Considering that S.B. Reda and Pamela Zero largely contribute to this album, A. Molotkov's Can You Stay Forever? could be seen as the follow-up to Discord Aggregate's The Texture of the Sky. Entirely written by Molotkov (save for Zero's "Death"), the album adopts the same scattered form as the collective's then-most recent effort. Can You Stay Forever? consists of 34 pieces ranging in duration from a mere few seconds to around four minutes. They all feature words taken from Molotkov's book Not From Around Now (Poetry for a Small Choir) — and a small choir is almost what we have here, with Molotkov, Reda, Zero and Annie Vox reciting and occasionally singing. Several tracks are tied to each other, either through musical content, instrumentation, or lyrics, expanding or reducing themes previously heard. The vocal variety is already impressive, but the amount of instrumentation is downright staggering — violin, sitar, duduk, contrabass, accordion, sax, lap steel guitar, flute, and various percussion — in addition to keyboards and the aforementioned voices — adding up to a total cast of 17 players. The result is often dizzying and strikes as quite hermetic upon first listen, but as the ear gets accustomed to the luxurious arrangements and fragmented writing, the listener is able to detect the intricacies of the work, the simplicity of most melodies, and the enigmatic poetry that is Molotkov's forte and a distinctive trait of Discord Aggregate's previous works. Molotkov's music draws from Aboriginal, Arab and Indian traditions, along with the cut-and-paste style of '80s John Zorn, and the ordered chaos ethos of John Cage's chance-generated works. Can You Stay Forever? is more than an impressive solo debut, it's in a class of its own.

Summary

Putting a strain on my typing endurance, this is an album by A. Molotkov of avant band Discord Aggregate. He seems to use the same scattered song style as on the previous D.A. disc. Fortunately, he kept the titles themselves short. He also hosts many people on many many instruments. The cd is packaged in an extensive digipack. Very nice.

The music

Compared to Discord Aggregate, Invited sounds quite musical, but still there is a certain amount of weirdness. The violin is rather important on this track as is the sampling and percussion. The spoken words add to the atmosphere, which is nice. You may compare that to the spoken word Laurie Anderson (Ugly One With The Jewels). Passenger continues that line of sampled words, strung together to form a certain meaning, but sounding accidental. Samples and the like are combined to form some kind of composition, which sounds very much pieced together. A totally different way of making music, than the band format to which most readers will be used. Gone has fast acoustics, sitar and a sense of urgency. The spoken words continue telling a story of a kind. I am the kind of person who tends not to notice the words too much, trying to focus more on the impression it evokes. The vocals effects on Bleeding can be rather estranging and tend to give me hyperventilation with these people exhaling all the time.
Well, with this many tracks to go, do you expect me to go through them one by one? I hope not, because I am not going to. Not because I do not like the music, but simply because structurally and in terms of mood the music is quite similar throughout. So let us skip to the...

Conclusion

After this many tracks, the end conclusion is clear. The music made here is more like a combined art form than simply playing in a band and rocking out right. In fact, nobody rocks. There are stories told in a spoken voice, melodies played, fragments heard, (vocal) samples repeated and I guess there is also plenty of improvisation involved. The overall feel I something in between Laurie Anderson's The Ugly One With The Jewels and Peter Gabriel's soundtrack for The Last Temptation Of Christ with plenty of ethnic elements and occasional freejazz. The result is an unobtrusive avant garde, which can sound disjointed and estranging, but which does have a warm and intimate atmosphere throughout.

A creation that makes a nonsense of boundaries and categories. Molotkov's CD springs from San Francisco artistic and multimedia collective Discord Aggregate.Combining elements of poetry, instrumental and vocal improvisation, theatre, this is strong and vibrant work that challenges and takes the listener into what will be uncharted territories for many.

The numbers are impressive on this album. There are 34 songs, lasting over an hour. A. Molotkov plays over 20 instruments, from a Bengali flute to a vacuum cleaner. He is joined by over 15 other musicians, who contribute didgeridoo, electric sitar, throat singing and multiple other manners to create music or sound.
Mr. Molotkov is part of the Discord Aggregate, a multimedia collective from San Fancisco. One of his colleagues there is Pamela zero, reviewed on these pages before and also participating on "Can you stay forever?".
As you could expect, the album mostly contains improvised experimental music, but the end result is not as inaccessible as you made think (except for a few passages like 'Bleeding'). In fact, I find it quite an entertaining and colourful patchwork. Especially the combination of surprising sounds and original poetic spoken words works quite well. An album made with a lot of imagination, for those who like travel along the borders of the mind.
"When you are ready / Place a red ribbon / On the edge of the crescent moon."