Reach 16.1.25 | Amkarahoi/Purpurniy Dyadya; Radio Updates
Not quite back properly just yet, but here's a deeper dive into four albums from one artist which I've had on repeat since August, as well as a recap four of my recent radio outings to tide you over.
Good greetings to you! I’ll trust you to also feel fully within the calendar year of 2025, but the calendar new year only; Reach will be back in force when Spring wakes us out of Winter.
In the run-up to launching the Paid section last year I made some big promises about pacing and scheduling, and it’s clear I’m going to be hard put to fulfill those promises. I’m not worrying about it; instead, you’ll get content regularly enough, and there’ll be growing areas and sub-sections of the newsletter that allow me to explore different styles and states of writing more creatively. I’d hoped to offer consistency, but I’ll stick to doing what I can.
I’ve been whisked off my feet lately, as I’m completing a series of commissioned articles for Easterndaze (a really great online publication talking about perspectives on music scenes in the East of Europe). I’ve wrapped up one already, a verbatim interview with Prague’s trans-femme collective ESTROGUN. The next, an article appraising the impact and acceptance of diasporadic nights in the city, will arrive soon, and a third will follow discussing aspects of Prague’s queer clubbing nightlife scene.
As I finish these, and prepare for my teaching over the next semester, I’ve been trying to pin down what I could write about, and one artist has been the focal point of too much serendipity recently, and I’ve enjoyed all of the albums far too much to just let them slide, so here’s a few brief thoughts about those releases. Afterwards, I’m quickly sharing an onslaught of radio outings I’ve had over the month I’ve been away, from my new Shella Radio residency with Reach to guest appearances on Hong Kong Community Radio, and Canino FM in Barcelona.
Lately I’ve been listening repeatedly to four albums which all involve one artist, Sergey Dmitriev aka Purple Uncle / Purpurniy Dyadya, also making music as Amkarahoi, with Minereed. All four of the albums I’ve collected together here have been released within the last 12 months, and all present slightly different perspectives on similar sonic textures that are evocative of the type of ambient music with frayed club edges emergent in the 90’s. They are deeply immersive records that swiftly capture attention, and reward repeated listens that uncover new favourite aspects, as older favourites decline from overlistening; one of my criteria for a great album.
It was back at the end of Summer, when I was reconnecting with writing about music again after a self-imposed break, that I found Amkarahoi’s album for Patience / Impatience (the label released a great album from Memotone that I returned to while anticipating his then-upcoming release for Soda Gong, which I covered). About the same time, I dropped in on a fundraising stream organised by Xpone (I think) to raise funds for Ukrainian war relief projects, and I heard Purple Uncle’s solo live set. Suitably intrigued, I later searched for more of his music, just in time to see a new album arriving through Souvenirs From Imaginary Cities, who’d acrossed my path before. While waiting for that album to land I find an older Amkarahoi single in the same week that I swipe myself a batch of net-label Surf’s recent releases, featuring one co-starring Purple Uncle. Finally, a brand-new full length Amkarahoi album landed on Biardo, displaying a new aspect with the addition of vocalist chereshenkaa.
One of my other tests for a great album is how much I continue listen to it after I buy it. Often I faun and froth over a record, buy it, and by the next week I can only listen to one or two tracks because I overcooked the whole thing. That always happens to a degree, but with each of these albums I still find myself enjoying the complete experience frequently. So, with big ticks in all the right boxes, here’s the music:
Amkarahoi - Uncle Reed in the Purple Mine [Patience / Impatience]
Amkarahoi’s debut might still be my favourite, due to the way it straddles the half-light of the expected. I’ve also had the longest amount of time with this record, and it became experientially glued to various airports and train stations. Cutima is unpredictable and slurred, a drunken walk home on ice all gravel-faced and serious, until Handa’s quaint little patter trickles in and redirects the energy.
As an album it is full of twists and turns, and that gives a great lease of life. Not every track will be appropriate for your mood, but it’ll probably have one which is. At times it feels like a ghostly record, slipping in between the fascia of nostalgia and modernity to achieve an elusive timelessness. Djegda has that same indescribable feeling of some music on Music From Memory and other treasure troves.
Sergei Komarov meet Purpurniy Dyadya - Dub while [Surf]
This album found me just as we tumbled over the lip of winter into dark, icy nights, and it quickly registered as a perfect travel companion: spacious dub music rolled up with glimmering, delicate ambient. Second track դաշտ simultaneously contains the immensity of open steppes, stars above, and the close safety of the fireside. It also carries a musical restlessness that is present throughout all of these records, where the piece never rolls backwards or stagnates, but progresses in a clear direction, new elements arriving and leaving in turn. I’ve listened to it all compulsively.
Purpurniy Dyadya - La Ho [Souvenirs From Imaginary Cities]
Just as Dub while was nearing dangerously overlistened-to territory, La Ho emerged through SFIC. A solo release, it was the perfect time to become more accurately acquainted with Dimitriev’s individual contributions to the previous albums. Tracks like Fatu Hiva display the intrepid and exploratory characteristics I’ve already complimented, a constantly shifting array of sounds and samples, un-stagnant.
