Matryoshka 4.3 – Cave Diver, pt. II

A painting of a robed figure standing on a river bank looking towards the dark shape of a small boat coming out of a dark opening in a rock face.
Acheron, Reinhold Kukla

The team joins their KGB comrade to go into the caves underneath the cabin in the woods.

Players
Lina (she/her) – Katya Leskova
Johnny (he/him) – Yahyo Mahmudov
Jeremy (he/him) – Boris Lebedev

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
Sea Power – “Tiger King”
2003 Toyota Corolla – “2003 Toyota Corolla”
Sarah Davachi – “Untitled (Live in Portland)”
Stephen Scott – “Minerva’s Web”
Ryuichi Sakamoto – “ZURE”
Sarah Davachi – “Stations II”
Wouter Veldhuis – “Blue Forest I – III”
Cliff Martinez – “Hi Energy Proton Accelerator”
Colin Stetson – “The Lure of the Mine”
Mary Jane Leach – “Dowland’s Tears”
Deaf Center – “The Clearing”

Matryoshka 4.2 – Cave Diver, pt. I

Very dark illustration of a wooded area at night. Two deer in shadow stand and look at the viewer, their eyes reflecting some unseen light source.
deer in the dark, Lanrek

Katya and Yahyo investigate a musical performance that caused its audience to go berserk.

Players
Lina – Katya Leskova
Johnny – Yahyo Mahmudov

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
GAS – “Rausch 1”
Bengalfuel – “Adrift”
Chihei Hatakeyama – “Like Flowing Water”
Sarah Davachi – “Third Hour”
Akira Rabelais – “Notturno (Loverly Remix)
Apocryphos & Kammerheit & Atrium Carceri – “In An Arched World”
Kali Malone – “Living Torch I”
Christina Vantzou & Echo Collective – “Glissando for Bodies and Machines in Space”
Raime – “The Last Foundry”
Michel Banabila & Machinefabriek – “Cassina”
Mary Jane Leach – “Bruckstück”

Matryoshka 4.1 – The Town

…, Kosmogenez

The entire population of a town near the Pacific coast of the RSFSR disappears overnight and the Vladivostok branch of Division 3 is brought in to find where they went and how to bring them back.

Players
Lina – Katya Leskova
Johnny – Yahyo Mahmudov
Stone – Viktor Novikov

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
Bowery Electric – “Postscript”
How to Disappear Completely – “Seraph XI”
Phill Niblock – “Feedcorn Ear”
Jon Hassel – “Blues Nile”
Sinke Dûs – “That Which Lies Beyond”
Dirty Beaches – “Time Washes Away Everything”
Steve Roach – “Immanent”
William Ryan Fritch – “Low Smoulder”
Sarah Davachi – “Rushes Recede”

Matryoshka 3.12 – Sailfish

Lágrimas de sangre, Oswaldo Guayasamín

Matryoshka and their Yugoslav comrades make a plan with the Ct’kathka to drive the imperialists out of the sea.

Players
Dan (he/him) – Pvt. 1st Class Pavel Antonovich Ivanov
Lina (she/her) – Mels Kazakova
Johnny (he/him) – Emiliano Macana

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
Klara Lewis & Simon Fisher Turner – “Mend”
Abul Mogard – “Staring at the Sweeps of the Desert”
Sarah Davachi – “Magdalena”, “First Cadence”
Dale Cooper Quartet – “Une cellier”
Brian Eno – “I Dormienti”
Apocryphos & Kammarheit & Atrium Carceri – “What the Earth Bore”
Craven Faults – “Deipkeir”
Alfred Schnittke – “Lux Aeterna”
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin – “Mäßig Bewegt (feat. S/QU/NC/R)”
HEXSYSTEM – “Manhunter”

Matryoshka 3.11 – Lights from the Sea

Trilogy of the Doubt #1, Lita Cabellut

The squad goes to Yugoslavia to help investigate reports of a large and dangerous bird-/fish-like creature in a small Croatian town on the Adriatic.
(h/t R. Lentz)

Players
Dan (he/him) – Pvt. 1st Class Pavel Antonovich Ivanov
Lina (she/her) – Mels Kazakova
Johnny (he/him) – Emiliano Macana

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
William Basinski – “4(E+D)4(ER=EPR)”
Chubby Wolf – “Bedside Manor”
William Basinski – “dlp 2.1”
Biosphere – “People Are Friends”
58918012 – “Pressure”
Kali Malone – Living Torch II”
Abul Mogard – “Tumbling Relentless Heaps”
Bing Satellites – “Dreamworld Part Three”
Daniel Brandt – “Chaparral Mesa”
Masayoshi Fujta & Guy Andrews – “Needle Six (Part II)
Deaf Center – “The Clearing”

Matryoshka 3.10 – The Far-spider

J. V., Nicola Samori

Pavel joins Mels and Emiliano as they return to the Blessed Theotokos Monastery in the Tajik SSR to confront what lies beneath it.

