Edward Crabtree

THE LEAGUE OF JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS: MAX FREI’S `THE STRANGER’S WOES` – BOOK TWO OF `THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO` REVIEWED.

This distinctive alternate world makes Romanticism Great again.

When I chanced on the paperback of THE STRANGERS WOES (BOOK TWO OF THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO) I knew that this was something which I had to devote some column inches to. Even so my pulse was not quickened: this brand of unadulterated fantasy involving magicians and their spells ranks alongside War and Historical Romance as amongst my least liked genre.

Eye opener.
Cracking it open on the metro home, I experienced moutning surprise. Here was a novel altogether different from the Lukyanenko’s Nightwatch tribute that I had been expecting. In fact, it is even poles apart from the hard-boiled nature of much Russian popular fiction.

A winner.
A multi-million seller in Russian speaking countries, the Max Frie series comprises some twenty-four books now, with but four of them out in English courtesy of the London based publishers Gollancz.
Critics tend to pigeonhole the series as being Urban fantasy but I find this label a tad misleading. For me they belong to the Magical Land subgenre, albeit laced with the detective genre and with a lot of humour poured into the mix.

Max Frei is both the protagonist of the stories and the author of them. It is the pen name of Svetlana Martynchuk, a 54 year old Odessa born Ukranian who has spent some time in Moscow and has since settled in Villinus.Her artist partner Igor Steopin developed the premise of the series and has collaborated with her on some of the writing.

The Labyrinths of Echo cycle came into being in 1996, lasting until 2003. Then Martynchuk breathed new life into the much loved franchise in 2014 with an update on it known as Dreams of Echo.

The series is of huge popularity in the Russian speaking world. [apriltime.ru]

English speeaking monolinguals, though, have only been able to buy these books for the last eleven years. The translators, from an American agency called Gannon & Moore, have also rendered the rather more weighty works of Ludmilla Ulitskaya into English. Polly Gannon boasts a doctorate in Russian literature from Cornell University and Ast. A. Moore, the assistant editor, comes from a more technical background.

What makes this series worth looking at, even if you are no devotee of Fantasy, is how it shows what kind of appetite exists among the Russsian book reading public.

Loser redeemed.
Frei, an Everyman Hero if ever there was one, begins as a twenty-something nobody who likes food, drink and the odd cigarette – in our world, that is. However, when he dreams his way into the alternate world of the City of Echo he becomes both respected and feared as a part of the elite Secret Investigative Force. (As exposition is kept to the minimum, I recommend that you start this series from Book One. I have had to piece together backstory as I was going along).

You see…a long tiime ago there had been a cataclysmic conflict between waring magic orders. This had depleted the very World’s Heart and had almost lead to the destruction of the world itself. So now the use of magic has been forbidden. The City of Echo resides at the world’s Heart and here a Secret Police force is at work to ensure there is no recurrence of the dark days of the past….

The long-lived inhabitants of the low-tech world use luminous mushrooms as indoor lighting, have giant domestic cats, use several baths as a part of their morning routine, frequent numerous taverns and can contact each other via Silent Speech, a type of telepathy.

Max Frei, under the tutelage of the avuncular Sir Juffin Hully, the director of the Secret Police and alonsgside such colleagues as Lonli-Loki and the glamorous Lady Melamori, learns about his own latent magical abilities. These he is able to use in the just fight against those using magic for the wrong villainous reasons. He becomes Sir Max.

Within the pages of Book Two Sir Max will hunt down a criminal returned from the dead in the outlands of the city, become an ambassador to a distant tribe of desert people, and deal with an apparent zombie attack .

Dialogue heavy.
It is its style and not the not-so-original plot which makes this book so noteworthy though. Book Two contains three big chapters which are divided into sections and is 412 pages in length. Much of what transpires is dialogue in the form of merry banter between colleagues. The most elementary rule of commercial fiction – to boil everything down and keep the pace going – is broken. Here is a more or less random quotation:

Max, the lives of all the policemen of Echo are in your hands.
Smiling Melifaro made himself comfortable atop my desk, knocking the self-scribing tablets on the floor and an empty cup in my lap. Melifaro didn’t even blink. Instead, he hung over me, wringing his hands theatrically and demanding attention.
Ever since Boboota ran out of those funny smelling sticks you gave him, his temper is even worse than it used to be.
Impossible, I said in a calm voice. It can;t get any worse than it was. Nature's resources are not limitless. The boys simply forgot what their boss used to be like before he stuffed himself on King Banjee. Now he's completely recovered, that's all.
So you don't hae any more of those smoking sticks? said Melifaro. Poor Apurra.
No I don't have any at the moment, but I can fetch some more. No problem. Who's Apurra?
Right, you haven't met him yet. Lieutenant Apurra Blookey. He's been with the police since Shixola died. As smart as the late Shixola, and almost as nice. You'll like him. Oh, and there's a new dame in the city police, Lady Kekk Tuotli....
(From page 137)

It feels spirited and affectionate with an exuberance that becomes infectious even as you flag a bit with ploughing through pages and pages of this stuff. You can appreciate the humorous tone even if it does not leave you teary eyed with laughter.

Some have made comparisons with Harry Potter insofar as this seems like a classic wish fulfilment saga, others with the more sophisticated Jasper Fforde and other critics even with Oscar Wilde. For myself I was reminded a bit of some of J. P Donleavy at times. None of these capture the uniqueness of Martynchuk’s writing though.
Grumble sheet.

Online commentators have carped at the quality of the translation. I am in no position to comment much on this but I did notice some lame Americanisms.

We meet the phrase Stop making fun of me a few times. A more real-world approximation of this would be Gimme a break will ya or, if you want to be more British Stop taking the piss. Likewise the exclamation gosh is uttered in many situations – sometimes in extremis !

Just as common is the complaint that the Max Frei protagonist is nothing but a Mary (or Marty) Sue type of character. That is to say he functions as a flawless over-idealised projection of the authors. Whilst this may be so, Sir Max gets portrayed as a man full of gratitude for the wonderful world he resides in and this fact makes him forgiving and unassuming. Such a hero is difficult to dislike, even if he is a phoney.

An example of the copious amounts of fan art that the Max Frei series has generated [403 Forbidden Illustration]

Modern romance.
This is 100 carat escapist pulp fiction which can appeal to both adults and teenagers alike. The charm of it is the unfashionable romanticism at work behind it all. Is there a message in it too though?
It is difficult to ignore the trademark of the series – which is its eat-drink-and-be-merry hedonistic ethos. Right now this feels like a cheeky slap in the face to the lights-out-by-ten shibboleth which is all around us.

Romance isn’t dead in the world of Echo – more fan art [inpinterest.com]

Frei, Max THE STRANGER’S WOES: THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO:BOOK TWO (London:Gollancz, 2011) Translated by Polly Gannon and Ast. A. Moore.
(All quotations are from this text.)

Main image: tr.pinterst.com

`SHERLOCK IN RUSSIA`: HOLMES FINDS HIS HEART IN SAINT PETERSBURG.

IN THIS AMBITIOUS BUT PREDICTABLE DARK FANTASY SERIES THE WORLD’S BEST KNOWN SLEUTH IS ON THE TRAIL OF THE RIPPER IN RUSSIA’S CULTURAL CAPITAL. BUT, WAIT…ARE THOSE TEARS?

Embrace the chaos, Mr Holmes!

One thing that enlivened a dull pandemic was the fact that some people were doling out free face masks in some metro stations in Moscow. These promotionals were swish black items featuring the legend Sherlock v Rossi – Sherlock in Russia.

Sherlock in Russia AKA Sherlock: the Russian Chronicles represents the latest uncalled for addition to the overstretched Sherlock Holmes smorgasbord. This 18+ period-mystery-action show reached Russia on October 6th this year as part of the Moscow International Film Festival. Then it would infect a wider audience through being offered as a weekly subscription by START Video Service. The series was shown every Thursday in 52 minute long episodes until December 3rd.

Millenial iconoclasm.
It has been open season on the august occupant of 221b Baker Street since the turn of the millenium if not before. The Soviet Union, despite seeming to be steadfast in opposition to Western imperialism and so on, did at least distinguish itself with its fidelity to the Arthur Conan-Doyle scripture. The television series filmed by Lenfilm and running from 1979 to 1986 called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is viewed by many afiocandos of the cult fiction to be among the Gold Standards.

