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"Who exactly is Galya Chikiss? Her music was always unusual; attentive listeners could frequently tell that her songs grew from initial improvisations…Those same improvisations would become a soundtrack to various visual and creative changes. The band remained underground for several years, where they recorded DIY albums in what Chikiss calls an “ambient/improvised vein that often leaned towards pure experimentation.” And now, after years of waiting, a gorgeous album has come to pass, blessed with the resonant spirit of Baltic shorelines. This sense of space – both architecturally and historically – is always audible in Chikiss’ work. Her songs drift in and out of silence, with a pronounced recourse to echo/reverb. These are stories tinged with the sadness of being alone in a disconcertingly vacant realm. There’s a good reason, therefore, why these works were rehearsed, produced, and then polished in a vaulted old studio that used to belong to the Soviet recording company Melodiia; it was once a church, a place of both spiritual and musical worship. Chikiss’ songs are full of a melancholy, sometimes ironic yearning towards those lofty benchmarks: “It was such a peaceful place, somehow blessed… I found out that the piano there was the same one used by Mikael Tariverdiev when he wrote most of his beautiful music [for Soviet cinema]. Personally I consider him one of most brilliant composers… It was really important for me to discover those things.” These are the sounds, therefore, of dramatic humility and a delicate hubris. The work of Galya Chikiss gives voice to a bittersweet improvisation between those two elusive states: between a fading past and an enticing, yet uncertain future. These are fragile, almost mystical compositions; they could also be some of the most beautiful Russian songs of a new decade." David MacFadyen (http://www.moscow.ucla.edu/) User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.