Surrender Dmitry Evgrafov

• Dmitry Evgrafov (b. 1993):
• 1 Evgrafov: Splinter 03:55
• 2 Evgrafov: Sparkle 02:59
• 3 Evgrafov: Whirl 02:13
• 4 Evgrafov: Context 01:42
• 5 Evgrafov: Anthropocene 04:27
• 6 Evgrafov: Stymie 03:53
• 7 Evgrafov: Humble In Heart 03:41
• 8 Evgrafov: A Rural Song 05:11
• 9 Evgrafov: N.510 03:11
• 10 Evgrafov: Endless 05:53
• 11 Evgrafov: Serene Air 04:45
• 12 Evgrafov: Far And Close 03:38
• Total Runtime 45:28

Info for Surrender

Dmitry Evgrafov returns with his fourth career album and third for FatCat’s 130701 imprint (Max Richter, Johann Johannsson, Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka). His most accomplished work to date, ‘Surrender’ is a broad and dramatic record that expands the Moscow-based artist’s palette and reaches beyond the usual post-classical range. Revealing an ambitious scope across the twelve-track span, it is bold in conception and beautifully recorded. With Dmitry playing piano, marimba, xylophone, glockenspiel, bass guitar and synths and including sessions with an eight-piece string orchestra, a drummer and contributions from several instrumentalist peers, 'Surrender’ was mixed and mastered by Martyn Heyne at Lichte Studio in Berlin.

A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, Dmitry released his debut album, ‘Pereehali’ (2013), at nineteen. Shortly after, he performed onstage for the first time, when pulled out of the crowd to collaborate with Nils Frahm; and signed to 130701 in 2015, releasing the albums 'Collage' (2015) and 'Comprehension of Light' (2017), plus the EPs 'The Quiet Observation' (2016) and 'Return’ (2018). With a degree in sound design, Dmitry has composed for numerous films, videos, commercials and audiovisual installations. He is co-founder and composer/head of sound design at Endel, a mobile app company making personalised ambient soundscapes that generate responsive music in real time, which last year signed a 20 album deal with Warner Music, widely reported as “the first algorithm to sign a deal with a major”. Now 27, and with four albums to his name, Dmitry has also logged 100 million streams of his music to date. Whilst the beautifully close-mic'd piano parts of his music sit well in that playlist world alongside contemporaries such as Frahm, Arnalds or Goldmund, it is far from the full picture.

‘Surrender’ encompasses a continually changing musical and emotional spectrum, sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic, taking the listener on a journey through intimate piano, string arrangements, fractured electronica, electro-acoustic ambience, and complex, rhythmically driven constructions. On these, Dmitry forges a kind of hybrid sound where post-rock meets classical composition, at times closer in spirit to Efterklang or Mice Parade in its sense of adventure. Even the sparser, downtempo piano pieces are offset by electronics and a subtle, masterful use of FX that hints towards material like The Caretaker or the bleeding edges of ambient IDM.

In previous works, Dmitry assumed total control, only inviting in musicians when he felt it absolutely necessary, but 'Surrender’ arose from a much more collaborative effort, with more than twenty people in total involved in its recording. Written and recorded between September and December 2019, Dmitry is joined on the album by Ruslan Gadzhimuradov (drums/percussion), Memotone (guzheng on ‘Stymie’), Aukai (ronroco on ‘Endless’) and Heinali (piano on ‘Anthropocene’). Elsewhere, Ben Lukas Boysen advised and Miroslav Chernousov helped arrange. Several tracks utilise the richness of an eight-piece string section (four violins, two violas and two cellos) from Moscow’s Opensound Orchestra, who were recorded by Mikhail Ogonkov at Bashnya Studio in St. Petersburg, with drums recorded by Anton Malinen at Moscow's Cinelab. Almost all of the other material was recorded at home, and the album was co-produced by Dmitry’s wife Vika Bogorodskaya.