The post-communist Russian Federation, however, has come out fighting with its own sacriligeous pop culture variants on the Sherlock mythos to match those of Britian and America.

Thus seven years back one Igor Petrenko embodied Sherlock Holmes in a television drama called just that (produced by Rossiya1 and Central Partnership). He seemed more like a poet than a detective the reviewer Kim Newman said of his portrayal (Wikipedia).

This fare, however, still held onto the apron strings of the traditional canon; Sherlock Holmes in Russia all but dispenses with it. In that regard, the clearest precedent for this would seem to be Guy Ritchie’s 2009 shameless make-over of the cerebral icon as the sort of youthful, dapper action hero that could be played by Robert Downey Junior (Sherlock Holmes, Warner Bros, 2009).

Illustrious names.
A 55 year old conceptual artist from Sverdlosk comprises one of the culprits for this show. A member of the infamous Blue Noses Art Group no less, Alexander Shaburov also penned a series entitled The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes between 1991 and 1992.
Then the prolific fifty year-old screen writer Oleg Malovichko – who worked on this year’s breakthrough film Sputnik among many other prominent releases – transmuted these sketches into something watcheable.

Then a bankable star to don the dear-stalker and hold the pipe was the only other thing that was needed. Step forward the 38 year-old Svetly born Maxim Matvyeev – who appeared in Stilyagi in 2008 and played Vronsky in a TV adaptation of Anna Karenina three years ago .

Artifice.
Despite being filmed on location in Saint Petersburg, the scenes exude an overall contrived appearance with a crepescular ochre-burnt orange shade to everything. The iconography reminded me of the look of Viktor Frankenstein, the British film from 2015.

Matvyeev’s Holmes could not be further from the classic late middle-aged sexually ambigous representation of him. This actor is a screen idol type in the Danila Kozlovsky mould. He plays him with a trimmed beard and a floppy fringe and demonstrating cuddly emotions. He even blows on his magnifying glass as though it were a smoking gun.

Other nods to our brave new world include jerky camera shots and, at one early point, a cretinous glitch in the matrix in the form of a snatch of music from Britney Spears’s Toxic ! (We can be grateful that the otherwise more appropriate sepulchural soundtrack is by Ryan Otter for most of the proceedings).

On the hunt for a legend.
The breakneck paced action opens in rain-soaked back alleys of East London. Somebody (who at least has the decency to wear a mask) is trawling the alleways with knife crime on his mind. He is closing in on a quarry, when:
Hello, Mr Ripper, allow me to introduce myself.... comes the opening line of You Know Who. Telegenic fisticuffs then ensue. Watson comes to the rescue but this results in him being put into a coma.
Distraught at his companion’s fate, Holmes nevertheless takes a steam train bound for Russia. He has deduced that the serial killer is from that land on account of the make of knife that he uses. Furthermore, the killer has been leaving taunting messages for Holmes written in blood on street walls.

New friends and enemies.
Holmes arrives in Saint Petersburg and takes up lodgings in Pekarskaya Street (this is a pun on Baker street – a pekarniya being a bakery in Russian). He mails missives back to London to update those at home and his letters are read out to the unconscious Watson as a kind of therapy (this narrative device is borrowed in part from The Hound of the Baskervilles).
His host consists of a hired medical assistant in the form of the hardboiled Doctor Kartsev (the 52 year old Muscovite Vladimir Mishukov) with whom he faces a rocky partnership.

The trope of Interference From Those in Authority is fulfilled by the Chief of Police Znamensky. This buffonish character regards Dostoevsky (who Holmes is well versed in) as over-rated and considers the work of the Ripper to be the handiwork of an ecaped gorilla. He regards the migrants deductive approach – presented here as a sort of savant’s mental tick over which Holmes has no control – as a lot of new fangled nonsense.
It is whilst on a fact-finding tour of the Saint Petersburg slums – bring a knife and a prayer Kartsev advises him -that he encounters the plot’s crucial love interest: Sophie, played by the inevitable Irina Starshenbaum.

Irina Starshenbaum provides the love interest [mirf.ru]

Russian self-reflection.

In a manner rare for a Russian product Sherlock in Russia does try to say something about Russian identity in relation to the rest of the world. It is the illiberal and very much autocratic Russia of Alexander the Third’s reign that Holmes steps into.( Some might draw paralells with today’s Russia).
As soon as Holmes emerges from the station at Saint Petersburg he treads on a cow pat. Later we learn that Kartsev harbours a particular suspicion of the British. His memory of his uncle being shot by by a British sniper in the Crimean war has seen to that.

Holmes, who has an improbable level of Russian fluency, has to learn some Russian idiomatic phrases. I'll smash myself into a pancake, for example is a promise to work very hard.
Znamensky, meanwhile does seem to embody a certain type of Russian provincial ignorance. He has to be told not to let his colleagues wash away the evidence from the scene of a crime, for example.

So…this Russia is a bit rustic, holds old grudges,is full of quaint phrases and inept in its handling of investigative policing. Later in the series Holmes will even utter the words: I don't understand Russia. It's terrible.

Holmes in love.
Matvyeev’s Holmes outstrips Downey Junior’s in being teary-eyed, soulful and in opening up to the ladies. This Holmes has a full on hetersosexual relationship, which may well be a first. He also suffers visionary flashbacks in the manner of the re-imagined Nikolai Gogol in the cinema-cum TV series Gogol, which may have been the model for this series.

That said, there is one traditional aspect of this drama and it is something which has lent a rare 18+ certificate and prevents it from going out on mainstream terrestrial Russian television. This is the dwelling on the gentleman sleuth’s addiction to cocaine. I doubt this fact will placate the international Sherlock Holmes community though.

Judging from the First Episode this series may be cheesy, but it is not bereft of intelligence. For me the most menmorable character was Doctor Kartsev. He was more Holmes than Holmes was in many ways.

The lead image: deneri.net.

SHERLOCK IN RUSSIA – First Episode with English subtitles:

SLACKER ON A SUBURBAN TRAIN: VENEDIKT YEROFEEV’S `MOSCOW STATIONS` REVIEWED.

Is this seedy and honest samizdat novel an expose of a wasted life or a comic masterpiece? Stephen Mulrine;s first rate translation helps us to decide.

You know it's weird, nobody in Russia knows how Pushkin died, but everyone knows how to distill varnish

One of the huge bugbears of social life in the towns and cities of Russia is the Sociable Drunk. Get together with a few acquaintances in a public area, maybe speak a little English and – kazam! -up pops the Sociable Drunk. He – it is most often a he – fastens onto you like a lamprey. He wants to shake your hand, to practise his Englsh and is brimming with theories and observations which he just has to tell you all about.
Well, the Sociable Drunk has his very own novel: Moscow Stations by Venedikt Yerofeev.

This novel began life in 1969 as a photocopied document which was passsed from hand to hand in the cities of Russia. It would be twenty years later that this cult product would receive official blessing – of sorts -by getting printed as a serial in a journal called Sobriety and Culture. Then it gatecrashed the Anglophone world after being transmuted into the English tongue by the talented Glaswegian translator Stephen Mulrine (whose death, at 82 in January of this year, is another loss to Russian-Western cultural exchange, to add to that of Jamey Gambrell). He adapted sections of the writing into a one man play (more of which later) and then translated it all for Faber & Faber in 1997.

The Faber & Faber Mdern Classics Edition. [Smart Shopper.ru]

Venedikt Yerofeev is not to be confused with Viktor Yerofeev! In fact, they are poles apart. Viktor Yerofeev is a modernist and a critic who writes with great coherence about social and cultural matters.Our Venedikt, however, is more a sort of Vodka soaked Dylan Thomas of Russian lower class urban life.

Born in 1938, he originated from the provincial far north, excelled at school, undertook some teacher training in Vladimir and then seems to have spent most of his days travelling from town to town doing odd jobs whilst in the grip of alchoholism.

