A couple of initial notes: although it probably comes as no surprise to learn that the name of this St Petersburg outfit translates as “Doppler Effect,” it should be pointed out that hunting down the band’s material might be tricky, due – ironically – to a problem caused by that same familiarity. As is immediately obvious, the last name of physicist Christian Doppler is spelled slightly differently in Russian; the first word of the band’s Russian-language moniker would – if properly transliterated – be written “effekt.” In other words, what we have here is the Russian spelling – using Latin characters…

A little wasted time with a search engine might result, so be warned. Bad moods may ensue.

A few high-school physics lessons, taken years ago, might be enough to remind us that the “Doppler Effect” refers to ways in which wave frequency changes relative to a listener’s movement closer to (or further from) that wave’s source. Almost every textbook will use the example of a passing car and the fact that the noise of its engine will seemingly change as we drive closer – or further away. In essence, therefore, what we have is a metaphor of relativity: the type or nature of information changes, depending on where/how you, the listener, happen to be traveling.

That implied significance of the ensemble’s stage name has a pleasing and additional usage when we consider how these musicians operate on a day to day basis. Even in uncomfortable clothes.

They describe themselves in the following manner: “Effect Doplera is a collective of musicians who got sick and tired of the sameness and uniformity that defines most music styles or fashions today. We, the members of Effect Doplera, play a DIFFERENT kind of music. It lies at the interface of the industry’s ultra-modern and classical vectors.” Already we sense that our central metaphor is being put to good use; contemporary music goes through its motions, but its significance (the realization of its potential meanings) depends upon your activity.

As we soon learn, these new opportunities for a passage through “different” aspects of music will come from a development of visual possibilities.

“Effect Doplera is a multimedia project. In order to realize its artistic goals, it has created a unified media space by combining both intellectual and emotional significances, residing in aural and visual forms. In other words, Effect Doplera is made from a combination of both music and the visual arts. The ensemble was formed in 2007 from the members of several other, very distinct projects.” Yet again the importance of an aesthetic and philosophical trajectory comes to the fore, in the realization of some “goal” or other.

The inspiration for this ever-mobile outlook comes in part from a few Western sources. “We may like listening to [fixed genres, such as] punk rock from time to time, but how can anybody really play music like that today if you have any sympathy for projects such as Ninja Tune, Warp, or 4AD! After we went [not long ago] to concerts by Bonobo, Cinematic Orchestra, and Red Snapper, it became clear that we, too, could do something similar in a live format.”

Live shows, first and foremost, add a visual aspect, either as video art or the simple presentation of oneself to an audience. It all helps to reel in the listeners.

The individuals involved in this dual effort are Anna Kordubailo (vocals), Oleg Mikhailov (horns, programming, and IDEAOLOGY [sic]), Roman Bogun (programming, IDEAOLOGY), Slava Stokratskii (drums), Pavel Lazurin (guitars), Tat’iana Volgina (video art), and Nikolai Bichan (producer). The last two individuals in this list are unusual inclusions, but they speak directly the band’s desire to underscore the visual, theatrical aspects of their work: their role, in other words, as showmen.

In many ways this same desire harks directly back to Russian musical traditions across the entire 20th century. The established, if not conservative term for a lot of what popular music does in Russia is “estrada,” which literally translates as “the small stage” – plus all that happens upon it. This means that for Slavic music fans, song has – for decades – been wrapped up with simultaneous reference to comedy, puppetry, circus arts, and so forth.

In fact, after Stalin’s death – when stagy jollity became an option for performers, the long-lived traditions of today’s so-called “theatricalization” began, as singers started to move (more) around the stage, change costumes, and create small visual scenarios for musical numbers, depending upon their lyrical or “civic” content. Music, in a word, was shown. Effect Doplera hold to the same beliefs today, thus flying in the face, for example, of Western post-punk traditions, according to which almost anybody wearing a costume is laughed from the premises…

Especially if they intend playing keyboards with a log.

In the rain.

One recent comment on line from a concertgoer noted how this visual “trajectory” moves out into the audience. “Effect Doplera play nice music in a kind of lounge/trip-hoppy vein. At the start of their recent gig, the audience just listened to the music… but then they started to dance. A real disco got going The band played all the way through its set and started getting ready to leave, but they couldn’t! The audience was making loads of noise, jumping up and down, and shouting for the musicians to stay on stage. ‘Live’ music is live music… no matter where you are!”

It doesn’t matter, in other words, whether we’re inside the theater or out on the street; by dragging all manner of visual clues into the performance – and then removing the line between proscenium and parterre – Effect Doplera hope to turn their shows into the enactment of a worldview.

And that same worldview doesn’t involve saying very much. The band has recently set up an account on Twitter – the home of aimless chitchat. So far they have managed a grand total of three entries… The first celebrates the creation of the account[!]; the other two announce a couple of shows. Over the course of more than a month, our musicians cannot muster more than a handful of words. Nor, it seems, would they want to. They direct our attention elsewhere.

On their page at Vkontakte, they ask that fans of the music “give special thanks to our brilliant art director [shown above in wistful pose and mentioned in the list of performers]. Say thanks to Tat’iana Volgina (aka ‘Buzillo’) – for her visualization of our thoughts, emotions, and ‘heartfelt concepts’ on the theme of Effect Doplera!”

If we go looking for Buzillo’s own portfolios, we find an extension of her fin de siècle aesthetic (shown in our retro images), recalling the early days of cinema when street and stage performances went head to head with the early heroes of a silent, mobile art form. Sound and image battled for supremacy in the hearts of the audience.

The same battle is evident in a sarcastic comment left by this designer on one of her profiles today. It refers to the biggest, loudest exponent of a visualized or “theatricalized” tradition in Russia, Filipp Kirkorov. This is the tall, barrel-chested, Bulgarian exponent of “showmanship” whose glossy extravaganzas became the epitome of Russia’s moneyed ‘90s. Now, as we know, things are a little different on the financial markets, and forms of display have become more modest as a result.

Heads are hung in despair.

Buzillo’s snide aside comes in a mock admission that “My hero is Filipp Kirkorov. You’ve got to be pretty damn smart to get where he has – somewhere he really shouldn’t be, considering his complete lack of everything an artist needs.” And so Buzillo goes to work with the retro images in this post, turning back the clock on Russia’s performance traditions in order to get the audience moving along a different trajectory, one that’ll allow them – through music – to also look at the world in a different way. In short, she’s creating a multimedia Doppler Effect – no matter how it’s spelled, since words are already falling away – on underused Twitter accounts – in favor of visible action.

In another section of her online profile, she fills out the box marked as “Who I’d Like to Meet” by turning that imagined individual into a personified idea. She states not whom she’d liked to encounter, but what: “The meaning of life and knowledge of how the universe is put together.” The clothes shown in our photographs are, apparently, what you need before researching that meaning.

Philosophers, get ready to go shopping for a thinking cap.

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In the world of Russian dance music, some genres are considered more “provincial” than others. Trance, rightly or wrongly, is often assumed to be one of the styles most likely to fill lop-sided village halls in distant locations. Comedy shows and parodic cinema will certainly make use of trance mixes as the backdrop to all manner of scenes that take place in leafy, sleepy towns of no great distinction. Among those same addresses one might expect to find, for example, Volzshkii, a mid-sized industrial city in southern Russia.

The civic-minded banner below shows a recent attempt by Volzshkii’s authorities to inspire pride in their hometown as a special, i.e., unique location. The banner says “I Love You, Dearest Town!” Which begs the question: “Why?” What might the reasons be to love this place more than any other?

The city in question grew slowly over the course of the 19th century from its origins as a village – thanks to the development of river trade along the Volga. By the time of the Revolution, the population had grown from those first few huts to a respectable 20,000 people. The Soviet years didn’t exactly help the region’s general development, though. In 1952, a year before Stalin’s death, that same residency figure had actually dropped – by an enormous 50%.

As we can tell from even these initial stats, the history of Volzshkii is neither interesting nor special. Even today, both historically and architecturally, it reflects a general historical process that was undergone by many other towns – in many other regions. This is a profoundly typical place.

So what of those local, equally typical or provincial dance halls – especially in the context of trance, their fittingly “normal” style? Poking around other people’s property, we might run into a certain DJ Cross Fire (aka Aleksandr Sizintsev) who was born in Volzhskii 20 years ago and graces the top of this post. He produces a series of lengthy trance mixes on a fairly regular basis and has established a small web presence on most of Russia’s dance-related portals; we include two of those mixes lower down in this text. On his home page he includes a potted bio that says a great deal about the emotional, stylistic, and professional connections to “the [mythical] Big Time,” situated somewhere far away in the Big City.

