NATURE

This album contains very progressive music, But it is not progressive rock at all! You will not be able to find some similarities between "classic" DISEN GAGE albums (2004 - 2016) and "Nature". There are no bass and drums here. Sound is based on "sonances" and noises generated by surrounding environment - together with guitars, of course (both current participants of DISEN GAGE are guitarists). The 1st track is based on "tones" and noises generated by Planets, 2nd track - by Trains, and 3rd one - by Animals.

If you want to feel and understand music of "Nature" you should forget about stereotypes and try to listen attentively and carefully to these sounds. And you will appreciate and perceive space, atmosphere, hidden dynamics and inner beauty of this music.

"Nature" is not the best DISEN GAGE album - ".. The Reverse May Be True" is the almost unapproachable highlight - and endlessly very far from from "typical" DISEN GAGE "musical approach" (as I already mentioned). But it can beautify both your prog rock collection and your life!

Nevertheless, if you cannot imagine DISEN GAGE music without "rockish" rhythm-section. strange time measures, complex interactions between "guitar lines" and detailed compositional structures, pethaps, you should skip "Nature". But I recommend to go beyond prog rock stereotypes!

When Kostya contacted me to let me know that there was a new Disen Gage album available I was of course excited as they are one of my favourite Russian bands, but I was also intrigued as this is what it said in the email. "This story started a long time ago, when the participants of Disen Gage scoured in the night in the dangerous vicinity of the Moscow railroad station "Sortirovochnaya" trying to capture fascinating sonic roulades emitted by the wagons. At the same time, on the other side of the globe, in the State of Iowa, astronomers succeed in converting strange signals coming from the orbit of Jupiter into audible sound palettes. Later, in an Australian swamp, Mrs. Toad said to Mr. Crocodile: "Dude, why not concoct a Tops-of-the-Pops album of all those ingredients, one on which we would sing all together?" "I'll call Mr. Bear, my Siberian friend. He knows how to mix all stuff with a beat", answered Mr. Crocodile. Finally, the Nature, crafted from sounds of planets, trains and animals including higher primates, is now in your hands. Still we wonder how the human ear will take this?"

I know how most people would take this, they would listen to ten seconds, scratch their head as if trying to make sense of it, then discard it, probably with extreme prejudice. Me? I'm made of sterner stuff than most, and will happily branch into areas of RIO and progressive rock that are more commonly referred to as noise (yes, it's a genre). This album isn't meant to be easy to listen to, it's not meant to be something that will ever be played on the radio or to be hummed under breath while driving, this is all about challenging the very term "music" and wondering just how far that boundary can be stretched while still making it something that people, at least some people, will want to listen to. I find this music enthralling, almost hypnotic in the way that it drags me in, using sounds that are industrial, mechanical, other worldly and not even created by the band, twisting them into something that is not recognisable in its original form

There are very few bands who can say to be actually progressing in the truest sense, as opposed to the regressing that many seem all too fond of, but Disen Gage are creating a path that only the brave will follow. Are you one of them?

The latest-to-date curveball by the unpredictable Russian band Disen Gage is even more obscure than their 2017 live-in-the-science-lab soundtrack "Hybrid State", and easily earns my vote as the most difficult album of the year. But like all challenging music the effort needed to appreciate it makes the rewards more gratifying...especially to masochists.

This is a group (now just a duo) willing to sever all ties to conventional music-making and embrace more dangerous creative impulses: musique concrete, industrial noise, and all the environmental dissonance of their troubled homeland. The two remaining Disen Gagers - Konstantin Mochalov and Anton Efimov - are both listed as guitarists, but you'd be hard-pressed to hear anything resembling a traditional guitar anywhere over the album's three long sound-assemblies (you won't, under any circumstance, confuse them with 'songs').

The album opens with a shocking burst of interplanetary noise: the real thing, using documentary tapes from (according to the band) Iowa astronomers "converting strange signals coming from the orbit of Jupiter into audible sound palettes". Did they spot a mysterious black monolith circling the planet as well? The sense of cosmic disorientation would be no less startling...

The atonal cacophony lasts for 16+ minutes, at one point briefly incorporating background snippets of actual music (I hear a saxophone..!), credited to a "Zen Porno rock-band recorded in the vicinity of Jupiter" but possibly an outtake from an earlier Disen Gage session, back when the band was a legitimate group, performing on real musical instruments.

