Alt rock – Generation P: Edward Crabtree's blog.

SHAKERS AND MOVERS: -MURAKAMI LIVE AT 16 TONS, MOSCOW MAY 9TH.

All the way from Kazan, the altpop-rockers put on a show that packs punch.

Ninth of May – Victory Day in Russia – turned out a monochrome soaked Sunday with the television showing rows of stony-faced veterans with plastic warerproofs over their medalled uniforms as they listened to Putin pontificating about Chechnya.

Victory Day has long since devolved from being a commermoration of those Allies who died fighting the Nazix and turned into a sabre rattling spectacle. I was quite happy to take in a sideshow away from the fireworks.

I had first got to know of MURAKAMI only about a week earlier when I bought a Russian rock compilation CD which had a song of theirs – `Nash Strakh`. This track put many of the others in the shade with its ebullience and confidence of execution. Doing a subsequent internet search on the outfit, however, lead me to wonder if they might be a corporate pop-band in the making along the lines of A-STUDIO.

All the same when I discovered a coincidental arrival of them to Moscow the following weekend, there was soon a ticket with my name on.

Meeting of talents.

Their frontwoman, Dilyara Vagapova, the 35 year old mother of two from Kazan who as well as being a songstress also plays the guitar and composes film music, first got her name up in lights by appearing on a TV show called `People’s Artist` on RTR. This prompted the string and drum quartet `Soltse Ekran` (`Sun Screen`),also Kazan based, to invite her to become a part of their already up-and-running rock troupe.

MUEAKAMI: Teetring on the brink of corporate pop? [VKontakte]

MURAKAMI – yes, they are named after the cult Japanese author Haruki Murakami -came together in the winter of 2004 in the capital of the semi-autonomous Republic of Tartastan – Kazan. They have been offering a workable synergy of alt rock and pop ever since then.The café-bar 16 Tons – `Tonny` -has hosted MURAKAMI a few times before and the venue represents a more natural home for them than it did BRIGADNI PODRYAD.

The smart set.

The place has a reputation for being a decent microbrewery and I make the acquaintance of their light ale Zolotaya Leiba as undistinguished pop-funk plays through the speakers and the fans assemble.

They are not the leather jacket and combat trousers brigade. Bright t-shirts and pressed light blue jeans seem the order of the day.Lipstick lesbian couples, modelesque lone girls entranced by their phones, gaggles of plump women accompanied by chunky bald men, a lovey-dovey young couple and a puzzled American expat in the tow of a fashionista lady – they all 200 or so of them- bring with them a sense of expectation as well as the newly warm evening air.

Then at around 7:30, half an hour after the advertised starting time the `16 Tons` themes song is played (some godawful American blues ditty from the fifities) and this signals the arrival of the main attraction.

The band tease us with an instrumental interlude before Vagapora bursts onto the stage and opens with an unexpected sombre number which feels quite intense. Then she rips off the hat she has been wearing and launches into the crowd-pleasing `Kilometer` while swinging her hair around.

Rail Laptov, the rhythm guitarist and backing singer and Anton Kudryashov, the chunky keyboardist in shades both fight the impression that they are but session musicians. Artur Karimov, however, plucks at his base whilst skulking in the background somewhat and the percussion king Andrey Pugachev taps his drums with all the engagement of a doctor performing a minor operation.

Strong presence.

The commanding and sometimes coquettish presence of Vagapova forms the focus of it all. Her clear and penetrating vocal reach is only one of her assets. She empowers the music with great use of her hands and body movements. In her ability to take the audience with her I am reminded quite a lot of JULIA VOLKOVA.

The act is as well-rehearsed as it is sound engineered, yet there are quite a few raucous moments. In fact one of their numbers (as seems to be a requirement in law for Russian rock bands) a tribute to `Rock and roll`.

They enliven the show with some cabaret-like surprises too. Dilyara, all of a sudden, materialises behind the bar and delivers a slow number about soldiers (the one concession to the Day, perhaps).There is also a spoken monologue with a musical accompaniment and, just as the band had seemed to exit and we were getting ready to leave too, a melancholy unplugged piece (and one which seemed to put real tears into the eyes of Vagapora).

Not plastic.

I am left more stirred by this two hour event than I had expected.This is something a bit more than a manufactured and anodyne radio friendly colgate-smile sound. Both pain as well as pleasure get an airing here. It is all pumped out with a gutsy performance. The band’s poised ability to straddle the world of pop and at the same time delIver something serious puts me in mind of GOROD 312. There is even something of a potential Edith Piaf about Vagapora.

MURAKAMI have claimed in interviews that, despite the glare of the spotlight on them, they will not pack their bags and head out to the gated communities of Moscow like so many celebrities are expected to do. That is for the better. Russian cultural life is already way too Moscowcentric and the youthful and distinctive city of Kazan could do with an ambassador.

Murakami: remaining true to their roots in Kazan. [Murakamiband.ru]

OURS SINCERELY: LUMEN LIVE AT THE GLAV CLUB IN MOSCOW, 26TH MARCH.

