Mutants In Siberia
Circum-Disc, 2025
9/10
Joke Lanz’s turntables and vocals join Petr Vrba’s trumpet and electronics for these highly artistic and experimental jazz tunes that rarely sit in one place very long.
The quirky title track opens with videogame-esque sounds and wordless vocals that don’t follow any traditional ideas, and the glitchy “Ornette Coleman’s Elephant” follow with ambience and a very unusual, haunting quality.
Further along, the strategic mood of “Submarine Inside Your Body” is oddly mesmerizing with bright flashes, while “Dizzy In The Subway” is minimal with whistling alongside jagged soundbites.
Deeper still, “A Rifle In His Hand” comes with all sorts of cinematic, sci-fi stabs of art-damaged noise rock, and “Buster Keaton’s Pork Pie Hat” continues the unpredictable landscape with an atypical droning rooted in playful jazz-ish sounds.
Lanz and Vrba met at a chance meeting in Saint Petersburg, and their combined talents and powerful vision makes for 12 tracks of childish vigor, noise versus improv and plenty of experimental gestures that you can’t not find yourself enamored with.
Travels well with: Almufaraka- Master Of Disorder; Kaze- Unwritten