Venedikt Yerofeev: Portrait of the Artist as a Drunken Young Man [Pinterest]

Like all too many men would do of subsequent generations, he died way too young at 51. His satirical drama Walpurgis Night was published after his death but his name remains synonymous with Moscow Stations.
This he dashed off in a few months whilst working as a layer of cables. He wrote with friends in mind (one of them would later recall seeing him chuckling over his first draft in a disused railway station).
The main interest a reader might have in this work now is in seeing whether it resonates with modern Russian life or whether it can be consigned to the shelf markedPeriod Piece from the Time of Stagnation.

Diary of a Heavy Drinker.
Moscow Stations comprises of a day in the life of young Venya (no doubt the author in a very thin disguise). His world consists of wandering through central Moscow as he downs Kuban vodka or Zubrovka or any other strong spirits or wine that he can afford and, to this end, he knows all about brand names and liquid volumes.

We discover him engaged on a Friday night ritual of boarding a train at Kursk station. He is destined for Petrushki, a high rise suburban district some 124 kilometeres East of Moscow, in a trip that would take around two and a half hours. (We are not talking Trans-Siberian express here!) His new girlfriend awaits him there as does his son, both of whom, in his inebriated state, he idolises.

This banal premise allows us to be privy to the protagonists internal monolgue as -in chapters named after the train station stops – he gets thrown out of a cafe for demanding non-available sherry, hooks up for some rambling intellectual banter with fellow Career Drinkers in the train carriage, has his baggage stolen, engages with hallucinatory dreams involving military glories and then wakes up returning to Moscow having passed out on the train overnight (that, at least is what we surmise has happened: it is not the sort of novel which lays things out for the reader). Needless to say, following all his musings over the pitiable details of his sordid life, he fails to disembark at Petushki.

Plain-speaking hobo.
The voice is book-learned and streetwise in the Henry Miller manner and the novel functions as a free-form romp. The first person past rense confessional, much of it a kind of stream-of-consciousness, ends up spiralling into chaos and ambiguity and with the execution of the narrator by shadowy assailants.

I was reminded of the peripatetic anti-hero of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger . In contrast, though, Venya’s issue is not one of material need, he belongs to a society of near full employment after all, it is how to score his next liquid fix and then to stave off the after-effects in the meantime:
...you should have seen me, holding my eyes shut tight for ages, trying to keep down the nausea, effing and blinding.... One minute the glass I'd drunk lay smoking somehwere between my belly and my gut, next minute it was shooting up and falling back down again (p-13).
(His warts and all expose of drinking’s downsides fails to mention the horrific absence of toilets on these suburban trains, however!)

The strenuousness of Mulrine’s rendition of Venya’s vernacular is nothing short of awe inspiring. He has reallyh brought to life for the English language reader something rooted in colloquial Russian:
So to hell with you! You can leave all that extragalactic astronomy to the Yanks, and the psychiatry to the Germans. Let all those Spanish bastards go watch their corridas, let those African shits build their Aswam dam, go ahead, the wind'll blow it down anyway, let Italy choke on its idiotic bel canto, what the hell! (P-44)
Moscow Stations does feel quite fresh for something with a 1969 vintage. In fact I can recognise possible tributes to it in later Russian novels: the intimate misfit’s voice in Arslan Khasavov’s Sense, for example or the madcap army games which Venya dreams up finding an equivalent in Dmitry Bykov’s Living Souls.
Yerofeev is sometimes dignified with the term dissident, but, from this novel alone, this label does not seem appropriate.Venya protests nothing – not the Brezhnev doctrine, or the growing tensions between Russia and China, nor the use of pschiatric institutions as political weapons. He even advocates pusillanimity which some might argue has since become the national vice. So does the novel have anything else to announce to today’s reader?

Unintended cautionary tale?
Some critics have imagined there to be a core religious significance to this work on account of the references to the Lord and to angels and matters spiritual in the text. However, these Christian name-checks are handled with the same kind of offhand facetiousness that every other intellectual subject is in this book.

Others just frame the novel as a good comic one. Indeed, there is a lot of playfulness in evidence throughout. The infamous recipes for cocktails, however – which itemise such ingredients as brake fluid and sock deoderant -would be easier to laugh with if they did not have a basis in fact. (A female acquaintance of Yerofeev’s recalls having to hide perfume bottles whenever he paid a visit). The best joke, for me appears right at the novel’s outset. Venya admits that he has never seen the Kremlin. Then: For instance. Yesterday - yessterday I didn't see it again (p-1) Much of the rest of the humour is a drunk’s humour – far funnier to the teller than to the listener.

The novel highlights the squalid horridness oif a life devoted to drink. Unlike J.P Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, for example, Yerofeev does not seek to glamourise such a life with shows of macho swagger. Thus I can see how this novel made its way into a journal like Sobriety and Culture, which was devoted to public health, and taken as a warning against drink abuse.

Redeemed by a staging.
The narrator of Moscow Stations, whilst full of wisdom beyond his thirty or so years, is one I find hard to get on with. Yes, he is gentle and betrays affection for his loved ones and erudite and vivacious; he is also supercilious and proud and full of self-pity, just as a raving dipsomaniac would be.

The dramatic monologue that Mulrine extracted from this novel was put on at the Traverse theatre in Edingburgh with Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar) in the role in 1994, to some acclaim, and then it toured.

Born in the same year as Yerofeev and bearing a physical resemblance to him, Courtenay was 57 when he performed this role – a more fitting age for the protaginist somehow. Indeed Venya is something like what Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher might have ended up as, if he had taken to the bottle in a big way. I have not seen the play, but I have an instinctive feeling that this format would have more impact that the novel itself.

YEROFEEV, VENEDIKT MOSCOW STATIONS (LONDON: FABER & FABER, 1997, 2016). All quotations are from this text.

Lead image: Yandex.ru

TWO CLASSIC RUSSIAN ROCK ALBUMS REVIEWED: KINO’S `Nachalnik Kamchatki` and NAUTILIUS POMPILIUS’S `Titanic`.

KINO, the braincild of the frontman Viktor Tsoi, emerged from the Leningrad scene in 1982 to become the prototypical Russian rock act with their brand of `beat music` until Tsoi’s tragic demise eight years later.

Nachalnik Kamchatki (`Head of Kamchatka`) forms Kino’s second release after `1946` and sees the light of day in 1984 on Moroz records. Andrei Tropillo produces it.

For all the bright colours of the album sleeve this is a downbeat affair, notable for the brevity of its tracks. My version features black and white shots of the band which could almost have come from the Nineteen Fifties.

The album opens on a strong, famous anthem: `Last hero` (`Posledniy Gero`). Here we get a repeated bass coda held up by a light beat as Tsoi sings in a fresh voice with a borderline angry tone. `Good morning, last hero` is the chorus line. There are no instrumental interludes on this otherwise instrument heavy album, but the song is interesting enough not to need them.

The piece which follows – `Every Night` (`Kazhdi Noch`) – betrays some influence of the two-tone ska music from the British West Midlands of the time. With its chugging rhythm and its horn backing melody it could almost be an early piece from The Specials. `I know – every night I live near the sea, I know -every night I listen to songs` goes the oft repeated chorus line.

`Tranquiliser` plays next. Also with a British Eighties sensibility, this has an upfront bass and a funereal metronomic pace propping up Tsoi’s spaced out vocals: `The weatherman says rain won’t be long` and the drawn out chorus `Oooooh, tranquliser`. This is all too effective in conveying a certain defeated lethargy, despite some pleasing guitar work.

The fourth composition feels quite forgettable. `Listen to the New Song` sounds a little manic with sixties style organ keyboards, a stuttering bass line and somewhat nagging vocals.

`Guest` (`Gost`) is next up. Once again we are treated to a sparse mix of heavy drums and bass relieved by the intervention of a bit of guitar later on. The lyrics build on the theme of despondency : `Drink tea, smole papyrosas/ Think of what to do tomorrow`.

`Kamchatka`, the next track, offers a solution: daydream. The title is Russian slang for an idealised place to escape to (like Eldorado). It is all prefigured with some exotic, blissed out rhythm guitar before the refrain` It’s a strange place Kamchatka/It’s a sweet word Kamchatka` gets rolled out.

The seventh piece `Aria Mister X` reprises the electric organ keyboards and marries a ponderous song with a speedy rhythm. A bit of an outtake this.

