David MacFadyen, Far From Moscow

«Vdovin's new audio material comes with strange, even bizarre textual support. These sonorous tracks are accompanied by a long, wandering monolog on the benefits of Italian cookware! It even sounds as if the paragraphs in question were taken from the customer comments left at an online shopping resource. They begin: “I’m all for bargains when it comes to shopping - and I couldn’t pass up picking up a seven-piece nonstick cookware set. After becoming frustrated by countless times of scrubbing off stuck-on food, I picked up Tramontina’s 'Made in Italy' set...”

As if that opening salvo were not enough, another four or five paragraphs continue in the same vein, ending with an admission that: “The nonstick covers still work fine - though without a good pan it doesn’t help much. This set was OK as a starter kit, but don’t count on it lasting long.”

Vdovin's EP is designed as a response to these vacuous interests. Most telling here is the composition “Empty Fairground,” the latter half of which is a slow, melancholy and ambient meditation on places of commercial pleasure - once the commerce stops. Layers of makeup are wiped from the faces of clowns after the crowds have left; what remains is decidedly unfunny.

The “plenitude” of fairground jollity reveals itself as a thin veneer over enduring nothingness. At least in the short term. Somewhere in the background we see cranes looming above a building site: new housing for the employees of Italian cookware firms, no doubt.»