Players
Dan (he/him) – Pvt. 1st Class Pavel Antonovich Ivanov
Lina (she/her) – Mels Kazakova
Johnny (he/him) – Emiliano Macana

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
Sarah Davachi – “Badlands”
Hilyard – “On The Surface”
Chubby Wolf – “Die Unendliche Geschichte”
Phill Niblock – “Two Lips – Coh Da Guitar Quartet”
Wouter Veldhuis – “Blue Forest I”, “Blue Forest II”
Petri Kuljuntausta – “Violin Tone Orchestra”
Jon Hassell – “Blues Nile”
Kali Malone – “Bondage to Formula”
Loscil – “Straw Dogs”
Bvdub – “Your Painted Armor Longs to Crack”
Colin Stetson – “Clothed in the Skin of the Dead”
Olivier Messiaen – “Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus”

Matryoshka 3.9 – The Signal

Mels and Emiliano go to the Tajik SSR to investigate a plane that was brought down under very bizarre circumstances.
(h/t R. Lentz)

Players
Lina (she/her) – Mels Kazakova
Johnny (he/him) – Emiliano Macana

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
Tim Hecker – “Winter Is Coming”
Brian Eno – “77 Million Paintings”
David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir – “Telescoping”, “Multiplying Voices at the Heart of the Body of Sound”
Sarah Davachi – “For Organ”
Petri Kuljuntausta – “Four Notes”
The Beacon Sound Choir – “Drone 1”

Matryoshka 3.8 – The Singers of Songs

A salt marsh in west Asia. The foreground is a flat, largely blank landscape with a few short pale green and reddish plants. A narrow stream runs through the center. A salt lake can be seen in the background.

Mels and Pavel head to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic to find a pair of researchers who disappeared while camping on a deceptively plain-looking tract of land.
(h/t R. Lentz)

Players
Dan (he/him) – Pvt. 1st Class Pavel Antonovich Ivanov
Lina (she/her) – Mels Kazakova

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
Ben Bertrand – “Sora No”
The Beacon Sound Choir – “Drone 2”
Kasper Bjørke Quartet – “Seminom non Seminom”
Julia Kent & Jean D.L. – “Part Two”
Bengalfuel – “Let”, “Callisto”, “Worm”
Kevin MacLeod – “Ice Demon”
Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri – “Cuando el Misterio es Demasiado Impresionante, es Imposible”
Deaf Center – “The Day I Would Never Have”
Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow – “Ambulance Chase”
Daughter Produkt – “Anisotropy”
Susumu Yokota – “Gekkoh”
Jon Gibson – “Melody IV, Part I”

Season 3 interlude – The Shadow Under Leningrad, pt. II

The special investigators, joined by a former agent who specialized in the paranormal, come up with a plan to protect the people of Leningrad from the horrors below.

Players
Johnny (he/him) – Pvt. Georgi Nikolaevich Kipian
Jeremy (he/him) – Osip Rodionovich Ovechkin
Lina (she/her) – Valeria Danilovna Kareva
Dan (he/him) – Nikolay Nikolaevich Berozhkin

Music
utopologist – “Matryoshka”
Robert Turman – “Flux 2”
Bersarin Quartett – “Rot und Schwarz”
Phillip Wilkerson – “To the One Who Hears”
Hilyard – “Dismantled”
Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek – “Vague, Yet”
Kyle Bobby Dunn – “Buncington Revisited”
Bing Satellites – “Music for Horns No. 1 in G major”
Hidden Orchestra – “East London Street (Drums Only Version)”
Patricia – “Upper Peninsula (feat. Terekke)”
Memotone – “Ritual”
Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld – “Never Were the Way She Was”
Kasper Bjørke Quartet – “Paramount”