It is written in the third person, a decision that also speaks to the general objectivity or typicality of his experiences. Speaking of oneself “from the side” in this manner not only lessens the level of uniqueness, but also leaves a general impression of some shared, social annal. One young man’s story adopts the air of an old-school, universalized or socialist biography, even. It is told in such dry and predictable tones that with each paragraph it simply moves us down the road from rags to riches, or from the periphery to the “center of things.” Risk seems minimal.

The question, however, will remain of whether this information is reliable. Does life in a typically provincial town lend itself, especially today, to the kind of extraordinary, predetermined progress that fueled so many Soviet biographies? The kind of lifelines that brought diligent, distant toilers to the famed streets of the capital?

Will this story map a road to renown – or to nowhere? Much depends on which way your car is facing.

We begin as follows: “Aleksandr’s interest in music began at the age of 8. This was when he entered music school, having first passed the entrance exam. Much later on – in 2002 – he would finally finish that education, during which he specialized in the piano. He decided, [nonetheless], to become a DJ and went about looking for an appropriate style of dance music. The years of 2003 and 2004 were a tough introduction to the profession of DJ-ing; basically Aleksandr was busy learning all the technical aspects of the job. Serious, practical studies of all the complexities and nuances of DJ-ing came only when he entered DJ school in 2004.”

Until that point, everything was shrouded in mystery.

“Having found out about the DJ school, Aleksandr showed great initiative and desire. He studied under a couple of local performers. The equipment proved at first to be both complicated and confusing, but he got used to the JOG Pioneer CDJ100 fairly quickly. It ended up being, in fact, the only equipment that Aleksandr worked with. Having learned how to work this [one piece of] machinery to a skilled, professional degree, Aleksandr then started looking for a way to get on stage. Over the course of 2004 and 2005, these efforts proved fruitless, but thanks again to his desire and stubbornness, he established the necessary contacts to organize a debut show.”

Given the cost of initial stage equipment, getting to job interviews often proved problematic.

This first performance took place in the “legendary Volzhskii club – that has long since closed down[!] – called Ibiza. As so often happens with young DJs, the first show wasn’t exactly a success. His knees kept knocking, and his fingers got lost among all the knobs and buttons. Aleksandr showed himself to be a performer with promise… but he wasn’t yet leaving the impression of an experienced DJ.” At this point, the list of performance milestones trails off into silence, since our hero goes to law school for a while. Nonetheless, even though he was bound more to dusty libraries than to dancefloors, he would continue to seek the occasional opportunity to show how well he can “feel the audience.”

Once again the empty local streets beckoned, as he tried to get (rare) bookings.

Sizintsev’s real return to live shows came with a long-time commitment to a local restaurant, where Aleksandr “worked hard – so that people could either dance or relax to the right kind of music.” He then needed a suitable stage name, and “set about learning the theory of how to choose the right one. Having learned that theory [the nature of which remains a secret], he moved on to the selection process. That lasted two or three weeks[!], after which he simply gave up.” This state of melancholy endured until he happen to run across the phrase “crossfire” on a dubbed TV show. Why, however, he then decided to break the same term into two separate parts of speech remains just as mysterious as the supposed “theory of stage names.”

It’s enough to make your head spin.

And burst into flames.

It seems reasonable at this point to assume that Sizintsev’s law studies fell by the wayside. He instead used his time to open a DJ School of his own, “where he worked as a teacher.” Within a month, however, the school folded “due to some disagreements with the owner of the equipment.” It transpires, therefore, that Aleksandr owned neither the school’s venue, nor the machinery used. He also had no official qualifications. Things continued to look bad until – somehow – sufficient money was found to acquire a Pioneer CDJ 1000 turntable. In the US, that kind of machinery sells for over $1,000, which is no huge sum, but it does give a sense of how little financial misfortune can stop a musical career dead.

And, at some point, the remaining finances are best spent on fruits of the vine, rather than on vinyl.

Sizintsev’s problems with owning turntables have parallels in his troubles with accommodation for these projects, too.

Once Aleksandr had equipment of his own, he went in search of new premises… because he had been kicked out of the old ones. Much effort was expended on discovering a suitable venue and finally the so-called “Garage Club” was found. In a city where gloss and glamor is rare indeed, it seems unlikely that any such name would be chosen as an expression of self-deprecation; unfashionable locales need to be promoted, not mocked. If, therefore, a Volzhskii address is called a “garage,” it probably is.

A quick call would verify such matters.

To this likelihood we can also add the apparent bankruptcy of the first DJ school from which Aleksandr graduated. He attributes the success of his own garage-project to the “fact that there were no other schools in the city.” These biographical milestones of achievement, therefore, gradually take on the appearance of necessary movement in order to dodge disaster, rather than any steps “upwards” or “onwards.” In other words, it’s not as if capital is being accrued or employment made more stable as this narrative continues. The events we’ve noted thus far are, instead, a series of hops or skips across rare stepping stones, each of which melts away the moment it is attained…

The assured structure or rhetoric of a Soviet biography, of “great effort and subsequent victory” is mapped onto a much less stable society with considerable effort. And hazard.

One of the very last facts we learn is that “Aleksandr is now getting lots of experience on his equipment, training each and every day for 5-6 hours.” What – in the past – would have sounded like progressive zeal today has the ring of impending unemployment. Anybody with that much time on their hands – and a DIY school in a garage – probably does not have a job. Or a law degree. What they do have, paradoxically, with (absolutely) nothing to lose, is the chance to make a total, almost irrational commitment to their craft. And indeed: “at the moment, DJ Cross Fire is working on his new mixes. He is starting to try and write his own trance tracks, too. This is only the beginning…”

Presuming, of course, that the fickle workings of provincial business do not take our hero by surprise.

Yet again.

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If memory serves us correctly, this is the third occasion we’ve turned to Torba-na-kruche for extended consideration. Each time, we feel obliged to quickly explain the band’s name: it’s the Russian translation of “Bag-End,” Tolkien’s famous residence in Hobbiton. With that out of the way, we can move on to the fact that the group recently celebrated ten years together. That decade began in the city of Kirov, shown here and approximately 500 miles east of Moscow – in other words, further into the country’s deepening forests… And indeed lumber, together with transportation, has long been the major industry of Kirov (or, as it used to be known before the Soviet Union, Viatka).

Now, more than 800 years after its foundation, Kirov has acquired the strange title of “City of Twins,” since  – for unexplained reasons – residents are responsible for an unnaturally high frequency of multiple births. Perhaps inspired by this same productive spirit, Torba-na-kruche threw local caution to the wind and started their professional work in distant St Petersburg. In fact, they did so with such success that many fans consider the “northern capital” to be the band’s hometown.

On the heels of these efforts, a debut album appeared in 2001, which – bolstered by non-stop touring – then allowed for a modest Scandinavian series of gigs in 2004. These spiraling circles of influence have led this month to the appearance of the band’s fourth album, entitled “Nesbytochnaia” (”Unrealizable”). Although the CD’s title-track makes it clear that this adjective refers to a dream – and even more specifically to dreams of a certain young woman – the group also includes a definition of the term in their liner notes. It is taken from a well-respected Russian dictionary of the 19th century: “Unrealizable. That which cannot be; cannot become; is inadmissible or impossible. Undoable; prohibited; disallowed; unfeasible; not executable – yet desired more than anything on earth.”

Like a cigarette – when stared down by three non-smokers.

When combined with a few additional sentences from these new PR materials, even greater clarity is possible, especially for those listeners who are new to the band. “This CD marks an absolutely new phase of development for Torba-na-kruche, whilst being – at the same time – a classic Torba release, with a trademark, instantly recognizable sound. This is a recording about things that are ineffable, about a vanishing peace and quiet. It’s about the unknown, about the stars… and about you, too. ‘Unrealizable’ as a whole forms a beautiful, melancholy fairy-tale.”

The opening line here, whatever its stereotypical leanings, is key. The reason why a PR rep might define the album as – somehow! – different and yet constant is because Torba-na-kruche really do sit between two musical traditions. Russia is a nation where bands of the late Soviet period, focused as they were on issues of moral rectitude, almost never collaborate today with groups that appeared after 1991. Torba, however, combine elements of both…

…and do so with such ease, they could compose with their eyes shut.

To begin with, the band’s name alone references a book of social (and mythical!) significance for late-Soviet youth, whilst their sound is close enough to modern influences to attract significant airplay today. Lyrically, their greatest debt to the past comes also from a sense of Tolkien-fueled romance, a yearning – as we’re told – for some ineffable, vanishing ideal. Much as the PR texts suggest, therefore, a core theme of the band’s songs is some state of being that is constantly promised, or comes quietly into being… yet is never fully realized. Because this same yearning is expressed on “Nesbytochnaia” with greater clarity and earnestness than ever, we have – therefore – a lyrical spirit that’s “classic” and yet novel.

