Year: 2003
Genre: Tribal Psychedelic Ritual Ambient
The tribal ritual music on this album sounds rather mysterious and distant. The inspiration for this project comes from archaic nature cults and psychedelic experiences. Most tracks have titles which refer to elements of nature. With no less than 80 minutes and 12 long soundscapes “Rusali” is filled to the brim.
You can hear death ambient, with harsh guitar drones and elements of industrial noise. But also more atmospheric passages, with ethno-ambient influences and sounds of field recordings. And indeed, the music of Staruha Mha has something otherworldly or out of line with modern times. I love the deep drones on "Grasses", making me want to close my eyes and wander to ominous ancient landscapes. The music is too noisy to be truly relaxing. But the dense textures have a lot of brooding atmosphere. There is also something machine-like about the music, industrial rumbling soundscapes like "On Branches" or "Deformation" go and and on, disturbed by nothing. A good piece of work if you like dark ambient and ritual drones.
Year: 2004
Genre: Tribal Psychedelic Ritual Ambient
This mysterious and short-living Russian project has always been a kind of unique folklore/musical mythology projection. Its conception seems to be far from modern world in terms of both aesthetics and social issues, taking us back to the roots, where forest is like fairyland, embodying the dream of every hermit creature. Follow-up to the first released, but last ever recorded album "Rusali", "Fires" goes beyond that obscurity edge and features more vivid forms of sound, but never like new-age sweetness. All compositions are undoubtedly anxious, uneasy by the nature; it will surely destroy your afternoon meditation and face you under the hostile, wild and indifferent atmosphere which nevertheless is not going against ambient harmony. Fantastic real music, which is intended in absence of words... Deep solitude softly transformed into selflessness - only ridding oneself of rational thought it was possible to achieve such alienation attitude. This is beautiful and very peculiar work, and there is no real comparison, neither surmising instruments nor similar projects. Sometimes I catch myself at thinking this music was recorded not in a studio but in a real forest, by the supersensitive facility which can feel the aura of the environment.
