V.A. She Knows More Than She Thinks

A cultural experiment as much as compilation, She Knows More Than She Thinks is the result of St. Petersburg musician Galya Chikiss deciding “to show something beautiful, unusual, unknown, and talented from different sides,” by uniting six different solo female DIY electronic artists from Russia and Ukraine within a shared document. The purity of her motive belies a curatorial instinct heavy on contrast and enigma, as gauzy Soviet ghost-pop gives way to cultish percussion/chant loops, and electro Siouxsie fever sequences dissolve into fragile moon safari space chansons. Other modes repped evoke operatic new wave, insectoid industrial, tape-hazed folk, bedroom organ sleepsong, and 1980’s Moscow MTV, unspooling like a magnetic tape mural of unseen pockets of distant domestic radicalism. The cast includes: Blablarism (Kiev), Peekaboo (Moscow), Tosya Chai (St. Petersburg), Anya Kutz (Petrozavodsk), Ladan (Kiev-Odessa), and Chikiss’ own project. Despite the two nations’ complex international relations, the camaraderie of this collection belongs to people not places: “There is no political and feminist subtext in this story – just music and inmost things.” Pro-dubbed tapes with synthetic snow-maiden in ultraviolet artwork by Galya Chikiss. Mastered by Brian Pyle. Edition of 150.