In fact, the CD’s one-word title is even an admission that such vague hopes will never be realized… and still appetite or ardor endure. With desire running beyond logic and likelihood, the band’s romantic credo is given its full, “melancholy, and magical expression.”

This trademark spirit of being somehow “carried away” by ineffable flows of old-school romance was used in some other promo-materials recently, tied specifically to the release of “Nesbytochnaia.” They concerned one of the band’s guitarists, who – by accident or mystical design – confused the train platforms in St Petersburg at a time when he was supposed to heading for Kirov (below) – and the band’s showcase concert for the new CD. As a result of Lady Luck’s involvement, he started traveling slowly in the wrong direction. Everybody else in the band was on the right train. It took several minutes for this realization to take full effect, by which time – of course – everybody was in motion.

The guitarist began running back and forth throughout the train, looking for an emergency brake. Would he find one – or was an active role in fate’s machinations also something “unrealizable”?

Only in the third carriage was a handbrake found, and the guitarist yanked it downwards – which simply set off an horrific screeching sound throughout the train. The carriages ground to a halt – and the unlucky musician used the opportunity to jump down to the tracks unnoticed. He broke into a run and headed back in the general direction of the Petersburg railway station. When he arrived, huffing and puffing, he barely managed to find a different locomotive heading for Kirov – where, with some delay, he did reach the stage and play with his bandmates. Barely on time…

A recent interview with the press in Kirov gave perfect expression to these degrees of self-determination amid fate’s network of one-way passages. Torba’s vocalist, Maks Ivanov, spoke on the phone from Ukraine: “The concerts down here have gone really well! People have been waiting for us 5-7 years… they came from Kiev, from Belgorod, just to hear our songs. Even though it’s way colder down here in Ukraine than it is in St Petersburg, we all left with a ton of positive emotions. Personally I was shocked that everybody knew the words to our songs – verbatim. They knew the famous stuff, the not-so-famous materials – plus all kinds of things both old and new. Everyone was singing along in a really friendly way. It was so cool!”

These observations came at a time just before the album’s release, when the tracks were being sent off to London for mastering. Would this same spirit of consolation transfer to foggy Albion? Ivanov replied: “It’ll be interesting to see whether the guys in England have anything to say about our songs – considering that they don’t know what we’re singing about. Whatever happens, I am convinced that people here at home will really appreciate the quality of our UK mastering.” In other words, in terms of sound quality, values are international. In terms of lyrical content and worldview – regarding some “unrealizable” essence in life, things remained profoundly local.

People in Russia and Ukraine wanted to hear musical “fairy-tales” of a yearning that goes beyond “what’s realizable.” They wanted songs of hope, come what may, to which everybody knew the words – and could sing along. The kind of songs that turn a crowd into kindred spirits within 3 minutes. “We’ve got such a jam-packed concert list that it’s tricky for me to say where we’ll be playing! People give us a call, they wait for a while… and we turn up! True, given the current economic crisis, quite a few shows are canceled because venues are closing down. All the same, though, we’re happy to turn up and play wherever concert organizers can stage an event. Plus, of course, it goes without saying that for us to perform in Kirov is nothing but pleasure!”

What songs would people hear in the band’s hometown? “There’ll be new material that’s being debuted, plus some things that we’ve not really played anywhere before. All the same, the majority of songs will be known to our fans. These’ll be things they’ve heard at other concerts – maybe even at some of our acoustic shows in people’s apartments!” All the way from St Petersburg to Kiev, from stadiums to old-school Soviet “apartment gigs” (involving a sofa and two guitars), Torba-na-kruche continue to provide a consoling (even inspirational) narrative of some heartfelt, patently unrealizable ideal. It is, paradoxically, held in such high regard precisely because it will never come to be. According to the dictionary quoted above in the definition of “nesbytochnaia,” Slavic notions of “dearly held” values are often relative to their feasibility. Values that stand no chance at all are loved the most; lost causes win the day.

According to that same logic, if you wish to understand the core elements of a Russian worldview, don’t ask an Englishman. Instead, download this impressively stubborn CD, go to a Russian train station – and get on the wrong train. The longer you can keep your hands away from the emergency brake, the closer you’ll be to whatever inspires a collection of songs like “Nesbytochnaia.” A collection, in other words, of sung stories that came into being through a celebration of states that… cannot come into being.

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This summer, Russia’s most famous folk singer died at the age of 80. Liudmila Zykina had been the matriarch of Russian traditional song for most of her professional life. A quick reconsideration at that time-frame will, of course, indicate that she spent her creative heyday under the Soviets, when the cruelty and severe romance of much Slavic folk music was both toned down and institutionalized, in ways that served politics – or primetime socialist media. The rough edges were removed from folk traditions in terms of theme (no excessive drama) and “skill” (no excessive amateurism).

Although Zykina worked hard at the end of her career, ironically, to preserve many bona fide traditions in far-flung places, most of her life – and her tireless stagework – was spent in support of “Soviet folk,” so to speak. Zykina was trained in ways that underscored the importance of a centralized education system, an urban apprenticeship, and – hopefully – incorporation into the canon of proper, upstanding art forms.

Humility and hard work were the orders of the day.

For these reasons, Zykina was much admired by the Soviet elite; she helped to manage metaphors of Russia’s heartless expanses – the pitiless landscape of “the folk” – and domesticate them in songs of gentle yearning. The most famous example of this domestication, of course, was her trademark number “The Volga Flows” (Techet Volga) in which more than 2,000 miles of freezing cold water is turned into a miniature, charming image of a girl’s maturation as the years glide by…

These processes have a parallel development in the career of young singer Zara, who has just released her sixth album, entitled “For Her…” (Dlia nee). Zara’s own timeline is associated with St Petersburg, where she was born in 1983, but her background is spun from Armenian and Iranian family ties. Zara began working very early; with constant encouragement from her parents, she was performing live even before her teenage years – and quickly racked up a series of victories at singing competitions. Towards the end of the 1990s these successes had been recorded on stage in St Petersburg, Siberia, Sochi – and even at an International Youth Festival in Cairo. These dizzying heights left her lauded with the title of “Russia’s Hope” at one such competition.

Expressions of heartfelt gratitude followed.

An eventual move to primetime Russian television seemed inevitable – and indeed after a few appearances in TV drama, she took place in Russia’s version of “American Idol” (Fabrika zvezd) in 2006. This seemed a little odd at the time, since Zara was already far from an amateur – and she in no way embodied the kind of “provincial ingenue” that allegedly makes such broadcasts attractive. Equally strange, given her clear technical and professional advantages, was the fact that Zara did not win, coming only third in the competition. By this time, however, in her mid-twenties, she was a regular on the front cover of gossip magazines, due to a series of high-profile romances – not all of which were successful. The ups and downs of generic and generational changes were beginning to take their toll.

At this point we reach the current release – and an attempt to institute something resembling stability. The thing is that Zara’s reputation as a young singer was grounded in her genuinely impressive vocal abilities, as showcased by classical romances. Her initial success were in very staid venues, since she was blessed with the training to handle such material. In addition, she would often include a respectful treatment of Armenian or Iranian motifs on an album, as reminders of her “exotic” heritage. Neither classical dignity, nor “Eastern” exoticism, however, are well-suited to the Top 40, and so she tried her hand at “Fabrika zvezd,” the TV shows, and so forth. With each passing year, though, she needed to have one eye on the long-term prospects of her career.

With the recent collapse of the recording industry, the logical choice today is a commitment to TV concerts – as the calling card for extensive live work. All forms of classical severity or “oriental” uniqueness would need to be sidelined, in favor of whatever Mr. and Mrs. Average know (well).

More work, less expensive wings.

Enter the Golden Mean. Zara is now branding herself as the “Pearl of the Russian Stage” (or “Light Entertainment”/”estrada”), a Russian term loaded with the kind of traditional status that kept Zykina at the forefront of public attention for decades. In a word, as markets stumble or tumble, socialist standards and tastes are back. Even today, at the time of writing, Vladimir Putin has just appeared on Russia’s MuzTV (Music TV) before a studio crowd of teenagers, in order to explain how hip-hop can be used to ethical and patriotic advantage. His speech also outlined ways in which break-dancing can, purportedly, be used to keep people in good shape – and therefore at arm’s length from booze and drugs.

Walking a similar middle ground, Zara now performs in smaller classical venues like Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall, as shown in this post’s images, taken a few weeks ago. At the same time – and in the same building – she will also sing numbers by Soviet light songsmiths such as Aleksandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov, who penned the biggest pop songs of post-Stalinist Russia. All this material is, in essence, apolitical – but it’s equally proper, nostalgic, and time-tested by nationwide audiences who grew up in the USSR.