Having deliberately chosen to not play or compose new music between completing 'Comprehension of Light' and beginning work on 'Surrender', Dmitry sought to approach the compositional process from a fresh start, an opportunity to ‘reset’ from old playing habits, insecurities, and expectations. It was a chance to expand and experiment, to push his boundaries and explore new sounds and techniques. These include algorithmic, generative self-playing patches (‘Endless’), voices created by neural network ('Stymie'), hardcore glitches ('Context'), worn-out tapes ('Whirl'), improvised soft piano ('Far and Close') and the use of exotic acoustic instruments like the ronroco (an Andean mandolin heard on 'Endless') and guzheng (a Chinese zither used on 'Stymie').

Where 'Comprehension of Light's strong narrative arc depicted Dmitry’s internal struggles ending in metanoia, he describes ‘Surrender' as being “more externally oriented... a reflection on topics like human culture, environment, global ecosystems dying at an unimaginable pace, technological progress, inequality and suffering.” The triptych of tracks ‘Context’ / ‘Anthropocene’ / ‘Stymie’ is “a musical vision of the realization that, perhaps, human development has come too far and lost itself”, asking “have we reached the point where we don’t know anymore what do with the momentum and all the tools and instruments that human brain created?” 'Stymie' features the sounds of a neural network gradually learning to speak, with a computer going through phases resembling a child’s speech development: sounds, letters, words, sentences. This uncanny image is contrasted by the sounds of a guzheng, one of the world’s oldest instruments. Elsewhere, tracks bear out Dmitry’s attempts to nurture an inner balance,and his belief that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. 'A Rural Song' sounds like an academically arranged version of an ancient folk song. 'Humble in Heart', 'Serene Air' and 'Endless' are “hymns to the art of Surrendering - straight and simple, yet giving a sense of depth.” 'Endless' is based upon a procedurally-generated soundscape, continuously self-playing and powered by computer algorithms, yet sounding beautiful and in sync with the acoustic instruments.

Rather than indicating a giving up, Dmitry interprets the album’s title instead as an opening and accepting: “I surrendered to letting people into the sacred space of my musical processes; I surrendered to allowing them to help me; I surrendered to the fact that musically I cannot bite off more than I can chew, and that instead of trying to wrench the masterpiece out of me, it is better to just let the music flow through me and accept that it’s okay if it’s not as perfect as I wanted it to be. I surrendered to new approaches and ways of music creation.”

Dmitry Evgrafov, piano

Dmitry Evgrafov
Hugely talented and entirely self-taught, Moscow-based Dmitry Evgrafov began self-releasing his music at the age of seventeen. In 2015, the young pianist / composer signed to FatCat’s 130701 imprint, releasing the album ‘Collage’, followed by a seven-track EP, ‘The Quiet Observation’, a year later. A further year on, the stunning ‘Comprehension Of Light’ album marks a sizeable step forward for Dmitry, witnessing an increased maturity in his writing alongside an expanded breadth of pallette. A must-hear for fans of fellow 130701 alumni Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka, ‘Comprehension…’ marks Dmitry’s first ever vinyl release and offers a genuinely rich, deep and rewarding listening experience. It is a wonderfully conceived and realised work, its narrative conceptually clear and moving with the emotional power and precise logic of a great film score.

Forged in a very focused period of composition through late 2016 until early 2017, the writing process of ‘Comprehension of Light’ differed markedly from Dmitry’s previous releases. These had each consisted primarily of compilations of unconnected pieces – partly commercial (works for adverts/ film/ etc.), partly sketches (hence the previous album’s ‘Collage’ title), with almost nothing written specifically for each album. This time around, a firm concept and sense of intention lie at the album’s root. Dmitry explains how “everything is connected and tells a part of a whole story, a story of a long and difficult personal journey from darkness to light.” Expanding on this conceptual underpinning, he writes of “some dark events and changes that happened a few years ago made me rethink everything I was careless or blind to. Gradually, year after year a big hole started to grow inside me. My faith and values got lost, my inner core blurred, all my moral intentions disappeared”. This album thus tells a story of recovery, mapping “a road from ignorance, vanity and darkness towards a more wholesome approach to life.”

