Katarina Gryvul - SPOMYN

A Closer Listen

Ukrainian composer Katarina Gryvul stunned us in 2022 with the indelible Tysha,  This year, on the heels of an astonishing collaboration with The National Museum in Warsaw, she returns with a set that is even wilder and more intense.

SPOMYN means recollection, and the album delves into the manner in which memories are fragmented, disjointed and reassembled, a process Gryvul imitates with fragile electronics, eruptions of sonic power and layers of voice.  The artist calls each track “a flicker of something lost, distorted, or forgotten.”  It’s impossible not to think of the ways in which entire cultures are under attack, their artifacts and collective memory threatened by invading forces; or the rewriting of narratives by the opposition.

The album itself sounds like a war, although Gryvul is always in complete control.  Fragments of voice and strings intertwine as the album begins.  Ghostly crackle holds hands with shifted pitch.  Even when those massive, dark chords intrude, they are unable to pin down the artist’s soaring, operatic voice.  She will not always remain in this range – her lower end approaches the guttural – but whenever one portion of a track turns dark, it seems that another turns light to compensate. “ULAMKY LYUSTERKA” is pure industrial music, down to the metallic clanks at the end; but then “HRA V TSVIRKUNA” begins with distant chimes.  Neither proceeds in a linear fashion; the latter flirts with choral forms, and the chimes even earn their own breakdown.

Percussion rolls on “VDYKH VYDYKH” like approaching tanks, Gryvul singing in ethereal fashion, channeling folk traditions, a clash of old and new, home and incursion.  For traditions to survive, someone must remain alive to extend them.  The center of the track is charged with a surprising tenderness, devoid of all music save for the tendril of a drone.  Despair and determination battle for dominance.  In the dark center of the album, it seems as if the former will emerge victorious, dark energies channeled through incantation and scream.  As if it is all too much to bear, Gryvul opens the blinds, saving her clearest voice for the penultimate piece.

SPOMYN presents two possible paths: memory distorted beyond all recognition, or preserved in amber.  By capturing the fragments, Gryvul attempts to reconstruct the whole.  At the same time, her compositions chart a new musical course, a reminder that in the harshest of times it is crucial not only to honor the past, but to sow the seeds of the future.  (Richard Allen)