Anton Batagov - Music For Piano

Firstly, allow me to introduce RAIG. (Russian Association of Independent Genres). Some of you may recognise the name from the Irmologion releases.

The Association caught my eye when i was browsing the Cold Spring mail order, and saw this album. Described as haunting ambient Piano melodies, I decided to look up the artist further, as I placed my order. Batagov is very well known in Russia as a Piano protegé, in fact, judging by the several releases he has put together, he is in huge demand for his ability. Let's take a listen.

Each of the tracks is from 7 to 16 minutes in length, which at first glance seems oddly worrying for a Piano only release. Fortunately, the hype surrounding this man isn't over-hyped in the slightest. Batagov has a knack of generating beautiful, sorrowful and haunting Piano melodies. The first track grips you from the word "go", and takes on an almost delicate Eastern manner at times. This is a Ballad, a Lullaby, or even just a nice soothing number to fall asleep too.

It doesn't stop here either, each of the tracks takes on a clear different approach in sound, and Anton is not only a master of his art, he's by far a modern day Composer. It feels unfair to compare this to the likes of Mozart, Beethoven etc, as the style is too stretched, but by all means, there aren't enough people out there playing original Piano music anymore. Out of those that are, Mr. Batagov is one of the best I've heard.

Face it, who doesn't hear a Piano piece and think "wow"?. The question is, can you handle 54 minutes of just Piano? If you think you can, please, please get an Anton Batagov release. Preferably this one. It's calming, relaxing, Beautiful, and above all else, it gives all of you out there something in your collection you can actually play when Auntie gets married! Hurray!.

RAIG - the best thing to happen to Independent music in a long time. We salute you! Dec 01 2006