Iconic Soviet forerunners of Russian rock: Kino (Viktor Tsoi second from the left). [tipstop.ru]

`Trolleybus` on the other hand redeems the album with a serviceable pop song. With an ostensible focus on the vehicle of the title (`I don’t know why I’m cold in here`) the song brings in an upfront guitar riff and some soaring saxophone. With its more upbeat stance , `Trolleybus` is a preview of what Kino would later evolve into a few albums later.

Then `Slushy snow` (`Raspotitye sneg`) fades in with another mechanical beat this time overlaid with acid blues style guitars. Again the mood seems one of desperation. `Mother` cries Tsoi. Then: `Help me!`

`Rain for us` (Dozhd Dyela Vas`) comprises a slow ballad complete with jangly guitars and more of Igor Butman’s saxophone but fails to really distinguish itself.

`I Want to Drink with You` (`Hachoo Pitz s’ Tovoy`) is track number eleven and is a return to form. With its funky baseline and much saxophone this could, maybe with a little bit more production, have stood alongside `Trolleybus` as a standout piece.

`General`, up next, introduces a dub like echoing bass and some interesting violin instrumentation but it otherwise forgettable.

The final piece, which the band should placed nearer the front so good is it, is `Romantic Walk` (`Protulka Romantika`). Concerned with a nocturnal city stroll, the song is built around a fine bass line and builds up to a memorable chorus line.

Taking all the above into account, we have here a glum, minimalist, reverb-heavy album which, nevertheless features a wide range of musicianship. The lyrical focus is very much on the minutiae of daily life much in the way that (say) Tom Robinson’s Band was during the same era.This is a`stoner` soundtrack and is not for partying to; nor is it the best work of Kino, which would come later. What does shine through, though, is Tsoi’s songwriting prowess.

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Nautilus Pompilius emerged from Sverdlosk in the eighties , lead by the singer Vyacheslav Butusov with lyrics supplied by the poet Ilya Kormitsev, they promoted their brand of `Urals rock` which would take them up to the late Nineties.

Titanic comes out in April 1994 in C.D fotmat and is their eighth album. Recorded in Yekaterinburg it is on the Jam Sound label and a member of Agata Kristie – Vadim Samoilov helps to produce it.It would go on to become one of their most popular.

Tutankhamun is the well known opening number. The intriguing and impressive sound is built up with a rhythm aided by a Jew’s harp and a clapping beat augmented by a repeated coda formed by bass,keyboards and violin. An oboe, or something of the kind, interjects later to lend an Eastern ambience to the proceedings as does the faux-African style crooning later on. Butusov eschews the usual build up-bridge-chorus line here, as he does in many of his pieces. We do however get a stage whispered repetition of the title towards the close of the song.

The title track `Titanic` also involves an historical reference with an evocation, in the lyrics, of blind ignorance of ones fate. (The lyrics did not come with the album and, although they are available on the net, I have not considered them here. Nautilius Pompilius are known for their lyrical ccontent and, for this very reason, it is interesting to see hiw their music stacks up when this aspect is left out).

Nautilus Pompilius playing live. [Yandex. Musika]

What a standout piece the third one is! `Polyana’s Morning` (`Utra Polini`), with its jangly guitars and blended base laid over a Casio style tik-tok rhythm over which Butusov sings, instead of intones for once, conjures up an elgaic beauty to compare with the best of Pink Floyd.

`Rascal and Angel` `(Negodyai ii Angel`) appears next and is a shorter rhythm based composition which seems to have been built around the vocals and then introduces a surprising keyboard interlude and some whistling. After the dreaminess of the previous track I found this one a little irritating.

The fifth offering `To Eloise` (`K Eloise`) boasts a sort of twenties jazz- swing approach and is something that could have almost appeared in Soviet times. However, for all its apparent lightness of touch `To Eloise` comprises a dark love song, of sorts.

`Air` (`Vosdukh`) is up next. This opens in an appropriate way with swirling, `cosmic` sounding keyboards before some slow guitar chords are added to the mix. This also features an enjoyable chorus complete with a pleasant melody and fades out as instruments take over.

`Wheels of Love` (`Kolesa Lyoobvi`), in contrast, seems like a jolly vintage rock and roll number complete with a boogying bass line but a definite oft repeated chorus line. One for the stilyagi.

The penultimate number `20,000` is the neaerst thing the album has to a dance piece:with a heavy bass and a great deal of electronic rhythmical doodling. This could almost be something from the `Head of Kamchatka` by Kino.

The final piece, called `Beast` (`Zver`) is another nugget to put alongside `Polyana’s morning`. It opens in an almost reggae like manner with a repetitive song sung over the regular beat and then the whole thing becomes graceful as majestic extended keyboard notes enter the fray and the sound becomes ever more elegant and soulful.

Taken as a whole we have here a listenable and durable art rock album which is well produced and well executed and varied enough to be appreciated without even understanding the meaning of the all important verses. Butusov’s vocal delivery, no doubt influenced by Tsoi, does lack variety but is distinctive and is no doubt something of a trademark for his generation of fans.

HERE TO STAY: the band MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE.

MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE and their antifascist posse will not be cancelled by the West European wokerati.

Vandalised synagogues, burning croses in the night/Religious fascist radicals burning inifidels die/ The shit of the same type, the shit we must fight/Know your enemy/Recognise the dark from the light.
These lines are trumpeted out in a song called Anne Frank's Army. They are all quite commendable you might think. Later though, in the same piece the words whore get uttered.

This word, among other proscribed attitudes, have been pounced on by Western European critics in a failed attempt to cancel the authors on account of not being worthy of their own professed antifascist ideals.

Moskovkaya Brigada Smerti – or MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE – are the authors of these words.This five piece hardcore punk/hip-hop oufit, formed in 2007, project a progressive and anti-racist ethos, which they shout out in English, but there are some who feel that they are not woke enough to join their brethren in the West.

Brown wedge.
MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE augment their sinister name with a ski-maked stage act and hidden identities. However, their stance is pro-inclusivity and they partake in a Russian subculture which, whilst eschewing politics, aligns itself with those on the sharp end of the nationalist resurgence in contemporary Russia. They represent Nice Guy Skinheads the world over and as Discovery Magazine put it are on their way to becoming a household name in the underground scene (21/04/20).

Alongside them are such bands as WHAT WE FEEL, with whom they recorded a joint rocky number called Here to Stay in 2015, and bands like SIBERIAN MEAT GRINDER (who offer a more whimsical take on things with a mythology based on a Russian bear-Czar, and so on).

MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE live in the here-and-now and know that the menace of fascism is for real. Fyodor Filatov (Feyday), the leader of the Moscow Trojan Skinheads, an avowedly antifascist collective, died in hospital in October 2008 after being found outside his flat with multiple stab wounds.

The Los Angeles Times (August 22nd, 2015) reports that an organisation styling itself Battle Organisation of Russian Nationalists (BORN) murdered ten people between 2008 and 2010. One victim included a Tajik man whose severed head was left in a government office building together with a note threatening further bloodshed.

Street humans.
Emerging from a DIY culture of skateboards and graffiti, MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE refer to their upbeat and electronically enhanced sound as Circle Hip-Hop and are recognisable from their alligator logo. The verbals are intoned -with rushing Metro carriage syncopation -by the balaclava clad Boltcutter Vlad and six Mosh G. In Papers, please we get a glimpse of their ethic:
Poison the water/Feast of legalised muder they begin. Then:`Their lies about human rights don't cost a quarter/They bomb your home, let the beast roam, close the border.
They can boast about four previous releases including a compilation with other European antifascist protestors called United Worldwide (Voice of the Street Records, 2015) and Boltcutter in 2018 (Fire and Flames Music).
Throughout they have been showing the world that Russia does not just consist of ethnostatist sleepyheads.

Attempt at defamation.
There have been naysayers though.Five years ago in February it happened. A group under the anonymous name of Antifascist Subculture Worldwide posted, on Linksuten, a scathing attack on the whole Russian antifascist music scene, with particular respect to MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE. It was entitled Russian antifa discredits Antifascism. This missive, which appeared untranslated from German, while the band were on tour,accused the band of being a bunch of nationalists and chauvinists who were using the anti-fascist association for monetary gain.

Not only did MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE make use of dubious words in their lyrics, they rubbed shoulders with shady characters and projected a macho stance which excluded sexual minorities.

