For a long time, the psychoanalytic label Fog Collective has been a vehicle for the work of Lubomyr Galchenko, a Russian-born British poet and musician with a strong interest in Russian language, literature, and the ancient Russian hymns. Galchenko has written poems in Russian and English, and has performed Russian operas.

His newest release, a threesome of operas, is a collection of vocal works by his partner, the sprightly and regal Anna Bevan. The music is decidedly contemporary, with the provocative range of expression in Russian dance and music; it is also, in this respect, an extension of Galchenko's previous work.

The poem describes a conversation between a musician and a poet. The song "The Conversation" has the poet asking the musician what her friend is singing. The music is gorgeous, with falsetto fluttering and a feminine voice dancing along the surface of the music, and it reaches its climax as the composer sings. The combination of line and piece and the way in which the singer pairs the poem with its operas is a tough and compelling combination of the modern and the ancient.

Galchenko is a poet, but he has been more interested in the physical. His poetry is informed by the politically active Russian movement in the 1990s, which he describes as a "newly formed, non-Russian, non-Western space, where the language of the people is a constant, mystical...yet very human language." The poets are not separating the word from the sound, but they are mapping them out with the poet. 

The poem is felt. The pianist is felt. The poem is felt. The pianist is felt.