Edward Artemiev

Another addition to the early electronic music from Russia, this album is a compilation of music drawn from three Russian movies directed by Andrei Tarkovskiy - not having seen any of them I know of "Solaris" only by repute. The music here, composed and performed by Edward Artemiev, is mostly electronic and extremely evocative. "The Stalker Theme", which opens the CD, is very wistful and gentle and leads into "Train", which carries on some of the same themes mixed with the sounds of a train passing: the rhythm of the wheels clattering over the tracks brings on strong feelings of mystery and sadness. Being science fiction, the music for Solaris is very different to that written for "Stalker", much more ambient, and dare one say, spacey. The single track drawn from "The Mirror" score is rather more industrial and jagged sounding, and probably the track I liked least. The final track, "Dedication to Andrei Tarkovskiy", is a very impressionistic sound portrait/tribute to the film director himself. Rather than sequence the music from each movie in turn, the producers have mixed them together, creating a new series of moods not dependent on having seen the movies themselves. In turn this has created a fascinating and very listenable 'new' album of music that highlights just how good a composer and musician Edward Artemiev is. Very few available