Cue the familiar, managed romance of the puffy shirt.

These universally known (and loved!) benchmarks mean, as suggested, that forms of extreme difference will have to be toned down – as indeed they already are. The Armenian and Iranian material of the past has been replaced by the kind of “Central Asian” or Turkish motifs used, say, by Blestiashchie that are more redolent of a package tour holiday than anything ethnographically specific. As a result, the sounds of “distant places” are brought very much into a smaller, more familiar space. Zara treats the lands on Russia’s southern borders much as Zykina did the Volga. Boundless expanses are tightly bound, so to speak, and easily marketed.

Another “excessive” facet of her perceived public persona that is seemingly outre is that of wealth. Given her dalliances with wealthy gentlemen, several of which did not end happily, she was often seen in the press adorned in expensive finery: “A Moscow mansion, 150 guests, a lilac dress from Oscar de la Renta costing 200,000 Euros…” Thus began one recent report of her social scene. Such images will not endure you to elderly citizens in distant villages. A new form of social membership is required, one to bring her back into the mainstream of public opinion. A recent divorce this summer helped to do just that, in that she was turned from an object of material desire to one of pity. The national suddenly sympathized, while the collapse of her first marriage allowed her to speak of “what’s really important.” The lofty, lonely princess became somebody keen to tell the Russian tabloids how “one antidote to the pain of divorce is company.”

In any location.

“The main thing to remember in these situations is that other people have been through the same thing. It may well seem to you that you’re the saddest person ever, or that nobody’s breakup has ever been this painful, but that’s just not the case. We all go through these things… and they make us stronger and wiser. The best solution of all is to head off to work – or busy yourself with raising your children.” And that, conversely, is precisely what the same far-flung pensioners are doing. Hence the new MOR aesthetic and all manner of concerts dedicated to socially laudable issues. This week, in fact, Zara performed at a Moscow gala – broadcast on national television – dedicated to Russia’s police force. We appear to have reentered the mainstream of state-run media with great success.

Arms akimbo – and a knowing smile – after a job well done.

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Anterna and Sead Noise are the pseudonyms of two young electronic musicians, one from Ukraine and the other from Russia. More specifically, the former resides in the city of Nikopol‘, shown below, and the latter in Kursk. The overriding theme that links these callow composers is – to be honest – death, pure and simple. Both work in the realm of dark ambient or drone textures in order to conjure sonic images of some universal and extremely sobering state.

Neither musician is terribly willing to reveal themselves personally; of Anterna, for example, we learn little more than his Christian name is Sviatoslav; Sead Noise, with similar reticence, is revealed to be the creative outlet of a gentleman known in less dramatic contexts as Roman, who labors away in the studio with two friends, Julia and Anton. All of these individuals have just joined forces to release an EP with St. Petersburg’s Qulture Productions, entitled “Control Illusion.”

In a related spirit, the B&W cover-art (above) for this new joint EP, composed across the territory of two neighboring nations, may appear to be taken from a post-war American archive, but it showcases ubiquitous issues of (physical) limit, decline, and demise that might have little to do with the constraints of political geography. In contemplation of such global, all-pervading issues, let’s take a quick look at what these two projects have to say about themselves and their extremely grim outlook on life. In both cases we will be translating the PR blurbs from Russian.

Of Anterna – in fact, with regard to the very meaning of that term – we are initially told it embodies “symbols of a dead reality that has [merely] been technogenetically invigorated. These symbols are blurred and unclear, as if enveloped in the cold mists of a predawn fog. The [music that emerges from such views] is a flight from the ramblings of an idealized human destiny, an attempt to rend the shield of a degenerate utopia that surrounds us all. Anterna tries to release and break through all the closeted limits of our [false] emotions.”

The text continues: “Anterna is a minimalist web of icy, incisive sounds from ‘within.’ It is a mystical, dark-ambient atmosphere, bound with the most extreme noises that have been distorted through various forms of ‘renunciation’ and melancholy. The result is tied to severe, solid rhythms from the realms of industrial or ‘power-noise’ music. These are emotions bordering on the lack of emotion…” A remarkably similar text was used to announce and promote Sviatoslav’s debut recording last spring, released through the Whispering Net Label. Hence, no doubt the image of a black hole or eddy from that first release, shown above.

In a word, these are lasting convictions. Local merchants and architects in Nikopol – as below – may try to resurrect the jolly “traditions” of an imagined,  romanticized past, but something grim clearly, consistently endures in the minds of local youths.

Since the time of that first release, Sviatoslav has asked several people on his page at VKontakte for their opinions and suggestions re: his musical and philosophical trajectory. One listener of these grim, Gothic instrumentals went as far as to say that the worldview behind them is more interesting that the works themselves! Not surprisingly, after such pointed criticism, Sviatoslav popped briefly out of the woodwork with a few words in his defense: “Hold on… don’t go overboard with the criticism. All of the tracks here are indeed joined by a single concept; its general outline [shown above] is sketched in my text, but not in its entirety. It takes the listener to imagine the full concept of the tracks.”

And, as the official (woefully unfashionable) concrete entrance to Nikopol’ suggests, that “fullness” of social concept may reside in something very Soviet – as we’ll indeed suggest anon.

One of the most telling and useful remarks came from another Vkontakte listener who suggested that the new music reminds him of “the horrors of war.” Sviatoslav agreed, stating that his compositions often reflect “ideas that come close to the tragedy of military conflict. These are visions born of the past.” Hoping to avoid such awfulness in the future, he often makes pointed, if not dismissive remarks about organized religion – both in the literal sense and as a metaphor for political zeal. Yet another listener summed up these cynical convictions as his general dislike (or despair, perhaps) for those citizens in “constant search of a demigod.” Sviatoslav concurred with this summation, and – in support of such positions – added recently that “such issues are especially relevant today.”

And indeed, despite the new B&W retro cover and universal themes of “Control Illusion,” there are a handful of snippets taken from US news broadcasts – together with other sounds in these instrumentals, such as police sirens – that make concrete sonic reference to legal and political “failings” in modern America.

The creative rationale of Sead Noise is built along similar lines. “Roman” of Kursk informs us that “my chosen style can be summed up as ‘experimental ambient’ – and for good reasons, too! Since my childhood I’ve felt a strong pull towards mysticism – and I can imagine the work of Sead Noise as the soundtrack to a horror film.  Each little track is a miniature saga, born of my own experiences and true emotions. These sounds allow me to reach out and make contact with the world; they allow me reach the feelings of everyone who has ever lied, been unfaithful, loved, or sacrificed themselves. These same sounds bring me into contact with the simplest of people… who surround each and every one of us…”

All along the deceptively well-scrubbed streets of Kursk.

If Anterna feel(s) that the downside of our negative – perhaps inevitable – failings manifests itself in extreme religion and/or politics, then the members of Sead Noise go further still, speaking of death per se – in all its forms. “The whisper of a nightmare behind you… a cold sense of horror creeping through your veins. A premonition of some nocturnal rendezvous with death.”

This dark foreboding is developed in even clearer terms in other venues: “Why plant seeds in places where they have no chance of growing? Why plant seeds where no rain falls, and there is only wilderness? In places where cries for help will only be answered by the distant sound of a single word… ‘War’? You are one of those tiny seeds lying within the soil. You bleed, pray for freedom, and yearn for a chance to blossom. A pitiful cry reaches your throat, not just from your dead-end existence, not from pain alone… yet it still cannot resonate. Impetuous thoughts in your head have become an intricate dance of Life and Death. Are you scared? Then get up on your feet! Get up from your knees… and start to grow!”

What, in short, has led the young members of Anterna and Sead Noise to such awfully pessimistic views on death, disaster, and military conflict? Of Sead Noise one can surely say that to live in Kursk and not be touched by the weight of history must be almost impossible. The area was home to a colossal military conflict in the summer of 1943 that – due (or thanks) to a massive Soviet sacrifice – started slowing the German move eastwards and perhaps even set the stage for the pivotal clash at Stalingrad. The cost of even potential victory, though, required unspeakable losses (above); the merest hope of life needed awful self-surrender. Maybe as many as 235,000 Soviet troops were lost.

Not surprisingly, tragedy on such a scale was turned swiftly into propaganda designed to spur Soviet counter-attacks (as below) and – in subsequent decades – the kind of Cold War rhetoric that would wall the USSR from the West.

As for Nikopol‘, it lies on the open and fertile lands of southern Ukraine, where agriculture – in prior centuries – would meet the river trade and so, in the region’s history, development came quickly. By the nineteenth century, the town was a major center for both farming and transportation. Given this happy marriage of the landscape and business, of fluid nature and fixed profits, what might give rise to the grand pessimism of this modern music?

One need only look across the river. There, staining the horizon, is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe – as can be seen below.

