Tag: power pop

KIS-KIS BANG! BANG!

The saucy Mumble Rockers draw an oversized crowd at Zhest Club in ….KAZAKHSTAN.

I now reside in Almaty, the largest city in the Russian speaking former Soviet nation of Kazakhstan. This is the first experience that I have had of seeing live rock music here since arriving here just over two months ago.

Kis – Kis (their name, rather than being a reference to sucking face, has the sense of `Kitty Kitty`) originated in St Petersburg. Throughout their four years in business they have already amassed (as I would discover) a dedicated following.

The four-piece personnel consists of Sofiya Somuseva who supplies most of the vocal element and her buddy Alina Olesheva hits the sticks while Yuri Zaslonov (`Kokos`)grinds out the chords and Sergei Ivanov (`Khumny`) pumps out the bass.

Their 2019 album, `Punk Youth`, alerted the Russian rock public to their existence and their latest release, of this year, glories under the title of “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living`.

Of late the quartet have been hawking their wares in the major cities of Central Asia. Before I caught them on the 26thNovember they had already entertained the kids of Astana (Kazakhstan’s capital in the North of the country) and then done the same on Karaganda in the central region. Then, after playing for me, were due to make their way to Bishek, the capital of Kyrgystan and Tashkent of Uzbekistan.

Excess demand.

I had already expected that by getting to Zhest Club by 8pm – the time given on the ticket – would provide me ample time to chill with a glass of Line Brew, the local beer, and find a good spot to get some visual record of it all.

In the event, on reaching the unlikely street, with its endless rows of eateries and food stores, I gasped on seeing a queue coiling down the street. This would be my home for the next hour, as a diverse set of punters, not all ethnic Russians, joshed each other with bonhomie while concerned looking members of staff, walkie-talkies in hand, emerged from the club to see how their clientele was burgeoning. For the first time that year, it began to snow and we were all well dusted with it by the time the line had inched its way to the entrance.

`Zhest` means `tin` and, indeed, this twelve-year-old venue resembled a huge sardine tin, and, as the supply had exceeded demand (reaching a thousand rather than in the hundreds), we were to be the sardines.

Some had opted to leave their coats in a pile in a corner but I opted to keep mine on. Getting to the bar involved more tortoise like movements and getting anywhere near the front proved impossible as the true fans, taking the precaution of having got there early, had long since squeezed up to the front.

Kittens and heavies.

I was adjusting to all this palaver when the brassy and copper haired Somuseva strutted onto the stage wearing an asymmetrical skirt, one side being longer than the other. Flanking her were two identical men, built more like roadies than the string section that they were, hidden behind ski masks (a la Moscow Death Brigade).

The modelesque Olesheva sat on a raised platform behind her drums and a wind generator rippled her pink hair as she drummed. This was a blatant bit of theatrics but she did look very fetching and provided much of the ensemble’s most memorable visual impact.

[TWITTER]

Only Rock and Roll.

They ran through their hits and other songs “Girlfriend`, `Kirril`, `Mincemeat` – and so on with some impressive synchronized pogoing throughout the two hour show. The crowd was kept engaged, anticipating each song as it came.

The two girls talked a lot. They sprayed the crowd with water. They collected the bras that fans hurled at them. They encouraged us to chant Rock! Rock! Rock! They told us to crouch down and then to all leap up on command.

Then Kokos took over as the drummer and another guitarist materialized so that Olesheva could launch herself into a sea of upraised hands. They quaffed some cognac (The rules must be more relaxed here as I never saw the like on a Russian stage).

Then Alina and Sofiya went for a clinch in a show of `spontaneous` affection for each other.

Of course, this stunt calls to mind the faux-lesbianism of tATu in the early noughties and no doubt they are already tired of this comparison. (The frisson that this had at that time is hard to recapture now, but the band are doing their best by, for example, recording an audio version of Maxim Sonin’s `queer` novel Letters Until Midnight of 2019).

The new tATu? [Woman.ru]

Slick.

For a four- piece, the band bang out a full sound, albeit they add some prerecorded keyboards to the mix. This is garage rock with elements of rockabilly and alt -rock, but all spun on a power pop framework. They are competent players well versed in their own upbeat genre and yet have no signature style of their own. (Kis-Kis have been bracketed in with a supposed rock trend dubbed `Mumble rock` which was initiated in Ukraine in 2016. However, it is difficult to say what the defining features of this journalistic invention are apart from a general cheekiness of attitude). For all their show of street rough-and-readiness the band aim straiight at their teen demographic, leaving nothing to chance.

Like Zveri before them they offer up a world which is cleansed of depressing oldies and which is full of parties, crushes, friendships, experiments and adventures.

A Kick to Kill the Kiss.

On this tour, perhaps Kis-Kis are playing at being cultural ambassadors to Russia. If so they are doing so at a time when many Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan in particular, are drifting away from the belligerence of the Great Bear. What can these two vixens, and other bands like these, do to bridge the gap and offer the youth of the former Soviet countries?

