundscapes. European union also increasingly devoted themselves to live show, laboring extended hours over adaptations of the work towards the concert format.

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