Mental Brew by Arkady Pikunov, Yury Parfenov, Petr Ivshin, Vladislav Psaruman

On May 19, 2022, at the DOM Cultural Center, there was, so to speak, a spontaneous music session. Of course, no one had prepared any material or any themes. At that time, we often did things that way — I don’t even know why we almost don’t do it now.

From time to time, we would gather with our beloved musicians, set up microphones, and surrender ourselves to interaction. And another one of those sessions had been planned, and a few days before it I decided to go to a concert by the band Auktyon. I was standing outside in line for the venue and saw Yura Parfenov, who had stepped out for a smoke before the performance. We already knew each other, so I gladly approached him, and we started talking. In passing, I told him something like: “We’re getting together to play with the guys in a few days — if you want, join us, we’d be happy.” Unexpectedly, a few days later Yura called me and said he would come.

And so we all gathered together and started playing. As always happens in this kind of music-making, we found ourselves in a living process of sonic and energetic interaction, content with the simple joy of playing with one another, without thinking about the result. Perhaps this music was — and still is — just a pretext for the appearance of the joy we felt when we simply hugged and told each other stories outside between the playing.

With these words, I am of course not diminishing what we achieved. On the contrary — it turned out the way it did precisely because no one expected anything, everyone only wanted to listen and to hear. There was none — let me deliberately exaggerate — of the composer’s dictatorship, nor the feeling that someone’s musical ego was suppressing the voices of others. In this freedom lies the whole essence, the whole beauty, and that is why the warmest memories — and the tears — are already here now, in 2025.

It is even hard for me to say why, every time I listen to the fourth part of the album’s first section, I burst into tears. The sound of Yura’s trumpet, especially his final phrase at the climax, seems to pierce me through. It feels as if everything is in it, but what exactly moves me so deeply — I still haven’t been able to explain to myself. In any case, this is a very personal music, because I have been listening to it since 2022. It has lived through many things with me — including Yura’s passing. Now the time has come to share it with you.

Arkady Pikunov

FANCYMUSIC is a record label focused on contemporary new music recordings. FANCYMUSIC is a broad platform for a wide variety of contemporary new music composed by different russian musicians. FANCYMUSIC is also a platform on which newer names may be encountered.

fancymusic.ru
Facebook
vk.com
SoundCloud