A punk ethos hides a very calculated approach. [Shazam.com]

The thrill of transgression? Maybe so, yet the band’s insolent naughtiness is ever more out of synch with the direction of the new wartime Russia and it even remains to be seen for how long it will be tolerated in their own country. Teen spirit? That’s a closer fit, yet the pair are now well into their twenties and I wonder how long they can sing as though they are in their first flush of youth. `Female empowerment`? Yet they appear accompanied by two body guards masquerading as guitar players. Rock and roll? This is the best suggestion, although the closest musical and stylistic comparison I can come up with is that of the Canadian teenybopper from the noughties – one Avril Lavigne.

Lead image: Mobilelegends.net

ON GOLDEN CLOUDS: ELIZIUM LIVE AT ADRENALINE STADIUM.

NIZHNY NOVGOROD’S LOCAL HEROES HAVE BEEN BLASTING OUT THEIR UPBEAT SOUND FOR OVER TWO DECADES. BUT WHAT ARE THEY SO HAPPY ABOUT?

So it is up the Green line to the north-west of Moscow to the Adrenaline Sradium, one of the live music venues to have come out of the other end of the Big Stop.

The hype for this event had only been an on-screen one: I saw no posters about it, but what hype it was! The event – billed as `Twenty Five Years in Space` was to be an Anniversary bash and was evoked with nostalgic fanfare:

`It seems like yesterday we were putting on plaid shirts and mohawks and the walls of the Nizny Novgorod `Manhatten club thudded together with any musicians we could…`

And so on. Yet despite this generational framing, the assembled masses lining up outside  the club on 17th September prove a nondescript bunch in terms of style and of all and every age. I catch sight of one man who seems to be accompanied by what might be his septugenerian mother. Conversely, another mother in her forties accompanies her daughter – who looks perhaps not yet sixteen – to as far as the entrance to the show.

Another incongruous aspect to the set up is the fact that a vaccine passport( in the form of a QR code) proving that you had had the Sputnik V jab is demanded for the privelege of them taking your money to see them. (The band, or their management are, I suppose, entitled to make such stipulations if they want but my ferverent wish is that such schemes do not become viral throughput Moscow).

Power Pop Dance.

ELIZIUM  first took to the stage in 1995 in the tourist town of Nizhny Novgorod on the river Volga. The bass player Dmitry Kuznetsov, who took up music after having taken two degrees, is the kingpin and together with the singer Alexander Telekhov forms the mothership of a band that is characterised by a revolving door  of contributors coming and going.

The band, somewhat lionised in their local city, boast some ten albums  and, for all the line up changes, a distinct sound. `’`Space rock` (as they sometimes style it) it is not – or at any rate not if this term puts you in mind of Hawkwind and the like. (The only cosmic part of their performance lays in the numinous electronic ambient introductory soundtrack as the band enters the sage). Nor, nowadays at least, could the sound be pigeonholed as `punk` or even `ska punk`: it is too polished for that. If pressed I would call it `Power Pop Dance music`.

Sporting a mohican doesn’t make you a punk.

 Heads up all the way, they deal out big slabs of melodic sound held aloft by peppy rhythms and enthused vocals. They are a slice of cherry pie swimming in cream and perhaps with some smarties in  it. Their very name, which they are weary of being asked about, is the Greek word for `bliss`.

Jamboree.

ELIZIUM  comprise the usual string and drum set with two horns and a keyboardist, making them a seven piece plus backing girl singers and an occasional electric cello. With so much going on on the stage they do not add any dry ice or strobe lights or anything of that kind. They are of indeterminate age and favour skinny jeans, casual shirts and shades giving the proceedings  a beach party ambience.

Alexander Telelhov, I presume.

Doing some synchronised hopping from one foot to the other, they sustain an unstoppable dance machine for three hours or so. Some of the best performances are provided by the audience. In front of me a shapely peroxide blone bombshell girates about with her uber-chad boyfriend. It was what they had come for.

One of the band’s songs features a chorus which translated as `Golden Clouds` and this seems to pretty much encapsulate the carefree ethos which they are determined to put across.

This being a birthday do, there are guest stars too. Among those that I recognised are Lu Gevorkyan, the leade singer of LOUNA . She materialises, quite without preamble, looking chunkier than I had remembered, and her trademark roar seemed a little askew amidst all the froth. Likewise,  isn’t that the dimunitive form of a pink haired version of SLOT’S Daria Stavrovich that I see before me?

ELIZIUM  are self-conscious crowd pleasers and the devoted punters reward them for it. Even the brass section, it is refreshing to see, can bask in some of the kind of love more often given to guitar heroes. Searching my lexicon for a pithy word or two to pin them down I come up with `brassy` and `vaudevillian` and I think that about nails it as much as I can.

However, the brassy vaudevillianess is diluted a bit by the presence of several television camreras on and offstage. I sense that the quality of the musician’s playing has a detached feel about it, as though they are performing for  on-screen posterity more than for us.

Without waitng fo the encore, I clamber out into the wide and dark boulevards outside feeling a bit out of sorts. The `golden clouds` may have been covid-free, but there was a kind of toxic positivity about them. I find myself sickening for some kind of confrontational bite – of the kind that a band like ICE3PEAK or, sometimes, PILOT  can deliver. This seems vanishingly rare in  the rock-pop world of Russian in the fourth term of Putin.

Elizium. [rockweek.ru]