Live rock is back – and with it LUMEN, an unpretentious quartet revisiting the songs that made them Russia’s favourite alt-rock exponents.

Lumen: (i) A unit for measuring the amount of light an object radiates.

Lumen: (ii) A prominent Russian alt-rock band who have been on the scene for 23 years..

About this time last year, with the Big Stop looming,I decided to forego the few live gigs still on offer then. Little did I realise at that time that it would be a whole year later before I would be gracing darkened halls full of people younger than myself and observing amplified performances.

Can I even remember how to do it?

Back in harness.

Getting back to the fray bought back all the tatty rawness of gig going that
I so love to hate.

The huddled gangs getting tanked up in the queue as you wait to enter…the general getting jostled about…the overpriced headache inducing Budweiser in plastic glasses…the pre-gig excited whoops as a roadie comes on stage to fiddle with a detail of the set…the trying not to spill your beer as you attempt to get some passable shots of the band with your unfit for purpose camera…all of that.

Alt-rock success story.

LUMEN – a four piece string and drum outfit -constitute a product of Ufa in Bakshortostan (in fact, they have written at least one song in the Bashkiri language). It tells you a lot that the band can boast an exact birthday: 12th February 1998, the fateful day when they became LUMEN and embarked on writng their own material.

LUMEN eschew genre labels and their music does elude them to some extent. They do not represent any kind of Metal, Nu or otherwise and seem too well-mannered and reflective to qualify as` punks`.` Alt-rock` seems the safest fit for what they do. Their nearest peers might be STIGMATA, except minus the grandiloquent Gothic trappings of that act, or PILOT yet lacking the evergetic inventiveness of those St Petersburgians.

They have gifted Russia and Eastern Europe with some nine recordings. Their name is fated, however, to be bound up with a piece entitled Sid and Nancy – a ballad extolling bonding through shared alienation which name-checks the punk celebrities in doing so. This summoned up a cult status amongst the nadstats of 2003 on receiving radio exposure.

LUMEN followed this hit with a reputation-cementing 18 track album called (in Russian) No Preservatives. Here was a band in the KINO tradition, taking a no-frills approach and telling it like it is.(Indeed, anti-government and ant-war anthems form a part of their repertoire. So far though, they seemed to have escaped the kind of attention from the higher-ups that have dogged the carees of LOUNA and IC3PEAK).

It is this very album that the concerts at Glav Club on 24th and 25th of March were staged in honour of. For two nights running – Friday and Saturday LUMEN were to revisit those compositions again as an 18 year anniversary.

Real people.

The two thousand or so punters who show up on this early spring evening – plus three degrees already! -appear an unspectacular lot, all grey and black khaki and t-shirts and anything between twenty and thirty years of age.

Among them are some true fans: I espy people at the front holding up some illuminated signs of the band’s birthday at the front of the pit.

Otherwise, I sense that we are all here to check out each other. This is always the case with such rock events but, this year, the hunger is even greater.(Indeed, at the end of the show many show a marked reluctance to leave and even crash out on the floor in small groups).

It’s about the music.

LUMEN saunter onto the stage without any theatrical preamble, soI am at the bar when it happens, trying to get the barman’s attention. Donned in tight jeans and their own promotional t-shirts, they could be members of their own audience.

The lynx-lean lead vocalist Rustem Bulatov.for all his lack of preservatives, does not look his forty-years of age although his chunkier colleagues do just a tad more.

I am more familiar with the band’s more recent anthemic material but what they play tonight seems to be a kind of power-pop which most in the audience know well enough to to sing along to. Sid and Nancy, however, is taken out for a walk.

With his earnest image,I do not expect Bulatov to be so garrulous. In between pieces he addresses us all as though he knows us, but with a casual and respectful air. What has most impact on me though, is Igor Mamaev’s lead guitar. He delivers quasi-classical sequences of soaring melody which have me closing my eyes in zoned out relish.

It is all about the music. The band have no recourse to video projections, or such special effects, but just use alternating red and blue lights for the most part. There are only a few balloons, The rhythm king – Denis Shakhanov – does not lob his sticks into the crowd and nor are there multiple encores or a selfie taken with the crowd.

A proper picure of the band – taken by a proper photographer. [metalking.org]

Isolation begone.

When the two hour set comes to a close and the masses chant `mol-od-yets` (`well done`) Bulatov, in a gesture of honest humility bows with his palms pressed together.

It all feels like a note in the margins of the post-pandemic situation. Yes, we are ordered to mask up on the way in to the venue. Yes, the bartenders insist on us wearing masks when we order (as is right and fair). Otherwise the masks are off and the band do not even reference the pandemic. It is like 2019 again – and a worthy beginning to a new season of live music in Moscow.

Soul versus market.

LUMEN offer a kind of heartfelt desire to share. They offer `sincerity`. This commodity may have been a bit out of vogue in the West for some time but many roubles could be put on `sincerity` making a rapid come back.