The label compare the music to Susumu Yokota’s, and that feels apt, especially on pieces like Chara, which use similar techniques and sounds, while Derevo Glzny makes me thing more of deep-space dubbers collaborating with artists in Dimitriev’s periphery, such as Minereed, Hoavi, or Misha Sultan. At the same time, the 90’s pulse that I loved from the Amkarahoi debut beats strongest again here, especially closer Pulse II; there’s so much to dig into.
Amkarahoi - l’eau de Nil [Biardo Records]
Your Purple Uncle tour finishes near where it started, with more Amkarahoi, but one year after the debut album. l’eau de Nil showcases a deepening of that almost-90’s sound in a contradictory step towards different territory: arrhythmic wave rocks the seafloor, not merely a disturbance on the surface, while obscured by clouds carries in its wake a sensation similar to the ambient middle parts of peak-era jungle, de- and re-contextualised but unfulfilled, until the breaky drama of urban hate punches in.
The deal on writing this was sealed in part by molfar and rokotsi: molfar has a similar spirit to one beloved Abu Ama track from the early Bokeh Versions days, and I’ve spent what feels like hours spiralling ever-deeper into rokotsi, which manages to nearly perfectly emulate the same broken heart, dubbed-in-half spirit as Bristol’s Jabu, but in a new voice. And I’m always going to lap that up.
RADIO!
I have way too many radio shows from myself to share this time around. The “news” side of this is the new residency on Shella Radio in Prague, which will be once every two months. I’m keeping my Radio Punctum show, and splitting the mix, so Radio Punctum will have more listening and conceptual music, and talking, and Re-Up on Shella will be about face melting club music :) Click-links in the titles for the shows.
If I can direct you to one of these mixes over the rest, it’d be this haymaker of a mix I did for Oblaka / Exhausted Modern’s HKCR show OXY. I threw everything into this; 80 tracks in 1 hour, so I won’t repeat the tracklist here, and it’s almost entirely built on what mixing on three decks offers, with a lot of “conceptual” mixing techniques and lots of personal meaning wound up in the selection and combination. Please check it!
I had a visit to Barcelona at the end of November and went to see Canino FM. Quite hastily thrown together, but like the mix above I’m happy with the way I dodged the tempations of straightforward mixing.
A lot to cram in from me already, but for the sake of inclusivity and being done with it here’s another guest mix I did for UNIZONE, who curate an excellent label and a great mix series also. This was made back in September and has the early ideas of the kind of music I’d play under this FFFHHH alias (very dancey); I recorded it live from the radio station in Prague, and it was really funny peeping through the blinds at the news being shot in the studio opposite as I was mixing!
So, new regular radio residency! I threw together a bunch of 160-85bpm heavy slammers for this, and cut it up with older tunes by Goth-Trad and Gantz (the mood took me), and one by billy woods that’s been on heavy rotation. I’ve put the tracklist below because Reach radio stuff is about sharing (relatively) newly released music, and there’s a fair bit of that. Super recommend the new Outlines, re:ni’s clubwrecking EP, 96 Back’s SVBKVLT album, and that wonderful closing track out on INDEX.
TRACKLIST
IFS MA - Uruoi (Janka Dub) (Outlines)
Re:ni - Dragons in a Row (re:lax)
Klpflrtpr - Kind Push (Exiles)
Kohcya - Diamond (EQ Why Dub) (KY Records)
Simo Cell - Vitesse (Self-Released)
Hassan Abou Alam - Khalsana ft. Ziad Zaza (Nerve Collect)
96 Back - Rubber Knife (SVBKVLT)
Sciama - Phasing Out (A Walking Contradiction)
Ruff Cherry - Tricie (Midgar)
Prieste5s - Enchantress (traverse)
dBridge - In A Box (candy mountain)
Vardae - Pahlevan (Sure Thing)
Yogg - Mainstay (30D Records)
Paleman - Lying About Lying (30D Records)
Gantz - Bone Collector (Self-Released)
Goth-Trad - Skin No Longer Scars (ft. Dälek) (Back2Chill)
Carmen Villain - Nutrition (Smalltown Supersound)
Zoe McPherson - Let Go (SFX)
Tristan Arp - time dilation (Wisdom Teeth)
Naco - Mappy (85acid)
Loefah - Veal (Gantz Rework) (Self Released)
billy woods - spider hole
Amoura - Trim de Pride (Trip The Light)
CYBERMISSION - Y La Tuya Cual Es? (INDEX:Records)
That’s all for this edition: I’m going to slowly move towards regular writing and posting once more in the next few weeks, and you’ll see my dairy-review of PAF Festival before too long. Paid subs can expect a notice in a few weeks, and a tidal wave of karmic rewards in the coming days. You’re too kind.