The history of Kursk is marked by a gross intrusion of mobile warfare, of tanks and bombers that traveled from afar; the landscape of Nikopol’ never allows complete confidence that the future will be safe and secure. And, as with the events of nearby Chernobyl in 1986, if such structures might indeed falter or fail, there will be no escape from danger. Fleeing a tank or hiding from reconnaissance aircraft may seem possible for the swift and nimble; for 800,000 people in and around Ukraine 23 years ago, however, sickness and death came with the same stealth of which Anterna and Sead Noise speak – and which sounds so melodramatic to Western ears.

Local issues, however, clearly give voice to local worldviews. And the soundtracks thereof.

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The far-eastern town of Khabarovsk, a mere bicycle ride from the Chinese border, is home to the quartet Sistra (whose name is often written as |sistra|). More specifically, we’re dealing with four young men by the names of Artem Gnesin (vocals), Roman Lopatkov (bass), Roman Murashtov (drums & percussion), and Arsenii Sysoletin (guitars). They have just released a three-track EP from several locations online, one of which might well be here. Called “Love Is a Verve,”  with the artwork shown above, it comes on the heels of the previous – even briefer – release entitled “Japonica” that was also made available to anybody with a web connection and a flexible digit.

And then, for those of us inspired by an even more extreme archival zeal, the third (and earliest) of all these local products went by the name of “Na sladkoe” (”For Desert/For Afters”) early in 2009. That, too, can be hunted down with a little time and effort. By way of a clue, the artwork is shown below.

These diminutive milestones help to map the band’s progress over the last six years – when they first formed as a coherent outfit in their hometown. One reason for the paucity of these publications during the 2,000+ days of the ensemble’s existence has been that Sistra tried – first and foremost – to establish their reputation as a respected live band in the Far East of Russia’s endless territory. Only then did they feel that it made philosophical or fiscal sense to commit anything to hard media. After all, as they recently declared, “we’ve used the last couple of years to experiment [even further] with our style. We’ve endeavored to find a unique sound. [As we slowly came to discover that uniqueness,] that’s also the time when we put out the first of our three releases – at the start of ‘09; it consisted of six really varied tracks. Two months later we published the English-language single ‘Japonica‘ [below] – and it got some pretty good feedback from our viewers! Now [in November '09] there’s our new EP, made of three songs. As musicians we’re all still playing around with our aesthetic. This time we’ve dabbled with some synthesized elements.”

The search continues, far and wide, high and low.

This endlessly empirical approach to music-making is already impressive, in terms of its bold engagement of time and space: long-term effort and very long tours. Already documented are those years on the wide and unforgiving roads of Russia’s Asian lands. To this travelogue – and with no sense of early haste – we can add the three 2009 releases, differing in length, language, and even instrumental line-up. The degrees of physical outlay and adventure here alone deserve prolonged applause. Even the band’s list of members has fluctuated – and then reformed – over this period. No wonder, given the work ethic on display!

The streets of Pacific Russia must be littered with the emaciated frames of exhausted musicians. Given a blanket and a warm meal, they will tell mythical yarns of unspeakable toil amid the ranks of those who once played in Sistra.

Given this benchmark of labor, wavering rosters, and brief, almost impromptu releases, it makes sense for us to turn to a recent interview with the band. This should give us an impression of any underlying rationale behind prior efforts – and a chance to predict the group’s future trajectory with a little more accuracy. When asked, for example, what exactly might be influencing or inspiring Sistra at the present moment, Arsenii Sysoletin has said: “You know what? We’re influenced by absolutely everything around us!” (Hm… that doesn’t help very much.) “Personally I consider that music reflects the heart and soul of an individual. I really don’t have any concrete sense of how a melody might come to me in the process of composing songs. The only thing I can say with any confidence is that it comes ‘from within.’”

And that it conjures a knowing smile of gentle satisfaction.

Each of the band members then gives a variation on the same answer. Murashtov adds: “Inspiration really is something very personal indeed. In order to write music, you need to experience some kind of maximal internal state. And it’s not always positive, either!” In terms of what might instigate that negative, though “useful” state for a songwriter, he makes a few choice comments about the opposite sex that we’d rather not repeat here. Gnesin thankfully interrupts him with a more diplomatic answer, stating that he “looks for inspiration in all kinds of new acquaintances, friendships – and even among interesting individuals in movies.”

It’s left to Roman Lopatkov to bring some sense of order to the proceedings. He whittles down the multiplicity of all these friendships, acquaintances, and filmic narratives to relations within the band. The world they share, therefore, is – in essence – the quotidian life they cohabit. Grand, sweeping statements have their origins in the most modest of surroundings. “We influence one another,” he says. “Our musical sound is some kind of symbiosis that arises from all of our feelings. Those feelings and emotions are, in turn, united in a single wave. And as for inspiration, personally I am inspired by any good day that comes on the heels of a bad one!”

Considerable gratitude for the smallest of blessings.

If the core of Sistra’s inspiration, therefore, lies not in the grandiose, even bombastic dimensions of which Sysoletin first speaks, but instead in the equally “big” significance of the band members for each other on a day-to-day basis, how does that relate to the additional, extended context of a sympathetic audience? How, asks a journalist, does the vital significance of mutual love and respect among these four men go about the business of finding – and pleasing – a suitable, kindred audience? What kind of people would make the best listeners for a Sistra recording?

After a little thought, Murashtov is the first to respond. “First and foremost, these need to be people who are capable of being sad. If a person is sad, then you can say with confidence that s/he knows how to think, too. I’ve always been suspicious of people who never stop smiling…” Gnesin chips with the suggestion that the same doleful people are likely to be creative types. They’re unlikely to be obsessively goal-driven and, he hopes, also include “the kind of girls who like boys with guitars ”

Melancholy, introspection, and romance are three themes coming to the fore – with varying degrees of seriousness! “Rock ‘n’ roll” in Pacific Russia is taking on a very specific hue. Leather jackets, pyrotechnics, and TVs launched from hotel windows all appear to be in short supply. Instead Lopatkov hopes that the songs on this new EP conjure the kind of sensation that he imagines is undergone by any blind person, capable of experiencing a lot more simply by listening carefully and closing his/her eyes.

When Lopatkov tries this test himself, he admits to being – “quite simply – happy.”

In short, then, over the course of a few minutes, we’ve traveled from some awkwardly grand suggestions about the modus operandi of music to Lopatkov’s disarmingly simple thesis that joy requires no more than a few moments of introspection with a wistful song. These consoling melodies, by implication  – through friendship or romance – allow for a superior, most desirable escape from ostensible/visible reality.  What’s so bad about life in Khabarovsk, though? One would think that all was relatively well, since the city is fairly healthy from an industrial point of view – and even enjoys a good influx of Asian tourists nowadays, much to the benefit of local trade.

Nonetheless, 11 members of the Russian armed forces died tragically this week when their plane crashed into waters near Khabarovsk; the picture below ships of the Russian navy looking for the ‘black box’ flight recorder. As often happens, the accident was attributed to the low-grade quality of much Soviet hardware. As yet, the economic and social promise of places like Khabarovsk still has to deal with the weight of the (recent) past. Under-funded, rarely-maintained aspects of Russia’s infrastructure reveal themselves in the most unexpected ways. The “ability to be sad” or a “capability for melancholy” is therefore an essential coping mechanism.

Disaster, structural decay, and institutional dishonesty can – often – appear from nowhere.

Whatever terrible spectacles daily life throws up in the Pacific East, an ability to close one’s eyes and muster an affective counterweight – at least for a little while – is, perhaps, often the only means to mental strength. After all, when the very machinery designed to defend a nation cannot even stay airborne, an extremely robust coping mechanism is required. Sistra’s songs of melancholy, full-blown sadness, and mutual interdependence form a basic blueprint for that same affective system. In the band’s hometown where 11 families have suddenly been thrown from normality into tragedy this week, people who walk around smiling all the time must seem very suspect indeed.

Happiness, therefore, is saved for rare occasions among trusted friends.

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The Russian Association of Independent Genres (RAIG) has today turned back time by approximately 18 months. The association has dragged from its vaults a “lost album” by Aleksei Taroutz (i.e., Taruts) entitled – fittingly enough – “Eternal Number of Repeats.” It consists of ten instrumental tracks, running in total for approximately half an hour. Bearing the trademark sound of Taroutz’s discordant, slack-handed, and threatening guitar work, the album clearly invites multiple connections with his more famous “avant-rock quartet,” I AM ABOVE ON THE LEFT.

That project took an indefinite break from recording in 2006, leaving Taroutz free to experiment in more fluid forms – and commit times to parallel ventures, such as film scores, and this album. Colleagues, it seems, did not react to those plans with immediate respect.

