Tourism by Inturist

The new instalment from Russia-born, Serbia-based producer and multidisciplinary artist Evgeny Gorbunov, aka Inturist, ‘Tourism’, continues his sonic travelogues shaped by a forced vacation. His latest output ‘Off-Season’ chronicles his exile from Moscow to Tel Aviv following the start of Russia's occupation of Ukraine. ‘Tourism’ marks a new chapter in a long journey, caught between wars and the suffocating grip of international bureaucracy. The haunted primitivism of no-new-age detuned vignettes, sun-faded guitar/tape manipulations, and the inherent strangeness of Inturist’s signature psychedelia emerge from the depths of his inner exploration, distanced from the suffocating pressures of outside sociopolitical realities; the final session of ‘Tourism’ was recorded in Tel Aviv on October 7, 2023, with editing and mastering completed in his new home in Belgrade in 2024.

The moniker Inturist derived from the name of a Soviet tour operator that functioned as the sole travel agency for foreign tourists in the Soviet Union. Born in the Far East of the USSR, Gorbunov, in 2022 found himself living in a reversed reality relative to his artist name. The radically chill ambience and absurdist wit of the release stand in stark contrast to the nightmare political climate that has upended his life. The recording process was both therapeutic and meditative: hunting for tapes and equipment at Tel Aviv’s flea market, repairing a broken tape recorder, plugging the entire set of instruments into a mixer, routing the mixer into a loop pedal, and sending the entire chain into the recorder, all with zero mixing in post-production. The improvisational punk attitude helps create unconventional song structures and delves into the depths of intuition with a slant toward levity, simplicity, and playfulness.

The result of Gorbunov's extended vacation was a passion for the culture of the SWANA region, which became the main inspiration for the release. The product of post-Soviet culture, Inturist is making ‘Tourism’ by shifting his usual cultural touchstones, as the Middle East redefines his perspectives and accents, offering new prisms to better understand both his own and different cultures. No musical ‘orientalism,’ just site-specific tension delivered through an immersive sound bath in Inturist’s most sophisticated work to date. Threading together fifteen distinct episodes into a cohesive whole, ‘Tourism’ follows the music on unknown paths, guided by emotive depth and a wandering sonic sensibility.

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