Restlessness combined with a great sense of humor typify these pieces – composed and performed from 1978 - 2006. Given the diverse nature of the collection it's a light hard to decide if the enclosed diversity is the result of a conscious decision to pursue music free of the prejudice of specific form, or if it's just the sort of thing that's bound to happen during the course of 28 years. As the former – an admirable and open-eared aesthetic is at work. As the latter – I guess the objective results might be the same.
Addicted to speed and contrast, the most accomplished and typifying piece here is "Menuetto", jumping pole-to-pole from the nearly Eine Musikalische Spaß deliberately dead-ended string trio passages to some very complicated, open ended and nearly delirious High Tide-like heaviness. Successfully inter cutting two extremes like this takes more than sleight-of-hand, and it would take more time and expertise than is currently available to this reviewer to understand just how these opposites are reconciled, but in the absence of simple collage-like juxtapositions, they clearly are. And across the 10 tracks stylistic imprints are all over the place. From prog rock to the Stooges take on the free jazz and noise of "L.A. Blues" to hints of guitar amped Rickenbacker basses set in fractal motion by a close-to-Bruford sounding rim. From the also hard to classify constructs of Ensemble Nimbus to a few bars of Gryphon's contemporary extrapolations of the Medieval.
Just listen to the multiple transformations that occur in the first few minutes of "Who's flying over me?" and you get the picture. Kostarev has the ability to not only imprint pretty much any style with convincing conviction, he trends to concurrently subvert it. This is the music of a man who perhaps knows too much. Still, his digestive processes are admirable and the compositional and performance skills on display will stand up to pretty well anyone. Discs as eclectic as this do not quite ascend to the uncategorized levels of something like the work of the aforementioned Ensemble Nimbus. But they do help in nudging a listener out of some sometimes too comfortable groove, or rut. The Works do in fact work.
Track Listing
1. Who's flying over me?
2. Menuetto
3. A-theist Hacker
4. Heavy Water
5. Hoop
6. Turn-A-round
7. Pilgrim
8. Whole Lotta of Patience (sic)
9. Grass of Blue
10. No Fears
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