Furthermore, they did not put their heart and soul into a Left cause and were patriots who imagine that the politics of antifascism can be narrowly reduced to only a fight against Nazis. And so it went on….

Objections Overuled.
The band’s reply which they posted on Facebook on 19th February 2015 was detailed, dignified and convincing.
They remind us that the group – composed of Jews, Russians, Ukranians, Tartars, pople from Christian, Jewish and Muslim families have played numerous benefit gigs all done without profit.

They also remind us of their local situation. On the one hand they are in the shadow of a Soviet past which did not encourage much faith in State Socialism and on the other they are facing very real neo-Nazi tendencies from within their own circle (There are even red-brown Stalinist bands such as KLOWNS who sing in dismisive terms, of the tolerant West).

They express a hope totake patriotism away from the Naziz whose slogan consists of Russia for the Russians by embodying the multi-ethnic nature of Russian society. They have signed a non-partisan manifesto against the war in the Ukraine.

In one pointed passage they say: We can't understand why it is necessary to be labelled a Communist of an Anarchist to be a part of the antifascist movement.
The most significant part of it all is when they go on to characterise the slander of them as being Eurocentric and a blatant expression of West European Imperialism and elitism. (Indeed, it does seem as though the Woker-than-thou German critics have channelled a racial stereotype of Eastern Europeans as being brutalised and backward).

Undeterred.

Menawhile MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE have released a pro-quarantine song called Put On Your Mask – the proceeds of which will go to organisations which help senior citizens in Russia during the coronavirus.

Their newest album, released last April, comes under the telling title of Bad Accent Anthems. This features a standout euro-banger track, which together with a video featuring people of all ages and types flinging themselves about to it, is a friendly appeal to solidarity:
Another run/ We have just begun/One against the storm/They had to lock the gates so we;re talking them by storm.

The main image: Youtube.com

THE ABRAMENKO EXPERIMENT: THE FILM `SPUTNIK`.

Egor Abramenko’s intense cosmic threat thriller SPUTNIK is so much more than a Russian Alien.

With mounting alarm the young psychologist observes the scene unfolding on the CCTV. The cosmonaut is thrown to the floor in a convulsive motion. From his mouth oozes a ridge of slime. Two spindly limbs emerge from this and the being begins to creep forward. The military man, also watching, has seen this all before….

Sputnik means satellite in Russian but also carries connotations of fellow traveller. The film with this title, a thriller with a science-fiction premise and scary movie trappings, is a rare beast in Russia. Such a mix of genres is matched only by The Fatal Eggs, an adaptation of the Bulgakov novel from 1995 and Diggers (2016) and Avanpost from last year.

Intended for release last April, the film ended up getting its premier on the net, owing to the pandemic. There it gathered over one million viewers in Russia alone. I, however, waited for the cinema doors to be flung open again, and my patience was rewarded. SPUTNIK is one picture that deserves to be experienced in a large and loud format.

Egor Abramenko, the man on the high stool, has been churning out commercials for years but his other brainchild was an eleven minute long short called Passenger released three years ago. This was to be the egg that was to hatch SPUTNIK.

Some bankable celebrities signed up for the project. That Golden Boy of the Russian media Fyodor Bondarchuk has come from behind the cameras to fill one of the main roles. So has the stately 33 year-old St Petersburgian Oksana Akinshina, who had a cameo role in Rassvet, this time being given prime space.

Interrupted mission.
Andropov is in the Kremlin – it is 1983 – and around the earth circle two cosmonauts on a routine orbital mission. They are about to re-enter the atmosphere when it happens. There is an unholy knock on the spacecraft’s hull….Only one of the crew members makes it back to terra firma alive – and he has black eyes….

Later a female psychologist – Tatyana Klimova – with a history of employing maverick methods, (Akinshina) is getting a dressing down at a tribunal in Moscow. As she leaves in disgrace she is approached by a military colonel called Semiparov (Fyodor Bondarchuk). He considers her to be of made of the right stuff for a position he has to offer her. This involves reaearch into a unique incident.

He chaperones her on a journey to the Caucuses. There, in a military installation, she learns that a cosmonuat who is supposed to have died on return is alive but infected with a parasite of unearthly origin, and no memory of how it got there. (Pyotr Fyodorov who also appeared in Avanpost).

Soon Tatyana begins to harbour qualms about the humanitarian implications of how this hero of the Soviet Union is being treated – as well as the uses to which the resulting knowledge will be put. Can she escape the compound and return to Moscow to expose the dark doings of this rogue operation?

Space age possession.
This 1 hour and 53 minute drama has a measured pace and highlights the human dilemmas that the situation throws up (challenging the view that science fiction and horror lacks human depth). There is even a sort of sub-plot concerning the neglected child of the cosmonaut, languishing away in a care home in Rostov-on-the-Don.

The two story writers Andrey Zolotarev and Oleg Malovichko had also both worked on Attraction (2017) and Invasion (2020) which were alien contact tales directed by Bondarchuk. Those blockbusters, however, were frothy fun-for-all-the-family affairs whereas SPTUTNIK contains more intelligence in its details.

With SPUTNIK being something of a star vehicle for her, Akinshina makes for a likeable lead. She is no Sigourney Weaver-like action hero but a woman constrained by her professional role while thrown into an extraordinary situation.

Bondarchuk, meanwhile, does what he does best: lend gravitas to the proceedings. He portrays a complex man with some paternal affection for Tatyana and a begrudging dependence on the creature who he wishes to isolate and exploit.

The assistant-to-the-heroine is a stiff white-coated drudge of a research scientist (played with conviction by Anton Vasilev) whose conscience is awakened by Tatyana. It is he who phones through to the Moscow authorities with some important information before being gunned down.

The creature itself is a fine piece of work, if not original.Stitched up by Main Road Post, its a puppet and CGI slimy quadruped with several eyes, insectoid limbs, buzz saw teeth and cute floppy ears. Living off the hormones produced by fear, it has a penchant for cracking open heads and slurping on the contents.

Last, but no means least is the score by Oleg Karpachev. With its bombastic drum-heavy sound, this really signs and seals the sense of a shadowy secret mission.

Well received.
The primary mood is one of mounting unease. It is refreshing to see that the director has not relied on sudden noises and appearances to stun us, but instead there are some drawn out nightmarish sequences, such as when the alien is being fed live prisoners. There is some gross out involved as well as some tomato ketchup flying about (both untypical for a Russian film) but this is restrained.

The 1983 period placement is a puzzle. Is a hidden event in history being shown to us – as in Apollo 18 ? Or is it a way round the problem of how to portray the military as fragmented and corrupted without incurring the wrath of the censors? Or is this just an exercise in nostalgia? (An iconic Russian toy does play a part in the proceedings).

Reaching America and the UK, SPUTNIK has set forth an excited rattle of keyboards and much of what is being said is positive. The default comparison most seem to be making is with the Alien franchise.

True SPUTNIK has a ballsy heroine, but this is less rare in Russian cinema, and otherwise it is earth bound, set in the past, and much less of a stalk-and-slash romp. A more telling comparison is with the British television series from 1953 – The Quatermass Experiment. The initial premise is almost identical except that SPUTNIK then takes off on a different tangent.

Russian language promo for the British series `The Quatermass Experment` Was this the real inspiration behind the film? [sweet.tv]

For me, the film leans too much on hackneyed tropes about a caring, maternal woman in opposition to a monomanic, ruthless male. Otherwise, the borrowing fom Nigel Kneale aside, it is quite fresh and there is something primal and archetypal in the idea of a man having a goblin in his stomach which comes out by night. As Tatiana asks: Parasite or symbiote?.

Many Russian horror movies seem targetted at a young South East Asian audience and tend to play down their national origins. Not so SPUTNIK, which -with its setting in the steppes, glimpse of Soviet times and concern with military machinations – is Russian through and through.

Lead image: in-rating.ru

The trailer (English subtitles):

LOOKING FORWARD TO THE PAST? VLADIMIR SOROKIN’S `DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK`.

When Russia’s foremost iconoclast came over all committed, the results still resonate even more 14 years later.

Liberals differ from the lowly worm only in their mesmerising, witch brewed speechifying. Like venom and reeking pus, they spew it all about, poisoning God's very world, defiling its holy purity and simplicity, befouling it as far as the very bluest horizon of the heavenly vault with the reptilian drool of their mockery, jeers, derision, contempt,double-dealing, disbelief,distrust, envy, spite and shamelessness.

