05/08/2025
Beyond The Lower Hovels (NEUTAPE-044) by Ilia Belorukov to be the new featured album on grey clay radio.
Featured albums play every day at 5pm UK time on grey clay radio for two or three weeks.
https://www.greyclayradio.com/featured-albums
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Beyond The Lower Hovels is one of those almost indefinable releases you come across that immediately captivates. I love it when I not only wonder what exactly I’m hearing, but also how anyone can put something like this together. And do it so well. This is a release of seriously skilled composition, albeit painted in the most abstruse of palettes; the range and texture within it is magical.
Coming in like a meeting of field recording and instrumentation, whilst defying any familiar use of either, there is a jazz-like freeness and a movie soundtrack-like space that clearly keep the attention exactly where Belorukov intends it and this is perhaps one of the key beauties of the album.
Track titles are also a joy and work with the music in a softly provocative sort of way. The first being, The Path Drifted Nearby. (How often have I felt that?) From the very first moments you know you have to simply lay back and immerse yourself in the scene as it is being revealed to you. Urban and unhurried, it soon darkens and quickens and seems to swing between the gigantic and the minute. Industrial atonality is punctuated with extremely sparse melodic elements but such that the musicality is never gone. This is exceptionally well done.
The second track, The Windows Slightly Shut, takes you to even more places. A hubbub of distant voices, waves on a shore and sounds of unknown activity, all underpinned by subtly played notes that create a sense of narrative. The restraint and economy of line here is artful. I am both intrigued and warmed listening to it.
The Glow Slowly Circling commences with drama. Becoming somewhat freeform for a moment before widening into a space where what you thought were brass horns seem to become car horns. As with the other tracks it all essentially inhabits some busy outdoor place but you’re never quite sure where or even what is really going on there. You are also never quite sure what is field recording and what has been cleverly inserted. In fact it is even possible there is little or no field recording there at all!
Finally, The Twists Ebbed Behind. Suddenly it all appears in the foreground, in detail and almost (almost) for a moment, recognisably musical. It is musical, but not the rule-following kind. There are instruments, that can clearly be played well, but they don’t ever assume authority or precedence over the other sounds even when they appear to have the last word.
This is truly beautiful experimental music that finds a path through sound and feeling with wit and humanity and is endlessly rewarding to follow.
I cannot wait to explore more work by this artist.
T. Čelet
July 2025
FEATURED ALBUMS Daily, playing at 5pm UK time
