Cluster Lizard – Star Corsair

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CD – Prostir

Cluster Lizard is the alias for collaborations between Dmytro Fedorenko and Kateryna Zavoloka. The duo formed in 2017 and are now on their third release under this moniker. The spark that gave rise to their latest project is direct and incendiary when compared to the their previous more conceptual releases, both as individual artists and as a partnership. “What could the soundtracks of our favourite films look like?” the two composers ask themselves. But instead of focusing on suitable films, they picked a book by the Ukrainian science fiction writer, philosopher and dissident Oles Berdnyk, Star Corsair. The fundamental concept stayed the same – the desire to write a soundtrack for a work considered by the two authors to be truly exciting and meaningful. Oles Berdnyk, who passed away in 2003, is one of the fathers of Ukrainian science fiction. While his career was regularly interrupted by the Soviet authorities and his literary activity spanned different genres and themes, his most significant legacy was Star Corsair, a 1970s work of science fiction, a treatment full of futuristic tensions and libertarian impulses, which only now shows its full potential. Influenced by the vision of personal development inherent in the novel, Cluster Lizard elaborate their own personal reflection that coincides with a profound transformation. The main concept of ​​the novel is that without an “internal” freedom no “external” freedom is possible, a parallelism that in times of oppression and heavy regimentation – in the post-Cold War era, for example – can become a cult manifesto. The sounds played fully convey the atmospheres of the narrative, they are full of modernist inspiration, deep and dripping with hope, evocative and imaginative. Everything that is cybernetic and astral in the strings of Zavoloka and Fedorenko comes into play here, dark and mystical atmospheres, science and robotics, in an overlapping of textures and elements between minimalism and industrial music, straddling dark, intertwining, ambient and cosmic pulsations.

 

Cluster Lizard – Star Corsair