R.A.I.G.

R.A.I.G. records and mailorder or Russian Association of Independent Genres is a free union of independent musicians inspired to promote their works and to strengthen direct links between artists and their supporters worldwide. Founded in 2002 inside the art community, RAIG provides activity coordination, profile web-hosting, album-production, design, publishing and distribution for its members. It strives to advocate modern deviant music – experimental & instrumental rock, progressive, space & psychedelic, improvised music, ambient, noise and other obscure freakouts - anything which by its nature creatively approaches sound and form.

AVAILABLE click the title for sounds

(R023) AHKMED "Chicxulub"

(10 tracks - 65 min.) Though AHKMED have been continually pegged as stoner rockers, the band’s sound is in fact an alternation of various sonic substances that also defies simple classification in terms of musical styles and sub-genres. The ten songs comprising Chicxulub cover the period from 2003 to 2005 and reside in the areas – more or less in chronological order than the album’s tracks succession – of muscular guitar rock, electric psychedelia, vertigo space rock, atmospheric experimental rock and post metal. The album includes two EP’s released by the band themselves: mostly instrumental “In Your Neck of the Dying Woods” of 2005 opens the album with four epic pieces; and six shorter, heavy dynamic, laconically sang tracks from “Ahkmed” of 2003 complete the picture. As a whole, their brand of guitar driven rock echoes not just stoner-metal genre staples, but also draws comparison to the spacier, noisier, and heavier contingent of post-rockers. The art-presentation for this disc – in a gatefold sleeve which encloses a booklet with 10 exclusive photo-images, one for each song – is an attempt to visualize and symbolize the band’s unique and ever shifting sound-world. Limited edition of 500 copies.

(R026) SENDELICA "Spaceman Bubblegum And Other Weird Tales From The Mercury Mind"

(7 tracks - 58 min.) The core material of the SENDELICA’s second full-length album, this time all instrumental, was recorded in one-day session on a mobile studio under the watchful eye of producer Colin Awen (aka Powerstepper) who also played additional keyboards. Intricately entitled Spaceman Bubblegum & Other Weird Tales From The Mercury Mind, it features, among others, live psyche rocker favourites “Spaceman Bubblegum 2”, “Siren - The Second Coming”, and “Indrid Cold”. The trio put the stress on loping grooves, sometimes drawing from the free-jamming of an acid-rock band, but they also are getting into the more intellectual sounds. In essence, SENDELICA had evolved a long ways from the roots of psychedelic rock and, at this point, they take serious inspiration from modern experimental and cinematic music. There's a real looseness and grit to lengthy kraut-jams, weird elegance to more tightly arranged space-prog-numbers, and wonderful atmospheres to melodic non-drum ambiences. There's also a more easygoing, humorous bent to the way three instrumentalists interact, avoiding the over-cerebral stiffness. With all tracks running smoothly together and working as a single piece, the whole thing holds together as a coherent and listenable work. This is much more exciting and intriguing than average psyche rock revival music.

(R025) GDEVA "Bubbles, bubbles..."

(5 tracks - 60 min.) For a band that's only been together a short time, psyche rockers GDEVA are certainly versed! On its debut release, the band tries to explore prog-rock territories while routing the map of late-60s and early-70s psychodelia by using decrepit vintage musical equipment. Within these five jams – all recorded live-in-the-studio with no overdubs in two days – you'll find the charms. Steady bass and drums set the flow, while the guitarist (or two guitarists) rocks the improvisational waves in more gentle and intellectual manner. The players don’t try to show what they know and the dynamics are controlled carefully – they really know how to listen. Their influence may be apparent, but there’s a pleasing loose, space, and organic flow to the compositions. This young band could easily turn into one of the greatest space-kraut-prog-psyche outfits you’ve probably never heard of!

(R024) VESPERO "Rito"

(8 tracks - 66 min.) A landmark album after which the young band moved from spacy, ethereal material with lengthy instrumental passages to relatively concise, theatrical and avant-garde poetry dominated pieces. Rito spends most of its time with sonic textures and elongated compositions based on the repetitive and sometimes dark pulses that characterize their earlier work. But it also retains a gentle, fairy-tale ambience colored with beautiful vocalizations by Natalya Tjurina and Arkady Fedotov, as well as elegant violin passages by Valentin Rulev and flute by Fedotov himself. Their sound held together by Ivan Fedotov’s assertive drumming, Arkady Fedotov’s powerful bass and synthesizer work, and Alexander Kuzovlev guitar and sound effects – keep the proceedings moving no matter how spaced out the music gets. “Triptych”, “Inna’s Burst In Tears”, “Crabs Ashore”, and “Silence Breath Echo” – which one may know from the band’s earlier recordings – are all superior here, done clearly and louder, with a real edge to the playing (in many respects, thanks to excellent sound-production by Alisa Coral of SPACE MIRRORS . The album shows off a very potent group, able to create subtly textured music which evolves from art rock to space and kraut rock before turning up to neo psychodelia.

UPCOMING RELEASES click the title for sounds

(R027) WON JAMES WON "The Hollow Grail"

(R028) MOTHERFATHERS "Kolchak Top 20"

(R029) BOSCH'S WITH YOU "Dreams that come a Thing (Part 1)"

ACTUAL MUSIC QUARTET RSM "AMQ RSM"

DISEN GAGE "untitled (3rd)"

OCTOBER EQUUS "Architeuthis Dux"

TRIBAL LOGIC "Freaky Karma"