The Welsh rock combo THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS are what LUMEN remind me of a little. Here we have decent young men cocking a snook at the acknowledged grim realities of contemporary life for all too many of us.

But the burning question this raises is as old as the hills. Can LUMEN’s `sincerity` hold up when they are, for example, flogging LUMEN themed money belts, or producing arty-crafty videos to showcase their latest slow moving ballads – and staging nostalgic retrospectives like this one? They are, after all a well-established act who have reached, as they say, `the pinnacle of their career`.

ROARING TRADE: PILOT LIVE AT GLAV CLUB, MOSCOW NOVEMBER 9TH.

Is this much-loved band the saviour of the Russian rock genre?

This November Saturday night proved to be as grey as the preceding October and I hoped that this band, new to me, could buoy me up – in particular as those last two live gigs had left me unmoved.
They did.

Pilot [short /i/and beat on the second syllable] were recommended to me during a rare chance encounter with a self-confessed Russian rock fan who was also a Russian himself. This seemed a good enough omen in itself.

The Pied Piper’s of St Pete’s.
The second good omen came when I tried to get my ticket. For various reasons I buy my tickets in person over the counter. My trusty usual kiosk told me that all the tickets had already been pocketed. I got lucky at another place however.
Then at the Glav Green Club itself I encountered a queue on my way in and, along this, wideboys were pushing last-minute offers for anyone who had turned up on the off-chance.

The gig going community – and this night it did feel like a community – became so populous that we had to wait our turns to get in and out of the venue.

In the lobby meanwhile, the band’s merchandise – the lemon yellow wooly hats and scarves -were getting swallowed up faster than the stall holders could unbox new batches of them.
After twenty-two years of strumming and pounding, Pilot have the capacity to really pull the crowds.

Alt rock institution.

Conceived and organised in the rainy second capital of St Petersburg by Ilya `Chort`Knabengof in 1997, the band, first under the moniker Military Jane, have honed their own local strain of hard indie rock. This incorporates folkish and punkish influences but within an industrial sensibility.
What’s more, their Russian nationality seems to be encoded into these sonic emanations. Throughout their existence they have been transmorgifying into a unique brand, complete with a recognisable cartoon logo, numerous fan sites, endless photo shoots and so on.
In this tour they were revisiting an album called `Fish, Mole and Pig` which was first produced 15 years back.

Anthems for the 21st Century.
The doors of the concert venue were unlocked at 7 pm and the four piece materialised about an hour and a half later. There was no warm up act.
Following a shamanic sounding introductory soundtrack, the drummer, Nikita Belozyorov, arrived shirtless. The bass guitarist, Sergei Vyrvrich, a relaxed tall man with a floppy blonde fringe, came on next. Then Ilya himself appeared – wearing shades, which he never removed. The keyboardist was invisible (supplied by digital means, I presume).

They compensated for their nondescript appearance with much use of back projections to underscore the songs themes. Not that it was easy to see that much anyway, through the vineyard of raised phones, scarfs and girlfriends sat on shoulders.

Their opener was a declaration of intent just called `Rock`. Many in the audience seemed to have anticipated this as they held up pictures of the horned fist salute with the words `Rock` written beneath.
The next number spoke of their civic pride for their home city as the backdrop showcased it all with shots of the spires and waterways of that city. There were songs about the sex industry, the Hindu religion, psychopaths (`Nye Chelovek`) and one titled `Terrorism`.

Pilot, without offering leadership, could not be called escapist and do seem willing to confront the questions of the day.
That said, some of their compositions showed unashamed sentimentality. One involved a visual tour through old family albums and another, celebrating the band’s longevity, showcased children’s drawings from yesteryear as balloons dropped down from the ceiling.

Quite singular.
Like t.A.T.u, Pilot prove a more impressive experience live than in recorded format. Belozyorov’s tom -toms, put high in the mix, are a great boon in the upbeat ambience they create. In fact, Pilot dish out quite a detailed sound with keyboard melodies and guitar digressions aplenty.

I find it difficult to twin this outfit with any that I know in the West. Pilot owe a clear debt to the grunge of the Nineties. Otherwise they might be understood as a more slick version of their compatriots Posledni Tanki V Paris.

If `Russian rock` constitutes a genre in its own right, and many contend that it does, then Pilot might be said to be one of its last remaining popular exponents.
Sure, there are bands like Louna and IC3Peak, but the former seem to belong to an international nu metal trend and the latter to an international dark wave hip-hop tendency. Pilot are Russian-Russian.

My kind of crowd.
The feeling in the air of this enjoyable gig had a lot to do with the punters. In their thirties and forties and not dressed to impress, they exuded cheery bonhomie. For example, they offered to hold my beer for me as I tried to take pictures. I saw no fights break out.

We all downed quite a few Tuborg’s together with a lot of help from the – let me say – angelic bar staff. I got a real sense of this being an audience who were not just here to see the band, but here to say: Here we all are! Just look at us all!

`Osyen` by Pilot.

Main image:Flavara.com