Improbable though it might sound, some memorable dubstep and house music is being created in the very far north, in Russia’s port city of Arkhangelsk, by the artist known only as PakØ – apart from this moniker, little is to be gleaned other than that he’s represented in the UK by the record company 2019, and that an EP, Dubcity, has been issued by the Subline label in his own country; on his Facebook page, where he is quite generous in providing links to tracks by other artists, he dispenses no further information about himself.
But how much does it matter if PakØ is something of a cipher, after all; the music is what counts, and amidst the pieces he offers on his Soundcloud page there are several which do stand out by virtue of their spare mix of elements (and also their rather abrupt endings), in particular a collaboration – a northern alliance they call it, and actually the sounds tingle in one’s ears as they waft by, akin perhaps to an icy breeze – with his fellow artist Snoe in Murmansk, “Dotted.”
Closer to the mainstream of house music, but still somehow redolent acoustically of large open spaces and a certain thin cool air, is the solo work entitled “No More Light.”
Moreover, from the EP, I’d like to mention a couple of tunes; firstly “Bristol” (here too, if one listens closely, one may hear gusts of wind and the brittle sound which things near to freezing might make when touched or tapped).
And then (made available on Bandcamp by his record label) “Hustlaz.”
Postscript. The track “Bristol” is no longer available on Soundcloud, so I have substituted the one from Subline’s Bandcamp page.