‘Comprehension…’ opens – and continues throughout its first half – as a predominantly bleak sound-world. Eschewing the lyrical, piano-based impressionism that was becoming his hallmark, it instead unveils a constellation of heavy drones; low register brass and string swells; percussive rumbling / clacking; and sparse string composition. In places it recalls the subterranean weight of Jóhannsson’s ‘Miners Hymns’, in others the work of Leyland Kirby / The Caretaker, or Eduard Artemiev’s disquieting score for Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’.

Opening track ‘A Gleam’ offers a glimpse of a distant pure light, a promise of something beautiful and whole, which swells throughout the track until suddenly the door slams shut and we find ourselves (‘Tamas’, ‘Ungrounded’) lost in the midst of ugliness and chaos. Immaculately paced and scored, ‘Wandering’ sees a string quartet ramble through all 12 tonalities, one by one, occasionally lingering in some, yet never finding the rest in any. It isn’t until the fifth track (‘Rajas’) that piano enters the frame. Starting gently, it leads through shifting series of uneasy, descending chords, and instead of the anticipated explosion of melody, harmony and balance, the piano freaks before falling silent, and we plunge back into the murk in ‘Through The Gloom’.

From this midway point, the album pivots and begins to open out, reaching towards the light and flowering into a thing of hope and beauty. In the sprawling, rousing ‘A Chance To Change’, a vivid and active metamorphosis occurs. We start to feel the ground, are at the edge of something new and fresh and light. In ‘First Crop’, we finally hear the album’s first true major chords. ‘Kintsukuroi’ (titled after the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold lacquer, thus understanding its being more beautiful for having been broken) and ‘Znanie’ (which translates from Russian as “knowledge”) give the feeling of a fresh breeze, with more rooted and straightforward tonalities, and a warm, heartfelt sensation of finally returning to a familiar, more benign place. ‘Rootedness’ is a celebration of a wholeness and light, with ‘Sattva’ an aftermath – its ethereal waves swaying around and offering final relief to the listener. It completes a powerful narrative arc, a convincing transformation.

Alongside this new conceptual primacy, an acoustic shift is also apparent from the outset of ‘Comprehension…’. Where ‘Collage’ was a bold, densely layered and heavily augmented work with an expansive use of electronics and a mass of virtual instrumentation, this new album sees Dmitry upgrading to real strings and orchestral instrumentation alongside a more limited continued use of software instruments. “I tried to broaden my musical vocabulary and get out of my comfort zone”, he explains. “Being completely self-taught I tried my best to properly score and compose string arrangements and even string-led compositions that would sound convincing and full. Moreover, you’ll hear only one solo-piano composition on the whole album.”

Breaking with a previous self-reliance, the album also sees him open his work up to contributions from others, with more than a dozen musicians participating in the production process in one way or another. Iskra String Quartet, who’ve worked with The XX, Radiohead, Jóhann Jóhannsson and others, contributed strings on four tracks. William ‘Memotone’ Yates played cello and clarinet on several compositions, helping to catch the feel of grittiness, despair and uneasiness across the album’s early tracks. Elsewhere, significant contributions from the semi-mythical Abul Mogard and ambient genius Benoit Pîoulard add increased richness to the album – their lush and soothing waves of tone and harmony gracing its closing compositions.

After completing the recording, the album’s more complex tracks were mixed in Reykjavik by Addi 800, who has worked extensively with Ólafur Arnalds. Finally, the record was mastered to tape by Martyn Heyne (Nils Frahm, Peter Broderick, The National and others).

A stunningly conceived and executed album, ‘Comprehension Of Light’ traces a redemptive narrative arc and bears witness to a rising young talent in the field of modern composition. It feels like a major step forward. We believe that fans of the likes of Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ólafur Arnalds and Hauscka ought to love this album and we are proud to release it as a vital addition to 130701’s prestigious catalogue.

This album contains no booklet.