Gray Skies Forever

It’s no longer just a matter of new technologies and easy-to-use programs. Apparently, what continues to fascinate the most remains the “artisanal” side of creativity. The artistic flair that is achieved through a work that, in addition to the instruction manual, requires experience, a lot of experience. And patience. And passion.

Alexey Seliverstov, Moscow-born, LA-based composer and experimentalist, gets inspiration from real soundscapes that he hears. He is aware of everything happening around him sonically and tries to focus and analyse, so he ends up with an idea to build something. “We have huge environmental diversity here in California,” he told Vinyl Factory, “so I can drive around the desert and find sounds. When I hear something I think ‘Wow, I can add something on top of this to extend it’. I take from real birds, real noises, freeways, everything here in LA. Maybe it’s too noisy here for a lot of people, but not for me.”

Alexey used to work as a musician in a more classical way. He did synth music which was released on a label called Imprfct Records, run by Voicedrone — founder of the London club Fold.

At that time, he’d also done several film scores. Alexey’s success is the result of the merger between an experimental project dedicated to an abandoned Japanese hotel on a semitropical island in the Pacific — he went there in November 2018 and recorded everything with a pocket field recorder–sounds of scratching on the walls and weird things he found — and a really beautiful recording of night birds singing that he did in LA in 2018 using a small microphone with an iPhone. Then he built a soundscape using the LA and other field recordings and atmospheres. Using Ableton tool, Max For Live, he built his own device and programmed the birdsongs in different ways.

“Once I had that, I recorded it on different tape players and dictaphones, played with it and posted it on Instagram. It was a huge success, and I realised that people really love this type of art”.