1695 ‘Vana maa’: the birth of the autumn symphony
Earlier this year, the one-man project 1695 released its second full-length ‘Vana maa’. The three-song album was released on cassette by the legendary Estonian label Trash Can Dance (catalogue number TCD4522025). The genesis of ‘Vana maa’ itself dates back to the autumn of 2023, when Kruxator, the one-man-orchestra breed of organiser from Warhorn Records, was planning a three-part series of metal concerts in Tartu: ‘Arhailine Tarbatu’, ‘Sõge Tartu’ and ‘Dystopian TR2’ (read his own explanations). As he has always wanted to offer concert-goers a cultural spectacle in addition to the bands, he approached me before the first event with a request to put together a photo gallery of Estonia’s prehistoric sites. Krux was well aware of my quirky habit of wandering around all sorts of archaeological sites, taking pictures and writing about them. Over the years, my somewhat old-fashioned online diary Muinasreisid has accumulated a considerable number of entries (let’s add to them the stories that appeared in my first blog, Uputaja). Browsing them, I came up with a respectable selection of photos for the “Arhailine Tarbatu”, to be projected upon the big wall in the Genialistide Club during the band changeover.
But places with a deep history and sometimes sad or eerie wibes need a corresponding soundscape, don’t they? The idea of this popped into my head quite quickly, so one autumn day (or was it evening…?) I drove to my homelike Pergerus rehearsal room and in no time at all I had a quarter of an hour long symphony of ancient places called ‘Vana maa’ (‘Old Land’) on tape.
After the song’s premiere at the Genialists Club concert ‘Arhailine Tarbatu’ on 14 October 2023, I made it publicly available on Youtube. It is still there.
The 1695 sessions were not limited to the track ‘Vana maa’ that autumn. The second stage of the series, ‘Sõge Tartu’, also needed a similar added value. This time, the photo selection was provided by world traveller Dominyka Dačkute, who has taken thousands of memorable photos on her wanderings near and far. It was my duty to again create the right atmosphere for her collection. While ‘Vana maa’ was born mainly from the interplay of voice and recorder, for the second Pergerus session I chose my longest-standing love – the classical guitar. I can’t hide the fact that there is just something uniquely beautiful about nylon strings for me. Again, 20 minutes of ambient came with extraordinary ease. Apparently it was all there in me already, I just needed a specific reason to pour it out with a little help from my guitar. The newborn was named ‘Külm maa’ (‘Cold Land’). Perhaps by then the autumn days had already turned a little harsher.
There is also a third track on the album, the much shorter ‘Igikelts’ (‘Permafrost’). It is also a year younger than the others. When I offered ‘Old and Cold Land’ to Trash to put on a cassette, he asked me if I had anything shorter to add to fill out the tape more evenly. With nothing to take out of my back pocket, I grabbed my classical guitar and indulged in another solitary evening, during which I the finished piece and thematically titled it ‘Igikelts’ to match the others.
All three tracks on the ‘Vana maa’ album are aligned around a central axis. It is the land we live on, the echo of the footsteps of the bygone people around us, the unmistakable primordial progress of quietly breathing nature. None of the songs on the album have lyrics, yet they all tell a story of their own. The design of Ivo Liidemaa’s layout of the booklet of the cassette also resonates with the confluence of time and space. The pattern of the Neolithic combware gives us a glimpse of past human generations and their deeds – deeds that are recorded right here. In the Old Cold Earth.
Anyone who would like a cassette for themselves, please contact Trash Can Dance or me.
