Before the Evroremont is an intriguing piece based on an acknowledgement of sociocultural nature. “Evroremont” has been a trendy word in the Russian vocabulary since the fall of the Communist regime at the turn of the 1990s. It translates to “Euro-repairs” or “Euro-renovation” and refers to a propensity among Moscovites to redecorate their houses and lawns following what they imagine to be “typical” European fashion, as opposed to the “surrealistic chaos and psychedelic eclecticism” that is the traditional Moscow style, according to electronic artist Alexei Borisov. Together with photographer Anna Hämäläinen, he created this work for the 2001 Avanto Festival in Helsinki, Finland. The music consists of home-related field recordings (conversations, repairs, and the sounds of modern technology, like radios and computers) and electronics, both analog input and digital processing. Assembled live, the 31-minute piece often sounds harsh and hollow, in this regard offering a suitable metaphor for the phenomenon it reveals. But deprived from its visual component (a glimpse is given in the booklet), the music is not very talkative. Textural shifts are brutal and seem occasionally gratuitous, while on the other hand some of the sounds are truly puzzling, evoking the experiments of Quebecois sound artist Pierre-André Arcand (also more interesting to analyze than listen to). Despite its flaws, Before the Evroremont reveals an imaginative mind. – François Couture
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