Nights full of secrets - hallucinations or reality - voices in dreams - pulsing sounds - explosions of colours are lightning the empire of the dark - a trip through the soul of the Russian composer and musician Chekalin into the endless wide of the Russian landscapes and cultures.
Except for the film music by Eduard Artemyev and the performance music of L. Theremin there has never officially been any electronic music in Russia. Taking a more careful look at this genre now, and seeing the former as the pioneer of synthesizer music in the ´60´s and ´70,´s, Mikhail Chekalin turns out to be the underground electronic musician of a young Russian "independent"-scene.
The musical progress of Chekalin (born 1959) is a thightrope walk between solid craft training and ideologically imposed restriction or creativity by the Soviet system. Gorbatchow´s "Glasnost" politic Chekalin helped him to get accepted by the official authorities.
From 1988 on he was given the opportunity to release alltogether 14 albums on the Melodija label. In his studio work Chekalin places considerable importance on repressing sequencer, playback and multitrack techniques in favour of live recordings. In his compositions he brings out an eclectic philharmonic style. The selection here represents a cross-section of his works over a period of ten years.
