Leo Rec. 
Evgeny Masloboev & Anastasia Masloboeva :
Russian folksongs in the key of rhythm (RU,2008)***?
The number of professions that drummer Evgeny Masloboev (born in '66) has had becomes almost uncountable, but he most often was involved in music, art and stage performances. He recorded this album at home with his then 15 year old daughter, who sounds as if already musically well experienced when singing the folk songs. The music is based upon reinterpretations of such Russian local folksongs. Evgeny therefore at his disposal a big amount of found percussion (pots, pans, jars, junk,..) and additional melodic hammered instruments (like marimba, glockenspiel, chimes,..), as a colourful palette of rhythms with its own tones and sounds, as well as (block-)flutes.
This is all but a usual approach. While Russian folk songs in a pure traditional sense (-I mean, the occasional world music examples that reaches the rest of the world most easily-), for me are (except for some forms like troubadour related traditions, certain folk choirs and certain rarities) hardly listenable or bearable, this duo instead succeeds to poor the magic out of them. Some songs are sung solo or with beautiful (male/female) harmonies (duo/trio,..), or are accompanied by zither, glockenspiel and flutes (while breathing and pushing/rolling air in it) and drums, with a few moody colourful brushed drum solos (combined with other instruments). Then, thoroughly, environmental sounds creep in, like a distant dog barking, night birds and crickets sounds, with the atmosphere of what sounds like a cold stone church, with sounds of a post-industrial character, of peeping and slowly stomped iron strings and objects, mixed with a dark bass drone, while a distant male voice sings as if being some orthodox priest. This is a mystic dark atmosphere in which more songs appear, as if coming from deep hidden caves, from buried memories from before funerals, performed with a religious serenity, a distant voice as if related with some church, like a flickering light image out of a cold wintery environment.