The tracks on this “new” album bear no titles, as such. They are simply named after their running time; the first number, for example, is called “8:30,” because it lasts for that long. It is here that the issue of “eternal repeats” emerges, and not only because of the instrumentals’ structural similarities.

When I AM ABOVE were at their peak, they worked according to a principle of edited jams. Long, improvised sessions would be played in the studio, operating on the assumption that every so often a real groove or sense of synchrony would fall into place, endure for a few minutes – and then dissipate, only to congeal again some time subsequently. Hence the frequent predilection for grainy images in the band’s PR materials, proffering a degree of clarity either prior to – or after – complete focus.

Though static, such images speak consequentially of process, passage, and change.

That perception or assumption of repeated peaks and troughs, even within supposedly “formless” improvisations, leads us to view this quieter, much less funky series of instrumentals as the sounds either of an impending, coherent section of a jam or – conversely – the slow deceleration of synchrony back into relative disorder. The music below, therefore, operates as a sonic equivalent of the image above.

And, if we take the theoretical implications of the LP’s overall title even more literally, then those “eternally” reiterated waves eventually soon come to undermine the very idea of musical progression or linearity altogether. They both speak of and subvert issues of progression in the following way. By structuring themselves along “vertical” principles, say, of regularly increasing/decreasing volume, rather than anything linear (”verse-chorus-verse,” for example), notions of progress will eventually fall away. Through the endless repetition of a process, that same process becomes a state. We are in music, pure and simple – with no structural obligation to stop.

A sonic structure moves forward in order to cast a glance back at its own “undulating” development – and thus subvert/disown it. An impudent, challenging, and backwards glance would be thematically appropriate.

Thank you.

This logic can be extended further; thus far we’ve suggested that our ten tracks could, theoretically, be either brief preludes or afterwords to better-known and more formal instrumentals by I AM ABOVE. Given that these archival recordings were made almost two years after the cessation of IAAOTL, one is also left with the sense that Taroutz here is building up speed for some of the “second wave” material that would soon appear from WOGULOW TAROUTZ VERMO. After all, the latter project would indeed owe much to the former. Any work done in between them would – perhaps inevitably – be labeled as an intermission of sorts before another crescendo from another project. Both the towering achievements of Taroutz’s official ensembles and the tentative wheel-spinning of these ten compositions are, in principle, “eternally repeatable.”

And indeed, since last summer, IAAOTL have been dabbling once again, with Taroutz and Artemii Galkin on guitars, plus Pavel Eremeev on drums. Round we go, yet again.

Any (re)appearance in another/previously encountered ensemble or project is likely to produce a new flurry of press activity, leading – most probably – to a few new fans, as well. In that light, it was both interesting and entertaining to read on a semi-anonymous blog recently how one young Russian came to grips with the challenging noises produced by Taroutz. The following is a true story…

“A really funny thing happened to me recently. It wasn’t all that special, but nonetheless I reckon it’s worth a few minutes of your time. I got up very early this morning and was in a really good mood, too. I’d slept well, but that doesn’t guarantee that things are going to go well… In any case, I got up, ran a bath and climbed in. A little later, I heard some kind of sound, like a squeaking noise from a garden swing. It just got louder and louder, all around the apartment…” It started repeating eternally, so to speak.

“Then somebody rang at the front door. I went to open it, even though I’m naked. Some elderly lady is in the doorway. Totally untroubled by the fact I’m undressed, she asks me: ‘What’s that terrible noise?’ Her voice, if I’m honest, sounded like some kind of violin – it rang out all around the considerable expanse of my stately abode! (It really was that nasty-sounding.) I started to justify myself, saying that I can’t find the source of the noise… which is starting to scare me a bit. I invited her to come in and check for herself. I said she was free to dig around wherever she wanted, if she thought I had some secret speakers hidden away.”

Below we see one possible reaction to such complaints from prying neighbors.

“I told her I didn’t have any speakers anywhere. Then she says: ‘It’s the building talking to you!” – in her screeching voice. I answered that she was taking things a bit too far. That didn’t sound likely at all! I listened to a couple more of her ‘theories.’ Then I realized that I should probably ask her who she is… but it was too late. I suddenly woke up – in the bath! Turns out that I was talking to myself and listening to an album by Wogulow Taroutz Vermo! It’s a good album… but my story’s better! I bet it would make a good review.”

“I fell asleep. In the bath! Then that old lady comes. Maybe she was DEATH… and the music saved me?! Maybe you think this is funny, but I could have drowned in the bathtub! It’s dangerous to sleep in the bath!!”

Indeed, the damage can be severe. Listen to these songs in a sober, vertical position, far from objects with sharp edges.

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“Cynocephaly” is a new electronic compilation from the western Ukrainian town of Ternopil. Founded in the 16th century, Ternopil has seen more than its fair share of unexpected and unjustified violence; over the centuries it has been invaded by Tatars, Turks, Austrians, Germans, and Russians, to name but five attacking forces. Communities that suffer this much destruction – for no apparent reason – will no doubt foster a rather peculiar view of how the world operates. The myth of cynocephaly, to which this new EP is dedicated by Ternopil’s Pincet Records, is suitably bizarre.

Cynocephaly is the “condition” of having a dog’s head, rather than that of a human. It can be traced back to various gods in the Egyptian canon, together with reports from travelogues of the same culture, maintaining that dog-headed people had been seen in India. This powerful image of the lowly “outsider” would endure for centuries and certainly played an important role in the Eastern Christian tradition. Here the same canine motif was sometimes used to evoke the bestial, lamentable experience of a man prior to baptism. In particular the notion of cynocephaly is associated with St Christopher, not only because of his “regrettable” lifestyle prior to entering the church, but also due to his large frame and “brutish” physique.

Ukrainian manuscripts of the 14th century – above – show these dog-like figures clearly; now Pincet Records have revived the same metaphor from their domestic archives for the following reason. (The text appears in Ukrainian and English; here we modify and polish the latter): “Many different views existed on the subject of cynocephaly. People in this condition were described both as blood-thirsty monsters – and as gods, too. They were worshiped by some people, but used by others to frighten little children. These inconsistent descriptions show the degree of fear among the populace and the public’s unwillingness to accept new or unfamiliar phenomena.”

By this point in the proceedings we will not be surprised to learn that Pincet apply the same canine state to the careers of their contributing musicians. “These experimental composers exist like a cynocephalus. Their music is frightening; their potential audience also remains unsure [of how to respond] and has, as a result, yet to cohere [in any stable, long-term way]… The music of this compilation will both scare and soothe its listeners. It will take them on a mystical journey…”

Six artists are on display here. The first, according to the running order, is Reixtra, billed as “a young and talented musical enthusiast from the Crimea.” When, in the name of objectivity. we go in search of how this man frames his own work (posted here as the first audio file), we discover the following. A magical morphing is evident in his self-depiction, underscored by his preference for the contorted image above, rather than any PR photos of himself: “Reixtra is somebody who is in several places simultaneously. Nobody knows where he’ll appear from; his exits are equally mysterious… He is not wealthy enough to afford studio-level equipment. As a result, he uses a low-grade PC to make melodies that sound like they’re coming from some 1960s’ radio station – and got mixed up with some old-school beats. He experiments with any electronic pulses that bear a melancholy tone. Attentive listeners will be carried back to olden days… to something good, long-forgotten, and not yet fully realized.”

Something wicked this way comes. On a Ukrainian bus.

Turning to the next artist in the lineup, IAEA Headquarters, we learn nothing. Contextualized – with maximum brevity – as an “IDM project from Zaporozhia” in southern Ukraine, the gentleman in question is unwilling to say any more. His MySpace page simply contains a series of images, such as the one above, showing an individual so hard at work, his turntables are aglow. No more textual support is forthcoming.

It takes Musician #3, Kiev’s Heinali to keep the informational flow going. Thankfully the facts from this young composer, seen below in a horizontal position, are used to fashion a somewhat soothing and restful aesthetic after the ominous opening words from Reixtra. By his own admission, Heinali is aiming for “a very fresh, soft sound.” Not a dog in sight.

Just dog-tired from all the effort at the mixing desk.

Heinali has been experimenting since 2003 – quite literally. As someone with no musical education whatsoever, all of his achievements and web-releases have come as a result of long-term tinkering or trying various sonic avenues. “Experimenting [over the years] and attempting to find his trademark sound, he has produced a wide variety of tracks. Heinali has [by this point] worked in almost every known genre and style – all the way from noise and ambient, to jazz and ‘guitar-industrial’ … In late 2007 he started playing live and mixing hip-hop, acid-jazz beats, and old jazz, with soul vocals or dark D&B bass lines. This so-called ‘post-hop’ concept of his was developed over the years in minimal, dubstep or leftfield realms.”