Welcome to the World According to Andrei Danilovich Komiaga – and there’s plenty more where that came from in DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK by the sixty-five year old Vladimir Georgevich Sorokin. This writer and artist has been baiting hidebound traditionalists with his installations, stories and novels for forty odd years now.

His work offers a challenging double-whammy of weird fiction and post-modernism making this Moscow dweller a bete noir of both Soviet and post-Soviet establishments. He has only just escaped from prosecution for obscenity, and that is despite being in receipt of prestigious awards such as the Maxim Gorky and Andrei Bely prizes.

Try reading, for example Four Stout Hearts (from Glas New Writing: Soviet Grotesque, 1991). This just defies description in the transgressiveness of its content.

One of sorokin’s installations on show at The Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

Nevertheless, in writing such material, Sorokin himself maintained that he exemplified an Art for Art's Sake approach. All that was to change, though, when the author reached fifty and published DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK in 2006.

In this short novel, Sorokin keeps his scatological and obscurist tendencies (whilst still present) in abeyance and the tale is both coherent and entertaining. It functions as a cautionary black comedy about the Holy Triumvirate of autocratic state, orthodox religion and narrow nationalism.

The novel was unveiled to the Anglophone world courtesy of the discerning American translator Jamey Gambrell. It is with much sadness that I need to report that this contributor to East-West cultural understanding passed away earlier this year, way too young, at the age of 65.

Fly on the wall.
The reader is privy to a busy Day in the Life of an Oprichnik (the name refers to a resurrected member of the secret police from Ivan the Terrible’s reign) and in Komiaga we are treated to a great villain-as-narrator creation to trival that of Partrick Bateman in American Psycho.

The year is unclear – the book jacket says 2028 -but, anyway, this is the near future and Imperial Russia is back with a vengeance. A Czar sits in the Kremlin, which has been painted white to expunge the red troubles. There are public floggings in the squares of Moscow and the nation is encircled by a wall. The elite brotherhood of the Oprichnik are out and about to keep all this running smoothly.

Komiaga, driven by a mawkish sentimentalism, puts his heart and soul into a defence of His Majesty, who in turn represents the Motherland. We follow his career of executions, rapes, shady dealings and consultations on cultural censorship in a plotless sequence of events. The commentary hurtles along and is decked out with bawdy songs and poetry, and patriotic hymns.

Like all Monarchical societies, this one thrives on Pomp and Circumstance, which Sorokin itemises. For example, The Mercedov that Komiaga drives has to be decorated on the front with a real dog’s head, a new one being chosen each morning. (Sorokin has always been interested in ritual. Here, however, it makes complete sense in terms of realism).

There are some of Sorokin’s trademark surreal touches too. Komiaga purchases an aquarium containing gold sterlets. It turns out that these can enter people’s bloodstreams and create shared hallucinations. He and his comrades indulge this, creating a phantasmagoric diversion in the story.

Likewise, this future world introduces some science-fictional creations, such as the transparents, virtual computer generated assistants which can interact with humans with their encyclopedic knowledge.

The Future Now.
DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK takes existing trends to their conclusion: Putin has extended his rule to a potential date of 2034 and the bishop Patriarch Kirill has a major influence on affairs of state.

In the story, the sole kickback to the jackbooted new order comes from independent radio stations which indulge in obscure intellectualism. These carry so little punch that our narrator enjoys listening to these to pass the time inbetween his state duties.

A reader of dystopias may well be reminded of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) – with its protagonist who is a henchman of the repressive government -or Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962) – with its narrator who relishes in gang violence and uses his own argot to do so.

Character study.
Sorokin explores the psychology that lies behind this kind of society. He demonstrates how state sanctioned brutality is so often borne along by weepy romanticism.

Hypocrisy also plays a key role in this world and drives a lot of the (subtle) humour of the novel. For example, Komiaga implores his majesty to legalise certain drugs for the sole use of the Oprichniks so that they may buy them without hassle. His Majesty refuses this request on the grounds that everyone must be equal under the law – even though the Czar knows full well that his men are indugling in these drugs anyway!

This page turner is a hit, a palpable hit. It can take its place on the shelves alongside Zamyatin’s We and Voinovich’s Moscow 2042.

R.I.P Jamey Gambrell, 1954 – 2020. [amazon.com]

DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK by Vladimir Sorokin (translated by Jamey Gambrell) is out in Penguin Books/Random House, London, UK 2011.

Lead image: frommixcloud.com

MAKE IT NEW: MMOMA’S 2OTH ANNIVERSARY.

Opposite the building which houses the entrance to the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) stands a sculpture depicting Kasmir Malevich presenting the viewer with his provocative Black Square composition.
Demonstrating his mission of creating a repository of Russian modern and contemporary Avant Garde works,this is one of Zurab Tsereteli’s distinctive sculptures. It is by the man who, as President of the Russian Academy of Arts, establlished the museum in December 1999.

Colliderscope.
The 20th Anniversary of this project – MMOMA 19/99 – could be significant and, so, bemasked and temperature checked, I found myself in the lobby of the place on a wet late July along with clusters of attentive young people.
The translated visitor’s guide promised a birthday party which would fiunction as a kind of mosaic where at the right moment strangers collide and find common language.

Three floors of white and black rooms were given over to the diplays. These had been hand-picked by invited curators, which included such names as Bernard Blistene, the curator of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Vladimir Sorokin, the important Russian novelist and… a footballer called Fedor Smolov, among others. They had grouped the exhibits into supposed unifying themes such as History, Perfumery, Gastronomy and so on.
Most of the names were Russian but some Western ones popped up, such as the American Keith Haring. The earliest work that I noticed was Bathing Boys by Natalia Goncharova from 1911 and this was alongside plenty of offerings from a hundred years or so later.

As always with my visits to MMOMA, I was prodded and entertained by much of what I beheld. The accent fell on neo-Modernism, primitivism, pop art and kinetic sculpture and a few mixed media installations. It was to the oil on canvas productions that I gravitated, with a degree of guilt. This riot of diversions defied a simple or immediate response: I found it much of it clever-clever, beautiful, jocular, irritating, predictable, mind-boggling, insipid, sinister, refreshing and cheeky.

Abstracts.
Some of the non-representative material on offer held immediate decorative appeal.The 31-year-old Sergei Lotsmanov’s Abstract Landscape (2004) – an oxymoronic title if there ever was one -was one such, with its bold colours and geometry.

Ivan Chuykov’s acryllic on hardboard Red Sea from 1989, with its scarlet surface offset by – what? a fragment of newspaper type? -had similar aesthetic impact on me.

The most memorable of the abstracts for me, however, was Mikhail Shvartsman’s Spring, from that same year.With its muted browns and pinks set in apparent three dimesnsions, this rewarded focused attention. This artist, who toiled in obscurity during the Soviet period, has left behind a posthumous treasure trove.

Metaphysics and sureality.
Then the circular oil on canvas compositions of the 76 year old Sergey Shablavin -Moscow (1989 – 1990) and The Intersection of Centuries transported me somewhere, with their sense of timelesness.

The Intersection of Centuries by Sergey Shablavin.

I also enjoyed the simple surealism of Flight of Birds Inside the Head by Leonid Tishkov from 1986 and, on similar lines, the gaudy bodily jumble of from thirty years ago, just called Composition by a reperesentative of the Moscow unofficial arts scene – Ernst Neizvestny.

Ideas.
Not all was dreamy impulsiveness, however: there were some points being made. The concept behind Arman’s The Mechanism of Time (1960) seems interesting enough. It exemplified the approach of the New Realism that he developed alongside Yves Klein and Jean Tinguely which involved using real world objects in opposition to abstractionism. However, the plexiglass and metal collage made up of the innards of watches does not seem to do this concept justice.

However, another take on man’s relation to mechanisms came through loud and clear to me in Ivan Sotnikov’s brutalist but comedic The Machine from 1988.

There were some quasi-political gestures too. In what I took to be a comment on the militarisation of everyday life in Russia the AES + F group created the Action Half Life Series (2005 – 2007) which, via digital printing on canvas, parades prepubesent children manipulating the latest military hardware before us. (Russia is a country where you can buy children’s balloons adorned with detailed pictures of military jets and missiles).

