Losey

Rocket Recordings · Gnoomes - Foreign Agent Gnoomes ‘Losey’ (All Vinyl includes Bandcamp Download Codes) (Shipping from 4th of September) Confronting 2026, hope can seem in short supply, as the most divisive and toxic voices worldwide are amplified amidst an ever rising temperature of conflict and alienation. Yet hope is abundant in ‘Losey’, the sixth release on Rocket Recordings from the mercurial duo Gnoomes. Here, all they’ve encountered forms fuel for transcendence in musical form. Just as this couple have taken a bold step into the unknown by leaving Russia and moving to Slovenia, so their music has followed suit and thrown off all shackles to flourish in a defiant show of vibrant and revivifying colour. “The life of an immigrant is a strange thing” says the bands Sasha Piankov “But luckily, that glow music brings us has never faded, even though the emotional landscape has definitely shifted. Living in the countryside, partially in isolation, gave us space to be ourselves. It helped reduce the constant background anxiety we’d carried for most of our lives. We often say that moving from Russia wasn’t just a political decision, it was a nervous system decision.” Yet whilst the music that Sasha and his creative and life partner Masha Piankova came up with is testimony to a liberating triumph against oppression and adversity, it also goes beyond. These luminous and life-affirming beyond-genre serenades speak to the manner in which physical constraints can give flight to songs that expand to untold dimensions. Besides drums – which were recorded by their old bandmate Pasha in Perm – Losey was essentially created without leaving the house. “Those circumstances pushed us to find a new format, in how we interact with each other, both musically and in real life” notes Sasha. “As you know, we’re a married couple, and the process turned out to be deeply therapeutic and empowering.” What has emerged is a kaleidoscopic collision of styles which sends the ‘skygazing’ realm of their previous work spinning into electronic orbit. Here wildly disparate influences coalesce with the duo’s quest for new frontiers, thus whilst the opener ‘Foreign Agent’ explicitly tackles the pressures of the Russian state, it also throws a Stereolab-style motorik meditation through an in-the-red psychedelic prism, Elsewhere we can behold Bulgakov and Joy Division as bedfellows amidst the mesmeric, 303-fried EBM of ‘Satan’s Ball’. Meanwhile, heavy and perhaps unlikely influence came from Paul McCartney (whose melodic nous influenced the ‘dada pop daydream’ of ‘Shakshuka And Pie’ just as his post-Beatles farm-based solitude helped inspire the band’s process) not to mention Chris & Cosey, whose music informed the crepuscular acid stomp of the title track, not to mention the album title itself. “Rave as therapy. Pop as resistance. Love as endurance. ADHD as a production technique.” These are the primary ingredients of Losey, by the reckoning of the band themselves. This is an album that exists purely on its own distinct frequency, driven by defiance and positivity. As Masha says in conclusion; “This is for weirdos, romantics and anyone burned out with the world.” Losey is a soundtrack to set fire to the old order, the better to dance in the glow. ---