Heaven knows what an audience would make of this dizzying changes, one after the other. Despite his claims to be seeking a fresh and soft sound, Heinali appears more comfortable with the same rapid morphing that led Pincet to admit the musicians on this EP have yet to enjoy a stable audience. That’s probably because the moment the public believes (erroneously!) that they’ve got a handle on the artist in question, he has already “shape-shifted” and adopted a different form altogether.

The skies over Ternopil grow dark as a result.

We cannot shake the unnerving theme of metamorphosis, it seems. And indeed, as we move through the running order, that same cautionary note from Pincet about non-existent audiences begs the question, perhaps, of counter-productive enterprise. Why force one’s musical output through these changes if the longer they continue, the less people are able to keep up? A rather somber, if not masochistic streak comes to the fore, it would seem. The music may benefit from stylistically whimsical flip-flopping, but one’s social resonance lessens.

Isolation – therefore – increases, pushing us once again into the realm of peripheral figures or outsiders – who gave birth to the myth of cynocephaly in the first place. And yet the pace of transfiguration does not slow, be it aural or physical.

The audiovisual project from Dnepropetrovsk called Submatukana nudges us further in this general direction, since the EP’s last two instrumentals are discernibly darker. Submatukana call themselves an “excellently explosive” outfit, as if the ex- or implosion itself becomes an actively sought and “excellent” goal.  When their debut release appeared online not that long ago, it was tagged with the phrase “Sound is Our Structure, Movement Our Main Component.” Mapping those incendiary movements, a review noted: “This is not music you can easily dance too; in fact it’s not always structured as promised on the cover, either.”

Everybody’s out to push the music to its limits – by leaving the audience behind and frustrating their expectations.

Which leaves us with the closing contributor, Killall. Even Pincet cannot manage any information here: “He decided to remain incognito.” A search online reveals – with some effort – no more than one small picture of our musician. Instead there is a much larger photograph – shown here. It throw’s Killall’s moniker into a strange and radical light. His stage name is no longer an expression of some outward-looking, subversive violence. It’s not anti-social so much as self-destructive. Our champions of peripheral, outlying cynocephaly have now gone one step further. Knowing that their musical experiments are losing a local audience and therefore – by extension – jeopardizing a means of performing, making a living, or even acquiring instruments, they still push onwards. The law of diminishing returns is now envisaged in terms of a state from which nobody “returns.”

Reixtra is already complaining that decent musical tools are beyond his budget. Shopping can be difficult.

The fatalistic phrase written above on Killall’s earlier and bloodied release says: “Life without You.” Whether that pronoun refers to a loved one or a slowly shrinking audience, it matters little. The masochistic trajectory continues…

…into the dog pound and further still, seemingly because potential can only truly/wholly be realized at the point where it stops – and these musicians want to realize all they can, come what may. This increasingly dramatic idea runs through all the artists represented on this EP, perhaps no more so than with Electrostatic Death. Not only are they based in Ternopil, but have run their musical operations since 2004 in the same town, whilst channeling much of their work into the numerous publications listed at their MySpace page. Perhaps they offer a little sense of law and (natural) order?

Seemingly not. They define their modus operandi as follows: “The group constantly changes and develops its sound. It ranges from idm remixes of modern pop idols to experiments with guitars. Then, on top of that, we have psy-dub and ambient compositions, plus combinations of weird rhythms with acoustic instruments.” Disorder and unpredictable metamorphoses are gradually running the show. Electrostatic Death’s second website appears to have already succumbed to these changes. It has been spammed to death by endless ads for Viagra that run on and on, endlessly in a repeated stream beneath the musicians’ home-page information. A drug designed to increase an individual’s potency has done the opposite – and killed a domain of creative potential.

A frightening metamorphosis indeed.

One deserving of suitable lighting.

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For the second time this week, there is new music to showcase from the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk, one of the nation’s major powerhouses. For decades Dnepropetrovsk was a vital force in the development of Ukrainian manufacturing, both for industry as a whole and – more specifically – the field of space hardware. This connection to secret or military enterprise meant that the city was closed to outside visitors. Perhaps not surprisingly, a move from subsidized factories to market-driven service trade would not be easy after 1991, neither in terms of altered prestige nor employment opportunities.

As a result, the city’s attractive architecture (from the past) often alternates with unappealing options for the future. Bright facades and dim prospects coexist.

The worst consequence of these awkward (downward) shifts came in 2007, when a couple of young men from Dnepropetrovsk went on a prolonged series of terrifyingly unpredictable murders. In retrospect, it seems that this spree of bloody violence had its roots in the city’s recent fate – and what it might offer its residents. In other words, cut adrift from any sense of social purpose, the lives of these boys – and thousands like them – became increasingly anarchic. Soon they started to take their frustrations out on the local populace: over the course of two months in 2007, as many as 21 people were murdered in this one Ukrainian location.

The perpetrators would leave notes at the scene, claiming that “Only the Strong Survive.” A “positive” feeling of being came only at the expense of mass destruction: anything resembling progress or social construction was dismissed on a wave of chaos. The killers’ sense of vengeance was so pronounced, a local resident was being murdered almost every three days. As we see, the police were not able to apprehend the criminals at once… The individuals accused of the killings were finally found guilty and sentenced a few months ago, but the phrase “Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs” has unfortunately endured in the nation’s popular press.

As a result, an aura of dead-end industry and social failing still hangs over the city, now tainted with tales of unspeakable violence.

One can imagine, as a result, how music from Dnepropetrovsk would be colored either by a strong vein of social protest, or an equally strong desire to escape. The new music in this post, courtesy of Max Pollyul, operates according the latter goal. Pollyul has published a four-track, 32-minute EP called “Deep Swimming” on Deep Limit Records. The EP’s title, publishing company, and even track listings leave us in no doubt that these atmospheric, all-enveloping instrumentals are designed to evoke a dual atmosphere of descent and some subsequent, directionless state. Those track titles map a brief trajectory of descent, deceleration, and cognitive clarity. The world makes sense only as one leaves the realm of “maniacs”: “Drop”; “Deep Swimming”; “Viscous Liquid” – and, finally – “Concentrate.”

The pharmaceutical imagery of this musician’s early releases is now replaced by something cheaper, more natural, and less damaging.

At other venues online, where Pollyul has left these older or more experimental works, he occasionally give us a brief snapshot of other styles he might use in order to conjure the musical metaphors of profundity, in both senses. Most of those styles speak to a process of willful minorization: in an environment where large and evident targets are beaten and turned into the subject of snuff movies, hiding away or “shrinking” in some fashion would be a most attractive option. Hence a preference for the following, multifaceted aesthetic in Pollyul’s discography: “ambient, ambient dub, chillout, deep house, deep dechno, easy listening, electro techno, glitch, lounge, microhouse, minimal electronica, minimal house, minimal psytrance, minimal techno, psy-chill, tech house, and… last but not least, tech trance.”

Such are the sounds – and facial hair – that Pollyul has been crafting for the last ten years.

This work, however, is all done far from the public eye. Pollyul does not seem that keen on making his face visible. The small and amateurish image here of our chosen musician is one of only two he uses; the other is even worse.  A polished portfolio or good-looking headshot is clearly not an option. The equally sparse tools he employs for textual PR also speak to this hermetic tendency: “Max Pollyul is an electronic musician. He became interested in electronic sounds in the late ’90s. Following a long series of searches and experiments, he finally settled on a hypnotic techno and soft, deep sound. Characterizing his music with any precision would be difficult, but suffice it to say that Max prefers atmospheric sounds. He prefers music that bears an emotional load.”

And with that, the PR men close shop and go home, leaving Pollyul to his own devices in an empty studio.

Whilst in that quiet venue, he spins off a list of nouns that might at least help to contextualize his instrumentals. If the four tracks of this EP take us gradually in the direction of values upon which we should “concentrate,” then here – in Pollyul’s mind – are some possible objects of desire and respect: “Life, people, God, style, Mother, Father, bass, cinema, art-house, fashion, forest, house,  sound, sequencer, echo, cigarettes, coffee, [mental/emotional] condition, brain, music, technology, factory, advertising, inspiration, nature, love, despair, strength, reason, desire, time, the universe, friends, separation, persistence, aspirations, belief, dream, quality, understanding, rest, work, musicians…”

There’s an undulating quality to this list, as if its author drifts in and out of ostensible social contacts. He slips in and out of physical or sonic states with both grace and gratitude. One moment he’s present, and the next – when needs be – he’s gone. Actuality, in the words of a recent release, is made “elastic.”

In fact, given the happy ambiance of that same long list, it’s interesting to see how it also informs the raison d’etre of Pollyul’s label – Deep Limit. Likewise based in Dnepropetrovsk, Deep Limit has just celebrated its second anniversary. Apparently an ability to “submerge” and then “concentrate” on Ukrainian dancefloors is a successful form of emotional self-defense for multiple electronic composers.

