Folk & World
Theodor Bastard release “▽”, their first studio album since 2021, on Season of Mist today, and go back to their electronic roots. “Our sound changed because the world changed,” says producer, multi-instrumentalist and founding member Fedor Svolotch. “We had to destroy our own habits and expectations to make ▽. We wanted to start again, as if the band has no past, no safe place, no ready-made formula. As a result, this album is not a continuation of what came before. It’s a different door.”
The Russian band, billed by the label as world music pioneers, live in the forests of Karelia, but the path of this record, the label says, doesn’t lead back home: it heads into the coldness of the city and of a collapsing civilization. The label streamed all ten tracks in full on its YouTube channel on Thursday. It’s out on CD and on two vinyl editions, one black and one yellow, red and white marble.
They’ll play it on a ten-date Russian tour that starts in Yekaterinburg on 27 November and ends in Samara on 22 December, with stops in Saint Petersburg on the 12th and Moscow on the 18th.
Text by Alba Puiggròs