Light and shadow.
If there existed some darkness here – a room of coats with outstretched hands extending form them, a black room around which was projected fractured cityscapes -then this was alleviated with some levity.
One artist had revisited Malevich’s Black Square but these were set at wonky angles, almost as if about to fall off the canvases. There was a portrait of Brezhnev in cool shades and with the legend Alcohol. Andrei Monastyrski’s Cannon from 1975 bewildered us with a black rectangular box with protruding tube mounted on the wall which gave a harsh metallic ring when a switch was activated, as the viewer was invited to do.

I could discern no overididng theme to what I saw (and there was far more of it than I can do justice to here). There was a sense of it being Russian insofar as the remnants of Soviet culture were often being chewed over and there was a certain spirited resilience in evidence (which I have come to recognise as a national trait). What I did not see, and had hoped for, was anything like a direct engagement with the current Russian political establishment.

THE GLITTER VORTEX: the seductive diversion of the Russian Box.

How can I discuss television as a medium without sounding like a pseudo- Herbert Marcuse type figure sounding off about `psychoterror` and `constructed realities` and so on? The problem is that television is both superseded and powerful. The millenials are all on Tumbegrinder and Twitface anyway.

And yet – and yet we live in a television moulded world: both Trump and Johnson began as television stars before being voted in as leaders of their nations. Likewise, the Russian political establishment – from the Great Leaders New Year message onwards -owes much to broadcasting.

As much as I would like to sneer, I am a member of the televison generation myself. The first full novel that I read, aged about eight, was a novelisation of The Tomorrow People – a children’s science fiction show. Later, the arts programme The South Bank Show would introduce me to authors that I would later read and music shows like The Tube to the popular music which was out there. All of this has shaped what I am.

Bread and circuses.

It seems fitting that the Ostankino radio tower provides one of the most conspicuous sights in all of Moscow. This illuminated edifice, the tallest of its kind in Europe, represents the capital as much as Red Square does.

Television constitutes the most popular medium of the Russian Federation. No licence is needed for it, and should you not have one in your flat there is one in your local cafe or bar – a one-eyed monster with a cathode ray gun aimed at your head.

Russia boasts 3300 channels with Channel One, Russia 1 and NTV1 being sent out all across the nation. The government owns, or has a controlling interest in, many of these stations as does Bank Rosiya, Gazprom, the Russian Orthodox Church, the military and the Moscow City Administration (CIA World Factbook).

An independent channel exists too. Dozhd (`Rain`) – `The Optimistic channel` – has of late been slapped by a police raid and subsequent tax audit (Moscow Times, 1/8/19) – all of which has nothing at all to do with the fact that their journalists covered the rallies for free elections that took place last year.

I have spoken to many middle-class Russians who deny ever watching television. They must be untypical because a poll conducted by the Levada centre between 26th and 27th May last year found that 79% of Russians take in serials or films on television every week as opposed to 28% who read some literary fiction.In fact, 55% claimed to only read one book a year and the same proportion of people never attend museums or theatres. Those who never turn up to concerts make up 64% of the population. (Moscow Times, 1/6/19). However, the same polling station discovered that a 25% drop in trust in the TV news over the last ten years. (Moscow Times, 1/8/19).

BBC Russia was pushed off the airways in 2007.Dubbed Western shows that can be found here, however, include Poirot, the IT Crowd,The Simpsons and American Dad. Otherwise Russia is content to produce their own variants of Western hits with a car show called First Gear, with a ballsy female presenter and a talent show called The Voice.

Televisor Ga-ga.

Russian television transmissions feel sleek and sophisticated but also brusque. There are no continuity announcers and commercials flash up without interlude or warning. Speech is quickfire and shouty and the colours are all gaudy purples and yellows.

Contemporary crime drama forms the most prominent type of show. These appear all more or less interchangeable: parades of tough guys and lots of armaments. The more cerebral detective end of this can sometimes spawn promising results as we have seen with Freud’s Method, I See, I know and Akademia.One that seems to be on back to back on Channel five these days is Slyed (`Tracks`), an uptown version of Akademia.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the endless sherbert fountain of Russian pop. RU TV functions as the Russian MTV and it stretches the vacuousness of the genre to snapping point. A manic cult of the nubile young woman is much in evidence with many a scantily clad doll warbling in some hot beachy locale, to the strains of milk -and-water pop/hip-hop dance fusion, posing betwern a Lamborghini and a yacht. The talented Georgian crooner Valerie Meladzhe might liven things up by appearing in a blatant S and M themed video to go with his much polished ballads.

Диск277. Концертный зал CROCUS CITY HALL. 8-я Русская музыкальная премия телеканала RU.TV 2018. На снимке: певица, телеведущая Ольга Бузова

[kp.ru]

Over on the Mooz channel we ge some live music. Here the more established acts – Oilka, Sveta and Via Gra –cavort through their routines before the massed ranks. Here, at least, is a cheery crowd with no pretentions other than to indulge in some healthy fun.

Tears and laughter.

In Russia, `melodrama` is a distinct genre. It resembles a soap opera condensed down into one or two episodes. The protagonist will be a young woman beset by tragedies from which she emerges at length with the help of a wise old granny, a sassy female friend and and unexpected male suitor. The laboured plots play out in a paralell universe where there are few real money concerns, well resourced hospitals, jobs galore and everyone lives in swish apartments.

They are done rather well and their emotional punch draws one in. Many of them have been made available to the Anglophone world by Star Media who have put them on Youtube with subtitles. (I have linked one of my chersished ones below – Dark Labyrinths of the Past, a borderline psychological thriller).

Russian television comedy strikes me as quite broad. Much of it consists of boisterous skits on modern Russian life, but there is also the comedy of recognition via various stand up shows.

Shysest Kadrov (`Six Cadres`) – with its quickfire assembly line of satirical sketches – seems less ubiquitous than it was a few years ago. Pappini Dochi – Dad’s Daughter’s, on the other hand, seems to play on a perpetual loop. (This tale of a divorced and failed relationship counsellor struggling to raise a clutch of young women is one of the few Russian shows to have been replicated abroad – the German’s have their own tribute to it).

Subrealities.

There are lower rungs of the broadcasting hell yet. If you wish to elicit an agonised grimace from an educated Russian – just say the words Dom 2.

This reality show has, since 2004, been inviting us to gawk at leather trousered aspirants as they mumble inconsequential words to their bottle blonde inmates as they try to build a house which they then have to compete to live in.

Let us not forget the commercials (not that we could!) Should television be believed, Russia is a nation of dyspeptics. Viewers are peppered with a string of adverts offering solutions to stomach complaints complete with graphic images of colons and bladders.

Advertising alcohol has been disallowed so breweries have carried on by touting zero per cent alcohol beer – though their usual brew carries the same name and is as well known. (This same kind of pointless censoriousness extends to pop videos where, for example, should someone be puffing on a fag or holding a drink, this will be pixellated out!)

Saving graces?

In some areas Russian television does shine. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson ( 1979-1986) is well established as a classic adaptation of the Conan-Doyle canon. Less well known gems on the same lines include Kapatin Nemo (1975), inspired by the Captain Nemo tales of Jules Verne, which boasts a sumptuous score and an atmosphere which transcends the period-piece special effects. Moreover, the 1987 rendering of Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity (Konets Vechnosti) is well worth a watch.

A promotional poster for the TV series `Kapatin Nemo`[vovmar.livejournal.com]

Not all of these minor breakthroughs belong to the Soviet period either. Chernobyl Zona Otchuzhdeniya -Chernobyl: Danger Zone (TNT/TV3 -2011 -2014) is another television drama that may well be remembered in years to come.

As though making up for lost time, travel shows in Russia are approached with marked gusto. Mir Naiznankoo – World Inside Out -is overseen by a young male Russian everyman, a Dmitry Something, who hurls himself into exotic encounters with abandon,whether it is tucking into fried insects with the Thais or or gutting large fruits with African ladies. It is all quite apart from the cautious and ironic distance that his British counterparts would project.

The Russian small screen can deliver other positive messages too. A recent TV serial Tolya Robot (2019) had a man born with no arms and legs as its inspirational hero. Wedding and Divorces, from the same year, included a gay man as one of its players as well as portrayed his rejection by mainstream Russian society.

