Fix it if it ain’t Broken is the third album of the experimental duo of Nov-Sad-based, prolific modular synth player Ilia Belorukov (who is also a sax player) and Finnish guitarist and electronics player Lauri Hyvärinen, following Split (Rypistellyt Levyt, 2016) and Yesterday by Chance (Attenuation Circuit, 2019). It was recorded in a three-day session at kuda.org studio in Novi Sad in October 2023, and reflects the major global and personal changes, or better described as disorienting and unsettling disturbances, since their last recorded meeting.
Belorukov and Hyvärinen employ their instruments as abstract sound sources and keep searching for the unstable, the incompatible, and the uncertain, and create free improvised, intense and physical, dissonant and noisy textures. These dense, almost industrial textures merge Hyvärinen’s effects-laden guitar with Belorukov’s alien synth sounds into an otherworldly sonic beast. They attempt to «expose something hidden beneath, and then try to ‘fix’ it in order to rearrange the pieces again», as Hyvärinen puts it. The cover artwork, the oil painting A woman divided into two, representing life and death, captures the irreparable spirit of these textures.
Binus documents the first free improvised collaboration of Belorukov with the Vienna-based flutist Sara Zlanabitnig, who considers herself a researcher of unusual sounds and textures that move between the fields of electronic and freely improvised new music. This duo explores, live in the studio, the resonant acoustic and electronic timbres of Belorukov’s modular synth and fluteophone with Zlanabitnig’s effects-laden flute, played with false fingerings, quarter tones, harmonics and multiphonics.
These pieces were later layered and integrated in the post-production process with the distinct acoustic ambiences of field recordings taken at Novi Sad’s kuda.org studio, The Chapel of Peace, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, edited, re-arranged and mixed in June 2024. The five multi-layered, multi-dimensional pieces suggest electroacoustic, haunting and hallucinogenic-like and sometimes even nightmarish reflections on the dear and vibrant urban locations of Novi Sad.
Eyal Hareuveni
Ilia Belorukov (modular synthesizer, fluteophone), Lauri Hyvarinen (electric guitar, effects pedals), Sara Zlanabitnig (inside and feedback flutes, field recordings)
