You missed Sasha Mishkin the first time because you weren’t paying attention, but we’ll set that straight. Well, in a way. I have it on good authority that his tape from Cosmic Winnetou is sold out from the label, and good luck tracking it down at some janky black-market distributor. Life is cruel sometimes, and sometimes you blow it by not buying one of the 70 original hand-numbered copies of something. Like Pastoral Breakfast, a fabulous organ-based cassette tape that calls to mind visionaries like Bach and Rick Wakeman. Huh? (Do it. Keep going.) And mine has a beautifully stroked “63” on the jcard, because I’ve kept my ear to the grindstone and my eye on the prize. I’m laying it all on the line here, all out in the open, just like Sasha Mishkin does, just like Sasha Mishkin did that fateful night (or nights) in the autumn of fourteen.
Recorded in Hegenberg, Pastoral Breakfast finds Mishkin and his organ conversing with one another effortlessly, endlessly, like the lengthy and comprehensive dialogue throughout The Brothers Karamazov, with detail upon detail spilling out of the speakers as though Mishkin was unable to withhold a single insignificant mote of data. That’s important, because Pastoral Breakfast is filled with guts, with real substance — Mishkin is continually laying himself bare as he plays his instrument, unafraid of what he may uncover about himself or within his audience. But it’s unforced, graceful, the most natural progression of notes and mood, a fitting antidote to electronic malaise and synthetic convenience.
This is how it used to be, how the baroque fuckers used to play it, when the blood poured in the practice space, but you’d never know it because the performances were so light and nimble. Sasha Mishkin bridges that gap between obsession and compulsion, the personal and the public, and just murders that organ like he was an absolute star in Vienna in 1827 or something. Restraint, resolve, redemption, and you get … a short Soundcloud medley and a dream deferred. That’s just how it has to be, I guess.
Keep your eyes open for this one. Released in October 2017, this edition went perilously fast, so do a little homework and you may get lucky.
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