Even the easy-to-revile world of pop is can be a welcome space for those on the outskirts of Russian society. Rap music, for example, provides a voice for young men from Muslim backgrounds.

Rose tinted spectacle.

There is one adjective to describe Russian television : brash. It is also diabolical. A new opium of the people is what it all boils down to and should you try to use it as a guide to the Russian life of today you will be wasting your time. Just to give one example: I dwell in a downmarket, but not untypical Moscow apartment. I have yet to see a domestic interior even close to anything like my own in any Russian television drama.

And how does it compare to the old silver screen? During the quarantine period the Ruskoye Kino TV 1000 channel gifted us with some films had seen first at the cinema: Rassvet, Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest and – a particular favourite – Selfie. These seemed diminished when taken out of the dark and loud cavern of the cinema – and spliced with those stomach complaint commercials.

DARK LABYRINTHS OF THE PAST:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS4K4WOc44M

Lead image:votpusk.ru

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Missives from the Mosh-pit, 2015.

For obvious reasons, there is not a whole lot going on in live music in Russia right now. So, from the more carefree time of five years ago, here are two reviews of prominent Russian alt rock exponents – STIGMATA and TRAKTOR BOWLING – who played live at the Red Club in central Moscow in the winter of 2015. (I only wrote these for a very low circulation school newsletter – so I am not regurgitating anything too much by posting them here)

STIGMATA, AT RED, 21^ST NOVEMBER.

Burly, and bored, the security men manning the gates of Red nightclub seemed reluctant the let the crowd in. We had been hanging about in the dank November evening for too long, pacing around the arty boutiques and fancy restaurants, and it was past seven already. Most of the fans were buying their tickets –for the Stigmata Legion Tour – on the night. I had claimed mine a month or so earlier, and had needed to write the band’s name in both English and Russian before the sellers in the kiosk understood what I was asking for. (This is clearly a cult band therefore). Then, when the gatekeepers gave us the all-clear, they squinted at my ticket for some time as though they were worried that it might be for Elton John or something.

Young following.

Maybe they had a point: the three hundred or so Stigmata devotees must have still been in their cots when the band was launched at the turn of the century. Fresh-faced and flushed with expectation as they were, I caught myself hoping that the show would be good for them, as for some it may have been their first rock gig.

In the still chilly darkness of the club, the fans, anonymous in their indifferent denims and checked shirts, just kept on coming. We all stood about for a good hour gazing at the stylised `S` logo on the stage. Next to me a lanky guy in a Papa Roach t-shirt sucked on some kind of scented E-cigarette while a circle of baseball capped boys, their leader in a `666` sweatshirt, passed the time in the manner of ice-hockey team supporters by calling out the band’s name.

When the backstage screen lit up with Stigmata in black and white and they materialised, the walls and floor vibrated and the crowd began to jab the air with their fingers to the beat of the grinding noise.

Doomsayers from St Petersburg.

A five piece string and drum combo, Stigmata emerged from the rival town of St Petersburg. This fact, along with their occult laden moniker, would suggest a dark-wave Gothic type of music. Their actual sound though is a fast-paced and impassioned one: the sort that encourages a section of the audience to coalesce into a rugby-type scrum as the night progresses. You have to take a look at their translated lyrics to see the darker picture behind it all. What follows is lifted at random from some verses in – brace yourself- Psalms of Conscious Martyrdom (2010):

`Shield your skin for it shall peel/see the hungry jackals come and tear you limb by limb/ burn the day, darkened light`

(Er, no thanks! I’ve got a dentists appointment at five!)

Efficient.

Artyom Lotskih, the goatee bearded and paunchy lead singer, has one leg in a caste but gets on with the job without tiring. He belts out a bass growl and a rasp – signature clichés of the metal core genre which critics bracket the band in. Sometimes he sings melodies, and when he does he has a rather pleasant quavering voice. The person however, who introduces the songs and addresses the crowd is the rhythm guitarist, Taras Umansky.

Vladimir Zinovyev’s energetic drumming holds the whole performance together and the band, knowing this, have set him up on a raised platform. Then the guitarists provide some needed spectacle by goofing about: the bassist Denis Kichenko boasts a fret board with lights along it and the lead guitarist, who calls himself Duke, headbangs over a triangular guitar with his well-kept shoulder-length locks splayed about him. You get the impression that he rather wishes he were a member of the band Europe or something. Both twirl about like dervishes in the red and blue spotlights with their cordless instruments.

The songs came and went without much to distinguish them. Some were given a pensive aspect, such as the well-known Sentyabr by being introduced by a recorded piano motif. Then half way through their two hour set they incorporated some techno style interludes to their pieces which worked quite well.

This was a workman-like set from Stigmata. They left, without observing the convention of having introduced the band members, but after having their picture taken in front of the crowd – the same crowd who earlier had caught the bottles of half drunk water they tossed to them as though it were holy.

As we took our leave, I was pleased to see a lady, perhaps in her sixties, threading her way through the clusters of teens. `Whoa! ` I thought. `That’s cool! Someone here older than me! `

That was before I realised that she was most likely someone’s grandmother, here to pick one of the fans up and drive them home.

Tracktor Bowling – at Red, October 3^rd.

The bells of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour chimed just as I darted out of Kropotkinskaya metro exit into a crisp early October evening.

I was headed to altogether different type of sonic distraction: no sooner had I clapped eyes on the poster in the metro – advertising a visit by Tracktor Bowling to showcase their new Byezkonechnost album -than I had snapped up a ticket.

Having appeared on a compilation CD of numetal legends from Russia, which also boasted the likes of Stigmata and Amatory, they were already known to me. Besides, I tell myself, seeing Russian rock acts keeps me in touch with the world some of my students inhabit – and, since the genre has remained in stasis since the nineties, does so without making me feel too much like an ancient interloper.

Enduring.

Tracktor Bowling themselves are hardly a baby band: by this time next year they will have been rocking for two decades – a fact alluded to in the title of their new album (which means, something like, `never ending`). Wikipedia has even dubbed the group `the leaders of Moscow alternative rock`. Indeed, for a comparison you would need to look at the British Skunk Anansie or the German band Guano Apes, although they lack the balls of the first band and the originality of the latter.

What pushed them ahead, however, was the addition of Louise Gevorkyan as the lead singer in the nearly noughties. This thirty two year old Kaplan born Armenian, whose photogenic aquiline looks are one of the band’s unique selling points, studied music and teaches singing herself. A busy woman, she divides her time between Traktoring and fronting another outfit called Louna who, with their punkish socially conscious stance, have been making waves in America.

The gathering.

A mixed sex stream of black t-shirt and hooded topped twenty-somethings began to fill up the Red club at Yakmanskaya Nab on the riverside. Anonymous thrash rock played in the background and people’s trainers glowed in the ultraviolet light and I was relieved to see that, among them, there were also some older, nondescript types who had turned up to see what all the fuss was about.

There was a stampede to the front as the lights dimmed and the band’s logo flashed up on the screen behind it. Then, as the fans chanted `Track-tor track-tor` a siren sounded and we were then treated to a slick series of slides showing the band through the ages: a sort of early anniversary celebration. Then: there they were.

Rock chick.

Lousine now sports-bottle blonde hair and cuts a chunky figure in her cut off black jeans and Rage Against The Machine T-shirt. The men –Mult, Vil and Prof, all tattoos and short hair, looked like the seasoned musicians they are, but did not muster the same kind of attention as the singer.

For all their `alternative` trappings what Tracktor Bowling trade in is Power Metal: hearty ballads which sometimes sit alongside more shouted numbers. They only sing in Russian and among the few songs I recognised was `Cherta` (`The Edge`) and another one which translates as `Walking on Glass`. The crowd, though, not only knew the songs but where belting out their own duets to them. Loiusine, with the engaging manner of a tomboy skater, knows her audience well. Her pogoing and the later slam dunking enlivened a self-punishing two and a half hour set. After the encore they did not wait to commune with their followers but disappeared as – and this custom is unique to Russian rock gigs – some of them called out `Spa-si-ba! Spa-s-ba! `. Soon the besuited security men set about shepherding us from the building. I walked out of the club infected with the energy of it all, and with the sense that I had witnessed something of a phenomenon.