Ilya E. Monosov - Seven Lucky Plays or How to Fix Songs For A Broken Heart (Language of Stone) Eric Nielsen 4.7.8
Ilya E Monosov drops 10 songs on his new disc, Seven Lucky Plays or How to Fix Songs For a Broken Heart. One thing Ilya does know how to do is set a mood with creaking attic sounds that permeate the lower registers of ambience behind most of the tracks.

I met Ilya when he lived in SD through a mutual friend, Makoto Kawabata of Acid Mothers Temple. He was working with Kawabata on some drones across the ocean the same time that Kawabata was remixing and releasing my band, Maquiladora's ep "White Sands". We got together a few times to play a little music, have some drags and talk about art. We never meshed but I sensed some interesting ideas about song-making from Ilya that made me very interested to hear this solo disc.

The mood is thick like smoke from the artwork, the instrumentation, and the lyrics. It's heavy foreboding. I love some of the lines and Slint sounding whispers of Tricycle, even though I don't understand the relationship between the pieces that well. I love the line "when I'm inside you" but I don't feel the next line "I'm reminded of my tricycle."

The artwork has Ilya looking really stoned out, breathing out smoke on one shot and looking like he's coming off acid or sleeping off the junk. I think the pictures perfectly relate to the music. There is a subtle gypsy influence in the sounds, with mostly picked guitar setting the compositions.

Greg Weeks and Jesse Sparhawk also play on the disc, which doesn't always feel like a disc of songs. Wandering between Waits scenarios, European settings, Slint whispers, dreamy harps, and whacked stringed tweaking this album gently trods a path through a magic forest near dusk, basking in the last orange glowing moments of day and dropping into early evening.

There is hardly any percussion to make your march through a weary trail of toil and travails that accompany you while you listen and walk. Gentle and melancholy, you should be on your way. Follow the stringed sounds into the blackened midnight.