The label announced its birthday with a proud admission that “despite our relatively young age, we’ve nonetheless been able to win the affections of a progressive audience. The very fact of our appearance was something noteworthy on Ukraine’s music and art scenes. The number of Ukrainian independent labels may be growing daily, but Deep Limit [still] stands out from the crowd, thanks to its well-considered musical policies and non-commercial intentions. Over and above our releases, we’ve also been busy with the organization of parties, performances, exhibitions, and all kinds of open-air events.”

Focusing primarily on deep techno, glitch, and microhouse EPs, Deep Limit has now produced a compilation – shown here – to mark the two-year milestone. It can be downloaded for free, allowing an insight into some of the label’s other acts, such as Komponente, the Psycho Cowboys, Stich, Youngod, and Pappy Knead & Servello. Little by little, these are the sounds of musicians reclaiming events in the “open air” of Dnepropetrovsk.

These are sounds, in other words, of people returning – from the deep – to a troubled surface, once the maniacs have been locked away.

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Vladivostok’s Mumiy Troll are continuing their tour around the United States, moving on occasion southwards to Mexico – or in a northerly direction to Canada. The band recently appeared at one Mexican festival that caught the attention of local press outlet Enelshow.Com: “Few people could join in with the Russian singing, but everyone was swaying in rhythm. The energy and movement of Il’ia Lagutenko, the band’s lead vocalist, were both unique and deserving of the crowd’s boundless admiration.” This type of touching naivety colors a lot of the press coverage, bordering at times on slight silliness: “After the concert, the band’s CDs were sold out in a second. Many people couldn’t get hold of a copy.” Elsewhere we hear the words of one Mexican viewer in particular: “We really liked listening to the group. Our ‘vibrations’ matched the music of Mumiy Troll.”

Issues of authorship may lurk behind such allegedly spontaneous statements, but the general tone of these and other observations still plays a telling role at this stage in the band’s travels.

The point is that Mumiy Troll have just been booked to play on US network television, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the ensemble’s promotion department. A style redolent of our Mexican press clippings presides in the following announcement (We’ve altered the English a little): “Besides playing concerts in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, Mumiy Troll will perform on CBS’s renowned ‘Late Late Show.’ This is one of the highest-rated shows on American television, together with Oprah Winfrey’s and Larry King’s broadcasts. It is presented by an Emmy award nominee, the British actor Craig Ferguson. The format consists of chats with America’s favorite figures, plus interviews with celebrities from all around the world. The occasional humorous sketch is also involved. Il’ia Lagutenko will answer Craig Ferguson’s questions, while several songs – performed by the band – will also be included.”

There’s good reason to be pleased with this media coup.

The particular importance of the booking is manifest in the context of a similar appearance by Tatu in 2003, when the duo appeared on late-night TV to (eventual) public fanfare and/or furor. Over and above the faux-lesbian scandal that was already being used to great effect by Lena Katina and Iulia Volkova, the duo then caused additional worries with their choice of clothing. They both sported a white t-shirt, across which were scrawled two words in Russian. In translation they said “F**k the War,” in response to the recent US invasion of Iraq. Late-night TV producers, not being speakers of Russian, had no idea what the brief text said – and happily let the singers perform in front of millions of unsuspecting viewers.

Chaos then prevailed – as soon as somebody found a dictionary (that was liberal enough to include obscenities).

In other words, these type of TV bookings play an important – primarily charismatic – role in the development of an overseas brand. Lyrical specificity, and even the music itself, both take back seat to a profoundly subjective – perhaps orientalist – “charm” that can be effected in any number of ways. Heaven only knows, for example, how exactly those Mexican crowd members might have qualified their enjoyment at the recent festival, or to what they might have attributed their nondescript “swaying and vibrations.” A vague, wholly affective state comes into play that may, in fact, not be the result of a performer’s successful transcendence of their exotic origins, but precisely because they are so “intriguingly alien.” Whether, in that case, it makes more sense for a Russian performer to either downplay or emphasize their “incomprehensibility” becomes itself confusing.

One’s gaze moves upwards in contemplation of such matters.

This same conundrum brings us to the new EP from Mumiy Troll, “Paradise Ahead.” The title track, together with several others, comes from last year’s double-CD, entitled “8.” All of the songs have been translated into English, though some of the backing vocals and more complex lines have been left in Russian, either due to their complexity, or because a little local flavor never hurts.

And then, over and above the issue of literal translation, certain sociopolitical nuances also beg the question of whether they should/need to be clarified for a US audience, starting with the EP’s very title. Read possibly as a straightforward or amorous utterance, it also carries a second, ironic significance (as in the original text) of some Soviet social goal.  In other words, small elements of Slavic obscurity are left in place, often as nods and winks in the direction of a Soviet mystique. References, for example, to Pacific Fleet submarines, Siberian nuclear stations, and other forms of recent menace all help to make sure that the musical or textual translation is not complete, so to speak.

A delicate balance needs to be struck between incomprehensibility and absolute (i.e., dangerously, forgettably normal!) clarity. Singing in well-enunciated English, whilst sporting vile Slavic t-shirts was clearly a successful approach to the same problem. It set the benchmark, at least for a certain section of the marketplace.

A useful snapshot of US audience reactions, and how these “comprehensible” cultural stereotypes work hand in hand with insurmountable language barriers can obviously be found in the local press after gigs. Take this one southern newspaper, which is rife with all manner of clunky cliches: “If you were a Russian, what would you do after seventy years of stifling Communist domination? Probably the same thing you’d do if you were a Western European after fifteen hundred years of Catholic domination – you’d go a little bit crazy. That’s only natural. Still it’s nice to know that the sworn enemy we were once facing down and squaring off with in a little game called ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ are in fact not only nice people, but… know how to party. The challenge is to channel all that newly unleashed energy into something creative… like Mumiy Troll.”

A recent interview with Lagutenko – conducted in English – made reference to the same, yet elusive middle ground between things ordinary and the exotic. Knowing how to find that realm in another language is harder still. The singer was asked: “You’ve only recently started releasing songs in English. How has working in English affected the band’s process?” His response: “Nothing really changes. It’s just a bit more people involved in the process, as sometimes I’m going too far with my language experiments. You know, you should always be aware of that line which divide experiments from excrement . I usually get advice from my bi-lingual friends. We don’t want to trick anyone with too much complexity…and if our drummer – who doesn’t speak a word [of any language] other than Russian  – can understand what I’ve tried to say in English, then it is usually a victory. ”

That last phrase is especially interesting; it speaks of a desire to find language that will allow the band to sidestep it. Great attention will be paid to the lyrical aspect of presentation… such that nobody notices it. Once again, the line between the quotidian and the distractingly (or disconcertingly) queer is fine indeed.

Lagutenko has attributed any success in this ongoing search to his desire for increasingly wide or “global” contact with an audience. To find common ground with those Mexican festival-goers, for example, is to sidestep speech altogether. It means either singing songs of nothing in particular – or of potentially universal significance. Nonsense and universal semantics begin to sound synonymous.

A journalist not long ago asked Lagutenko: “How do you find English-speaking fans identifying with Mumiy Troll?” He replied that: “There are some people who have a fascination with Russian culture, and believe me, you hardly find anything worthier than Mumiy Troll in modern Russian rock music! I’ve heard stories of some universities (in Colorado and California) using our songs for Russian lessons. There are some people simply curious enough in [the] worldwide rock scene and they are happy to learn that there is a decent rock act out there in Russia. I guess it’s a sign of modern times. People start to think more globally and music is a great medium.”

It’s instructive to note that of all the quotes gathered from the North American Press this year, the one that has been foregrounded with greatest pride by the band comes form the New Yorker. It speaks directly to a harmony between “incomprehensible” Russian scripts and a most familiar overlap with homegrown genres. The result is both recognizable and rare at the same time. “You don’t need to be able to read Cyrillic to understand this Russian band – a fluency in groovy post-punk and edgy guitar rock is all that’s required. The foursome, based in Vladivostok and Moscow, fires off sparkling pop songs that keep its young chain-smoking fans dancing.”

When asked a few weeks ago – at the end of a press chat – whether he’d “like to add anything,” to these and related issues, Lagutenko quipped: “Like they say in Russia — less words more action!” Not no words, just less of them. Just enough to maintain a distance of intrigue. Two words, a black pen, and a couple of t-shirts from Walmart should do the trick.

Or a pose with the familiar faces of the modern Russian navy… at a place of unimaginably violent Soviet rebellion.

Download music and images from this site to your smartphone!

Go to www.cloudtrade.com and look for us under far_from_moscow