Next up is "Trains": a collage of metal-on-metal ambience recorded after hours at a Moscow railway station, the "fascinating sonic roulades emitted by the wagons" looped into a semblance of rhythm. There's really no comparison, but the harsh yet hypnotic effect recalls the uneasy slumber of Tangerine Dream's proto-ambient "Zeit", reduced to its elemental brain-wave basics.

"Animals" then combines the two preceding soundscapes into an unruly zoological sh!t-show, with a storm of bestial noises plundered from the natural world: check out the long, tongue-in-cheek guest list for the track. I'm reminded of something the early Residents might have spliced together, in their pre-eyeball mask adolescence...at least until it erupts suddenly into a raucous, Post-Everything rock loop, so over the top (when the wolves begin howling) that it's hard not to respond with astonished laughter.

In all, it's a unique and oddly compelling achievement, requiring yet another defense of the often misunderstood two-star ProgArchives grade. If five full stars acknowledge an essential masterpiece, two stars must be the connoisseur's rating: not a measure of relative quality, but a mark of distinction for albums aimed strictly at aficionados.

Sixth studio LP by Disen Gage is not Eclectic Prog the band is labeled with. It's certainly progressive and in a sense eclectic, ye the correct genre must be Avant-Garde, more precisely Musique Concrète: the source of the sounds on this album is mainly samples.

Aesthetically it feels like Dark Ambient. That is especially true for Trains, try it out at night on some creepy train station. The atmosphere of the other two tracks is harder to penetrate as the music is quite alien (especially on Planets, ha-ha, got it?). But that is exactly why the album is so good: it invokes unique feelings and offers a dive into some other realm for those who can catch the right set of mind. One good thing about experimental music is that it often tries to provide new aesthetics for us, bored by listening to the same thing for years, and it sometimes succeeds to do so. This, in my opinion, is the case.

It's very hard to access this work with stars. Yes, Nature is different, and it would probably be wrong to call it progressive rock due to the latter word. But this doesn't prevent, for instance, Tangerine Dream albums from enjoying highest marks and spots in all-time top. This album is a unique experience, which can also be highly pleasant if given a proper chance. Should I say that it's not something that would appeal to many progheads and call it "collectors/fans only" or should I praise the boldness of the band's decision to update its discography with this sudden atypical record and proclaim 4 stars?.. Funnily enough, the votes of the previous reviewers have divided equally. My choice is seen on the opposite side of the review.

DISEN GAGE ​​is an association of Russian musicians, Konstantin Mochalov and Anton Efimov happens with their 5th album "Nature" to compose three songs from natural noises. They took as reference a planet, trains and animals. The transcribed sounds have no bass or drums, but sampling of notes spellbinding, creative, electronic, contemplative and anarchic. Openness is almost obligatory to embark on this unique journey and almost unique: it was dark phases, repetitive, of mixing psychedelic atmospheres and natural sounds, we have sound research to the limits of the entendable moments then a more standardized its will restore any continuity under explored. Some QUANTUM Fantay to OZRIC TENTACLES, MIKE OLDFIELD, TANGERINE DREAM in their most adventurous and most dark stage can be detected, Lustmord to the dark side, repetitive and infamous, I'll even look that was the FIRM (International Foundation for Music Research) in its time! In short, both tapped into the space rock in the atmosphere, the noise, experimental, industrial and Vanguard!

"Complex textures, atonal improvisation, rhythms and hard riffs, soft soundscapes, a great sense of melody, outstanding personal skills", this is what I could find rightly on their chronic . I take this phrase to confirm that I am not alone in finding this album purely singular. "Planets" is the title built with sequences of sounds in space or hyper space wrapped in atonal sequences making random monitoring. It is hard to access, easier to swallow the helmet! With a few plays ears starting to detect a rhythm, a frame from theory Jupiter orbits.

"Trains" offers Station sounds about tangled paths, wind in the trains, brakes, winds blowing in the Moscow underground, it's very scary and dreamy: musical sounds are there to arrange and mix everything. "Animals" seems more accessible with more natural sounds, recognizable but equally frightening, dark and austere: wolves, bears, rattlesnakes and other insects are on the menu and many other dismal thing from a marsh Australian! Title not listen alone in the dark except for fun to be scared! These three titles more than 15 minutes each, despite my brief explanation, therefore represent a trip to the archaic music of our good old Earth, at a time when the man appears to be not appeared ... or already extinct; to listen without fear for those who are suffering from a huge spleen; for others, you'll get an unknown film music, a chilling atmosphere Sidereal but not meaningless.