On Efenstor and Elel'
Andrey Pivovarov was born on November 8, 1981 in Krasnoyarsk,
Central Siberia. In 1988 he entered the Krasnoyarsk High School
#21. In January 1990 moved to the School #133 in Vetluzhanka, the
suburban square of Krasnoyarsk. Being a humanities person he had
no dazzling success in learning precise sciences but was interested
in nearly everything, especially that he learned himself.
In 1994 Efenstor made the first faint attempts of musicwriting
with the 4-channel ZX
Spectrum 128 tracker program. The first full-length songs were
written in 1996 with Fast
Tracker II by Vogue and Mr. H, some of them have survived to
this day (Approach to Titan, China, Nightrise,
Myriaphobia, etc.). Also apparently then Andrey had chosen
his permanent nickname Efenstor after trying several others
such as Nightwind or later Yoda and Dr.oO.
The word Efenstor, the simplified version of Æfénsteor,
is derived from Anglo-Saxon Æfen Steorra — Evening
Star. Sometimes he is also called Mægéster Æfénsteor
or Master Efenstor.
Efenstor's first unofficial album called Infernal Machine
was released in 1998, the year of his entrance to the Krasnoyarsk
State Technical University. Though the university is called
technical there was still a place for a non-technical mind: the
Humanities Faculty (later reorganized as the Social
Systems Informatization Institute) centered on psychology
of human-machine relations. Infernal Machine had been heard
by Efenstor's father and brother as well as his new friend Alexander
Baranov (known as Bars) who had heard its monophonic tape version.
The songs of Infernal Machine consisted of music alone and
had no vocals as well as all the later Efenstor's works (though
in 2006 this tradition is about to be broken).
During the next year Efenstor finds the idea of the world of Elel'
and releases his second unofficial album Roads of Elel' that
contained mostly disco songs with some folkish elements. It is no
doubt that reading of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
had given the spark for the world of Elel', though it was much more
based on Efenstor's own philosophical inventions and impressions
than on fantasy literature. The basic idea of Elel' was, in opposite
to Middle-Earth, its vastness and unpredictability, it had no history
or map and just like in our world if something happened there it
could be left never explained.
Efenstor has invented two basic languages for his world: Dangol'
and Esaah (h is always read is Esaah). Dangol' is
the best developed one, the most of its words are based upon the
Indo-European roots, it has a rather simple grammar and its dictionary
currently includes about 300 words. The example of Dangol'ian phrase
you can see at the bottom of this page. The current dictionary of
Esaah contains only 18 base words which have a very specific Romany-like
phonetics. The grammar of Esaah is very complex, its phrases usually
made out of a complex words, for example: khuadad enkhmeetash
— we're going to the land of winds, shaundrbadadh nkhnababsh
— my parents had come to the land of hills.
In 2000 Efenstor releases his new album called "The Lord
of Tall Grass". It introduces the idea of lords (verataa)
of all the discernible things in the world of Elel': places, phenomena,
even senses and thoughts. There are separate lords for tall and
short grass, for falling and fallen leaves, for clouds in morning
and clouds in evening and so on.
In the next year Efenstor discovers the idea of minor universes:
small separate worlds existing in any place where one can feel a
certain special strong feeling somewhat close to the feeling of
snugness. According to this conception minor universes can exist
in dusty attics, beyond the dirty windows of old buildings, in dark
corners, in your room when it's lit by the the lamp shining from
the half-closed door and so on. And thus the next album had been
called "Minor Universes" and it is no wonder that
it contained mostly sad and gloomy songs.
In 2002 the album called The Voice of Peregrination
sees the light. The material is contained was directly opposite
to anything written before: it was mostly light, with feelable magic,
with powerful guitars and a lot of symphonic instruments. The roots
of that change were in that Efenstor had fallen in with Celtic music
and become a fan of Theodor
Severin Kittelsen's art.
In the autumn 2002 Efenstor, as well as with his brother and father,
starts to spend more time on touring the Yenisei forests and as
such this had an influence with Efenstor's music: the 2003's album
Out of the Caves! contained even
more folk-influenced and symphonic material, the songs had become
much less repetitive than before.
The album of 2004 called Myths designates
the period of attempts to create the "truly Siberian"
music, the music that in some way would be able to describe the
vastness of Siberian forests, their lifeful desertion and uniqueness.
No need to say that it was caused by even deeper going in for the
forest hiking. Nevertheless Myths
wasn't a "one-sided" album, it included indigenous shamanic
rhythms (Hyperborea, the Lord of Steppe Rain) as well
as more usual Scandinavian and Symphonic Metal (Draugen,
Dauðurá: the Dead River), the Celtic and the New
Age elements (Éirigh na Làn Gealaich, Forest
Abbey of the Lost Wanderers) and several absolutely unique tunes
(Die Märchen des Hoffmann, Magic).
In the end of 2004 Efenstor decided to cease using trackers to
create his music and move to live instruments to realize his musical
ideas more completely and intentions. At that time he could play
classical guitar and recorder and started to learn keyboards. Following
his plan to create the "truly Siberian" music he decided
to buy and learn an Altaic
khomus (jew's harp) and later a shamanic drum. Due to the search
for the needed sound in the following two years the number of instruments
has grown and included a Nizhny
Novgorod ocarina, a Yakut
khomus, a zhaleika (traditional Slavonic reed instrument), a clarinet
and even a bombard (Breton double-reed instrument) as well as an
electric guitar and some percussion. During those years Efenstor
collected hundreds of melodies he was periodically finding and in
the beginning of the spring 2006 he decided to start making songs
for the new album using all the experience he has gathered during
that time.
You can read another biography of Efenstor on www.rock-and-roll.ru
(in Russian).
If you want to talk with Efenstor write your questions into the
guestbook.
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