The project of Ivan Pavlov (Soisong) is happy to reveal the details on the remastered reissue and the vinyl release of the 2000 release coming out October 30.
Originally released in 2000, Iron grew out of Pavlov’s teenage fascination with heavy metal and the underground record-exchanging community of the late Soviet era. At fourteen, inspired by Iron Maiden’s “Running Free,” he picked up a six-string guitar brought to him by his grandmother and decided that he and his friends could also play that kind of music. Before long, they were rehearsing in a Soviet youth club with whatever equipment was available, looking for the sound they heard in early heavy metal records.
The album preserves traces of those early experiences through its titles and references. “Rubbing Free” nods directly to the song that inspired Pavlov to form his first band, while titles like “For Whom the Dell Falls” and “Love Mites” reference Metallica and Judas Priest. They also reference the atmosphere surrounding Western music in the Soviet Union, when exchanging records often meant running from the police, having records confiscated, and facing disciplinary consequences. It was a time when Pavlov, as a DJ, would make up a list of fake song titles for the principal to sign off on for a dance event at this school.
“It was an exciting time. There was enthusiasm; there was a community living on music. There’s a name in the album credits, Vadim ‘Mark’ Kosolapov, he was the person who introduced me to that community back in the day.”
Rooted in personal memories, IRON however is also a grown-up reflection upon heavy metal, an exploration of the genre as a sonic language. The album distills certain sonic qualities of heavy metal that fascinate Pavlov most, transforming them into an abstract electronic work.
“Iron could be seen as a symbolic tribute to the time when I was young, fearless, obsessed with forbidden music,” explains Ivan. “But aesthetically, I was approaching that music as an adult, and with interest and certain experience in electronic sound. What interested me was a particular range of mid-frequencies, the grain of the distorted guitar sound. On IRON, I was trying to isolate that grain, stripping away the rest – vocals, drums, cymbals, bass – to get a refined spectral slice of what I realize I love most about heavy metal. So, while emotionally the record looks back at youth and the excitement around the forbidden; sonically, it’s an attempt to express what I find the essence of the sound on the records we exchanged.”
The album’s artwork reflects the same idea of revealing structures through reduction. While working with Nizhny Novgorod artists Galina Myznikova and Sergey Provorov, on a film with his music, Pavlov discovered Provorov’s series of works created by placing a hot iron onto textured metal objects covered by paper, with the heat burning the paper and thus allowing the textures beneath to emerge.
“This technique relates to frottage, introduced by Max Ernst, where rubbing a charcoal or pencil reveals the structure beneath a sheet of paper you rub on,” says Ivan. “On IRON, I was doing something similar with sound, extracting only one essential texture from the whole spectrum of heavy metal. Sergey’s work felt resonant, with its similar approach, in visual terms. Of course, the double meaning of the word ‘iron’ – both the metal and the household tool used to make the artwork – appealed to me as well. There is definitely some irony in it!”
Tracklist:
1. Annum Per Annum [Pärt 2]
2. East.er.Okay.Hell
3. Love Mites
4. Waltz Nuevo No. 2
5. For Whom The Dell Falls
6. Rubbing Free
7. Now! [4’19” into 2000]
8. Spiegel I’m Spiegel
The reissue revisits IRON as both a reflection on Pavlov’s formative musical influences and as an exploration of the sonic qualities that continue to shape his work.
Coming out via We Are Busy Bodies this October 30, the reissue is available for preorder from now on here.
And on Bandcamp here.