Gel Stations Past LP

Russian Tsarlag

Another Russian Tsarlag album I’ve been listening to this month, I can’t get enough. It was released in 2017 on Goaty Tapes / House Rules and is a bit more dreamy than Gagged In Boonesville. It still retains the same qualities of being meditative and relaxing and it will definitely lower your heart rate. I think I first came across ‘On the Street’, which is probably my favourite off this record, and then discovered the rest of the album. It feels like life is passing you by in slow-motion as you watch it from a distance. It’s hypnotic but also grounding.

There is definitely a melancholic element with drawn out guitars and echoing vocals. I’d highly recommend you listen to some Russian Tsarlag. I’ll leave a bit of the Bandcamp description so you can get more of an idea of the sound.

These are his saddest and slowest-burning songs, drawn in dour guitar, sweeping keyboard, and sedated vocals that teeter well below mid-tempo. Many share a somber two-chord schema that slips in perfect doses of dissonance and distortion. The results are at once refined and totally ragged, seductive, woozy, and smeared in Tsarlag’s shapely four-track atmospherics.