Product Description
2 movement II
3 interlude
4 movement III
5 movement IV
6 epilogue
Genres: Ambient, Drone, Dark Ambient
RIYL: Tim Hecker, Stars of The Lid, Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ukranian ambient artist Bohdan Stupak reflects, “In the current age of wars, unrest and societal polarization, one needs to observe beautiful things to nourish the soul.”
Created on a single guitar and some baroque-influenced harmonies and processing, Bohdan’s tenth release book of sorrow sings with the ringing dark drones. When applying enough imagination, one hears the sound of a horn or violin, “But it was all made just with one guitar,” he says. “I surprised myself how far it got me.”
book of sorrow is on the border between ambient and neoclassical music. It is a homage to European classical tradition that tells the story of different beauty: the beauty of the shadow that, when cast onto things, makes colors around it more vivid. Starting with gloomy, unsettling drones, it slowly evolves into a layered symphony of multiple voices and tones creating tension between hope and despair, life and death. Eventually, this tension resolves into the stream of light, symbolizing the remarkable human ability to overcome hardships seemingly impossible to endure when looking from the outside. book of sorrow tells the story of light that will prevail no matter how unbearable the current burdens look to us.
When asked about living in Ukraine during the war, Bohdan sighs and reflects, “Honestly, each time I’m asked about the war, I don’t know what to answer. I think people expect some story from me that would highlight the drama of the situation. But a human mind adapts literally to everything. Apart from the first days of full-scale invasion that split my life into ‘before’ and ‘after,’ everything is pretty ordinary now. All of it: collecting funds to help the army, worrying about your close ones on the frontline, thinking about how your family will manage in case something bad happens to you, expecting air raids at night. It is all as routine as going to work or brushing your teeth. Maybe book of sorrow is the best answer to it. From 2022-2024 every year I did a war-related musical work to raise awareness about Ukraine. This year I didn’t, and I felt bad about it. I just don’t sense that I had the energy to re-live all this once again to digest it into artistic form. So I think this desire to escape into the realm of beautiful things is caused by fatigue acquired over these years. But as the music is quite minor key and tense, I know that I just can’t escape far, and these thoughts about the war are still living in my subconscious and affecting how I perceive the world.”
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
Bohdan Stupak is a Ukranian artist and musician who works in minimalist / experimental realms, and Book of Sorrow is his eighth release (some are EP length and extended singles) since his 2020 debut Fractions — there may be others that I’m not aware of at this time. Book of Sorrow is essentially one long piece, containing four movements in the ten minute range, a shorter interlude between the second and third movement, and an even shorter epilogue at the close of the piece. I hate to label things, because a simple description like ‘floating ambient’ may cunjure up some idea in a reader’s mind that is not at all accurate, although as a starting point it may serve a very general purpose. Each of the segments in this 45-minute trek is dark and reflective, almost nightmarish at times, but occasionally filled with light, color, and beauty. It was created using a single guitar mixed with some baroque harmonies at times, and gobs of effects and processing such that one might not easily recognize what the sound source is, as tones wallow and tumble over a shimmering backdrop that seems disturbed and unsettling. The tense, troubled, and dark visions that seem to preoccupy the first two movements give way to a more resolute vision eschewing the darkest tones after the interlude, embarking on a somewhat brighter and more colorful journey as the piece proceeds into the third and fourth movements, like the smoke clearing after a fire, revealing a clear sky with a full moon reflecting off a lake. Book of Sorrow, more than anything, takes the listener on a journey that goes from an almost gloomy and dreary uncertainty into a new world filled with the recognition of brighter times ahead, though that journey is slow and filled with mystery. -Peter Thelen