There is a quiet weight carried throughout the new EP from Amsterdam-based producer Van Sur Les, capturing the feeling of history dissolving in real time, and of memory surviving only in fragments.
Built around the fading Ingrian language and culture, ‘Ingrian Tape’ could easily have slipped into the territory of archival exercise or academic reconstruction. Instead, this six-track collection feels startlingly alive as Dmitry Surugin approaches the material as an artist attempting to reconnect with heritage through contemporary sound.
Musically, the EP occupies a delicate space between organic electronica, ambient composition, and modern classical minimalism. Echoes of Ólafur Arnalds and Bonobo drift through the arrangements, while the emotional architecture occasionally recalls the slow erosion and melancholy of William Basinski. Yet ‘Ingrian Tape’ never feels overly indebted to its influences. Surugin’s approach is too personal and too emotionally embedded within the subject matter.
But what gives the EP its emotional force is the way language itself becomes part of the composition. Across the release, Ingrian vocals and archival recordings gradually fragment and recede, eventually giving way to Russian phrases and distant textures. The transition happens subtly enough that we almost absorb the disappearance subconsciously, mirroring cultural assimilation through atmosphere as it plays.
‘Kadoi’ stands as one of the release’s most affecting moments. Built around archival recordings of Ingrian folk singer Kadoi Alexandrova, the track folds ghostly vocal fragments into softly pulsing electronics and understated rhythmic movement. Here, Surugin allows the voice to breathe inside a modern soundscape, creating something suspended between preservation and reinvention.
‘Tapio’, meanwhile, points toward something more hopeful. Finnish folk singer Emmi Kuittinen delivers newly composed Ingrian runo-song passages with remarkable sensitivity, grounding the track in living tradition throughout. The piece gently expands outward through organic percussion and glowing harmonic layers, becoming one of the clearest examples of the EP’s balance between intimacy and scale.
There is also something quietly moving about the fragmented nature of the album’s creation itself. Recorded across Amsterdam, Finland, Italy, Australia, and beyond, the process mirrors the displaced reality of Ingrian identity today; scattered geographically, partially preserved, never fully anchored in one place.
At its core, ‘Ingrian Tape’ understands that memory is incomplete by nature. Languages disappear slowly. Cultures survive in traces. Voices echo faintly through recordings long after communities fade from public consciousness.
But rather than mourning that loss from a distance, Dmitry Surugin transforms it into something tactile and emotionally immediate. ‘Ingrian Tape’ does not attempt to solve disappearance, it simply refuses to let silence arrive unnoticed.