Alexander’s story in the world of experimental sound design spans nearly three decades, tracing a steady musical trajectory. Since 1997, his fervent engagement with digital audio workstations (DAWs hereafter) has led him through the transgressive subgenres of deep techno, acid, dub, and trance. However, from 2013 to 2019, he found himself mired in a creative struggle, a period of uncertainty and stagnation, which he freely admits. A catalytic collaboration in 2019 with fellow drone-scape artist Cargo 642 sparked a renaissance. Together, they formed Defektoscope for the Cult collective, launching him into newer experimental realms. “Without Cargo 642,” he states, “I wouldn’t be Gipnozer. Our collaboration tore open my perception of noise, drones, and soundscaping. His influence was decisive.”
Parallel to his work with Defektoscope, the St. Petersburg-based synth soldier began to stoically delineate his individual sonic and aesthetic domain. Launching the YouTube channel Drone.Sound.System, he initially disseminated one-minute recordings of chillingly atmospheric compositions with a distinctly isolationist quality. These brief yet potent snippets charted his evolving, melodiously experimental style, heralding his predominantly Moog and Behringer-oriented sound within the increasingly engaged iso-drone circles. “The concept was simple,” he explains. “I’d set up a frame with my equipment, generate an atmospheric drone, and capture it for a minute. But one minute was never sufficient – the sounds demanded more expanse, more temporal unfolding.”
This realisation quickly led to what is now the Gipnozer channel on YouTube, via which he can explore his deep, mysteriously tenebrous textures and viscerally deployed soundscapes. On an existential level, his work is driven by the search for “harmony within chaos”, describing his process as “sculpting sound into an organic form,” and “capturing the raw emotions and experiences of the here and now.” In the context of temporality, technology, then, is simply an extension of ourselves.
Alexander’s creative work integrates into the broader collective of electronic music’s current state of evolution, analogous to underground iso-tech movements where explorative soundscapers transcend the mainstream dissemination of ‘feel-good’ jingles and the often saccharine, high-octave nostalgia-fests found on a plethora of today’s commercial-friendly synth exhibitions. His sonic transition from deep techno to stark-and-dark experimental drone mirrors the trajectories of pioneers like Aphex Twin, incorporating synthy artifices and stacks of old noise machines in a manner reflective of Eno’s introspective style spliced with a type of cerebral Jungian shadow-cognizance.
His latest album, “The Etheric Shaman,” perfectly encapsulates this worldview of life’s relentless ephemera, imbued with themes of societal incredulity and warring introspection that mirror the pervasive uncertainty of man’s contemporary being. From a thematically narrational standpoint, the album’s ontological centeredness probes inward amidst the disoriented geist of modernity; as it were, offering a boldly seminary consciousness aligned with the transcendent element of isolationist art. Central to the record’s creative vision is a compelling sense of pre-stillness, thus fermenting the quest to unearth the fundamental component of pure individuality. This thematic exploration is particularly relevant in relation to seeming myopia inherent to the modern trajectory of artistic dispensation, for this is precisely the type of music that transmutes raw, aggressive noise into coherent, palatable forms—and fearlessly evoking a return to the primaeval self at that.
Such is the case with most experimentalists, Gipnozer’s DAW-based creations exhibit a detachment from the physicality of instruments, with his software sonic ventures signalling a significant versatility in personal expression. But with this album in mind, one feels a syncretisation of traditional instruments with modern DAW techniques as an act of anti-nihilistic defiance, elegantly bridging past and present perceptions of meaning in the most Nietzschean of dichotomies. This voluminous canvas resonates with a dedicated audience seeking deeper, more thoughtful listening, reflecting a universal (yet quiet) movement towards an appeal to utter self-possession contextualised from the circuitry of self-generating drones and waving oscillators. Such an introspective focus on the tactile and the cerebral mirrors a newer form of soundscaping vis-à-vis past and present Existenz, similarly assuming the aesthetic primordiality of artists like Kukan Effect and The Lonely Bell.
This exhibition spawns from the raw vitality of perseverance and the tenacious taming of chaos inherent in the praxis of existence – and indeed man’s inner wolf. Marked by the gnawing entropy of creative stasis and the catalytic symbiosis with fellow sound grafters, we see how the will to forge an imprint of personal resilience within the confines of life’s afflictions produces compelling artwork. Through this aesthetic vision, Alexander has not merely rediscovered but radically transformed the core of his creative output, forging an acoustic gateway into which like-minders can freely traverse the battleground of the nothingness in the here and now – all the while exploring the depths of their own consciousness. Will we win?
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