Coconut Dealers

 

The Coconut Dealers, if we want to believe the release info, and why shouldn't we? -

only steered their ship through tropical waters for 1 - 2 years. That was more than 10 years ago. 

The crew probably only consisted of Konstantin Shkolnikov. Shkolnikov, as captain, boatsmate and cook all rolled into one, followed the same route that Dolphins into the Future, Wave Temples and other adventurers had already taken.

Afterwards, his trail is lost in the vastness of the sea, in the jungle of an unspecified island or just a faceless satellite city of the Russian Federation.

Whatever he left behind, and however it ended up in Not Not Fun's Britt Brown's hands, here comes almost 2 hours of oceanic bliss, 2 hours of support to bring back the memories of your last seaside vacation to refresh.

„Exquisitely woozy ambient wow and flutter from Russian Federation rogue naturalist Konstantin Shkolnikov, landing square between the distant gazes of Spencer Clark, Huerco S. and 1991.

Hard to resist, the pull of warmer climes and better days is most beautifully at the core of Coconut Dealers’ gently hallucinatory recordings here. Made sometime around 2011, and issued at the time as digital releases which totally escaped most radars, you can trust the ever reliable NNF to bide their time perfectly with this comprehensive survey and reminder of the project, spanning nearly 2 hours of breezy tropical transportation that will surely do in lieu of holidays for us.

There’s no shortage of this style in circulation, but the amount that’s worth your time is small. ‘Coconut Dealers’ is most certainly worth the dive though, turning an array of found research recordings gifted to the artists by an oceanographer friend, into a lush sort of ethnographic collage where rolling surf laps sloshing keys, waterfall sounds, and flanging tape hiss resembling far away jet planes.

Perhaps unavoidably comparisons should be made with Spencer Clark’s myriad “ethnographic” aliases, but also 1991 cult ‘High-Tech High-Life’ album, which shares much of the Coconut Dealers’ melodic wistfulness and washed out tape textures, just like Huerco S. when he vapourises the beats. Treat your ears to a few hours in the sun, no factor 50 needed.“

Boomkat 

„Russian Federation rogue naturalist Konstantin Shkolnikov launched Coconut Dealers in 2011 after being gifted an extensive vault of research recordings by an oceanographer friend. Inspired by their beauty and blankness, he began shaping them into ethnographic collages of rolling surf, sundazed keys, hand drums, tropical waterfalls, and tape hiss, “like notes in the diary of some traveler,” compelled by a compositional muse he describes as “pure visionary.” 

After three self-released digital collections the project ceased activities in 2012. Totaling nearly two hours, this remastered box set presents the entirety of the Coconut Dealers soundsphere, spanning all manner of aquatic and equatorial hallucination: “sunny archipelagos, woeful lagoons in the night, sleepy sand bays of restless waters with no horizon.” This is music of the mind's eye, adrift and ascendent, divined from and for the infinite seas within.“

NNF Release Info on Bandcamp