Our Thickness:Russian Futurists

Our Thickness
Label: 3hive

Genre: Indie-pop/rock

Rating: 8.9/10

Quick, pick out which of these names doesn’t belong with the others: Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Severianin, Hart… If you answered Severianin, DON’T give yourself a pat on the back! As any village idiot could see, Severianin was an Ego-Futurist, while the other three are Russian Futurists. What’s the difference? Ego-Futurists used half-baked aestheticisms between 1911 and 1913 to flesh out the ideas that would ultimately lead to the rise of Russian Futurism in the early 1920s. The full-scale exploration of concepts and ideas lives on in Matthew Adam Hart, probably the only non-Russian Russian Futurist in history (Hart hangs out in eastern Ontario).

Though a bit of a late-comer to the movement (He released only his first piece, “Method of Modern Love,” in 2001), Hart is rapidly making up for lost time and “Our Thickness” is a fine example of his technique. What Hart does is work alone in his bedroom, and perhaps that’s the most shocking thing; this album doesn’t sound like one guy at all, but his lap-pop indie is so refreshingly full in sound that “Our Thickness” does nothing but benefit from his modus operandi. Indeed, this third full-length is The Russian Futurists’ most fully-realized album yet, coming off as a more buoyant cousin of The Postal Service’s “Give Up” or some kind of strangely delayed 38-minute Christmas carol; for many people, that will come as a welcome relief. Though the second half is not quite as strong as the immediate melodies of the first, the bog of electronic drum loops, echo-laden vocals, and stuttering synths clears itself out for the grand finale, the epic “2 Dots on a Map.” It’s a glorious finish to an album that sounds beautifully unified in sound and in sight.

Though beauty was never intentional for The Russian Futurists, Kruchenykh himself would no doubt be pleased to hear the artist that bears the burden of carrying on such a revolutionary movement.

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