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

SHAM ROCK TO SOME: YULIA SEMINA LIVE AT HARRAT’S PUB KARAGANDA KAZAKHSTAN.

I went to an `Irish pub` to watch an acoustic performer: what was I thinking of?

On this slushy and already inky end of November I amble up Nurken Abdirov Ulitsa. This is sort of Karaganda’s Oxford Street and I pass the coloured lights of pizza houses, Georgian and Korean restaurants and various shopfronts on the way to my destination.

`Are you here for the kvis?` a young lady asks me as I enter. After a double take I tell here that I am here early for the Yulia Semina concert and fumble around for my ticket. However, she just directs me to the bar.

Harrat’s Irish Pub in Karaganda offers a wide range of corporate beers but, as it is my first time here, I decide on the on the Harrat’s own house beer. At 2,000 tenge this is of average price and turns out to be a so-so lager-beer. I make a mental note to graduate to Starapromen next time.

I sense a lived-in feel to this pub even though it only threw its doors open last April. No doubt this impression is given with studious care. There are many joke memes, film posters, beer mats and so on arranged about the place and mostly in the English language, as well as the regulation paper currencies from around the world pinned on the wall behind the bar.

Global outreach.

`Immerse yourself in the unforgettable atmosphere of a real Irish pub` promises the Harrat’s Irish Pub website of their own venues. This pub, spacious, pristine and somehow solid has more of a feel of the sort of establishment that sprung up in the cities of Britain in the early Nineties. Nevertheless `Irish-pub` has now become such a familiar collocation – like `Italian restaurant` say – that it seems a bit churlish to questions its meaning.

Harrat’s Irish Pubs – the largest Irish Pub chain in the world -are very far from being British. Igor Kokourov first set one up in Irkutsk, Russia, of all places in 2009. Now its venues have spread out to the rest of Russia (there are several in Moscow), Kazakhstan (there was also one in Almaty, which I avoided when I was there), Kyrgystan, Hungary, Belarus, Cyprus, and even America – but none in Ireland, of course.

Kokourov chose the `Irish` theme because it suggested something `classical`. He aimed to project an ethos of `cosy chaos` and to reach out to ` 20 to 40-year-olds who like quality music, quality products, are cheerful, not aggressive, understand jokes and don’t wear Adidas`. (Cia. Ru, February 26^th 2020) No gopniks, then.

Perhaps it was such a demographic which was immersed in the slick quiz which had pop music related questions projected onto the TV screens dotted around the place.

As I sit at the bar killing time this pub quiz crowd is replaced bit by bit by slightly older and more sober groups of people, all pushing forty or older. Numbering about a hundred, these are my fellow spectators and amongst them I see no children, nor college kids.

Not the target market.

Confession time: I am only here because an advert for it appeared on my social media feed, nothing else was happening and I needed some copy.

The fact is that unplugged music, solo acoustic in particular, leaves me cold. When it comes to rock and pop, I really relish in the orchestral mash up of mingled and treated and amplified strings, drums and keyboards. Without that, the sound is altogether too spartan and sequestered for me. So, I had no high expectations as to what about to transpire..

Local heroes.

Yulia Semina consists of the lead vocalist and songwriter of the Kazakh band Anomaliya. Formed in Astana 21-years-ago this pop-rock four piece have two albums to their name and numerous singles. Quite early in their career they built up a fanbase in their own country, so much so that the entertainment store corporation Meloman became their sponsors. Appearances at Russian festivals followed and punters came to know them there too. By 2006 they even found themselves touring with the legendary Noiche Snapeiri (the Night Snipers).

ANOMALIYA back in their heyday {Genius.com]

Like Gorod 312 before them, and many a band for that matter, they have since relocated to the big apple of Moscow.

Their output could be placed in the same broad pigeonhole as Zemfira, albeit without the spiky brilliance of that Russian artist.

Pleasant host.

Semina finally arrives at around 7:30. She looks fresh-faced and relaxed, is about the same age bracket as her audience and donned in the new nondescript global casual style. She sits cross legged on a stool on the floor level stage before us.

She begins with a remark about having found the streets of Karaganda to be pretty as she strolled around them earlier then starts.

There are fast paced robust rocky numbers and some more reflective downbeat ones. Without doubt she has a fine voice: penetrating, clear and with quite a range. Yet to me it’s all strum-strum-strum – warble in a high register strum-strum-strum – warble on a low register and repeat.

I have to say that the prejudices that I took with me about acoustic solo sets remain not just intact but are reinforced. I find myself weaving my way through the onlookers back to the comfort of the bar.

There is some variety when a technical hitch stops the show. A rather nervous guy in a regulation pony tail arrives onstage to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and then it all begins again.

The food scoffing, inebriated crowd are getting what they came for however and join in some of the songs. Her set lasts about an hour twenty minutes, which is a long time to play solo without so much as a bottle of Borjomi water at hand so respect to her for that. I just wait for the conclusion, when the crowd will chant `Spasiba! Spasiba! `

This comes after a significant sign off from Semina when she plays a – fittingly Irish – cover of a famous Cranberries song. The song is `Zombies`, known for its antiwar content with its mention of `with their guns and their bombs`. I also realise then that the vocal style here, that moody sincerity, is very much the one that Semina seems to be aiming at, but not fully reaching.

The beer has not worked and I make my way out into the night to be ready for the first day of winter tomorrow. Nobody has asked to see my ticket.

Lead image: ticketon.kz

BACK FOR MORE.

A tribute band revists a collection of Russian rock standards to big audiences in Kazakhstan.

Russian rock, as a national genre, seems less current than it once was. Most devotees of this part of the world-rock quilt refer back to the last four decades for evidence of its greatness.

In the Russia of now many of the big names, if they haven’t decamped to Georgia or Central Asia, are keeping their heads down and just retreading old glories.

As far as recognizable brands go, the twin poles of contemporary Russian rock consist of, in one corner, the mock-dissolute rock-and-rolliness of the girls of Kis-Kis (known for chanting `Fuck the war!` at their live gigs) and, in the other corner, the Z-friendly corporate pomp rock of Shamen. The beauties and the Beast. Take your pick….

The Silver Age of Russian rock now gets packaged as a commodity. It was so for this tribute band performing a medley of Russian rock oldies in Karaganda in Kazakhstan, as the promotional blurb for the show makes clear:

`This is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the atmosphere` it says of `songs that have become symbols of an entire era`.

The band responsible – Jazi Orchestra – hardly seem to cast a shadow in the Anglophone interweb. All I can tell you of this six-piece is that they seem to be ethnic Kazakhs for the most part and are known for offering retrospective covers of Western and Russian rock. For this they appear to be as famous as you can be, short of having household name status.

Illustrious location.

On a sunny but already nippy early September I weaved my way to Shalkyma Concert Hall in central Karaganda. Named after a symphonic poem by Almas Serkebaev, this concert hall, better known for hosting operas, represents a sample of late Constructivist architecture. Throughout the building’s 85 years existence it has been the `Oktyabr` cinema and, during the Second World War, a military depot. In more recent days the interior of the place has been renovated by a local architect called Sergey Soshnikov. In particular, the installation of flexible gypsum boards on the ceiling has given rise to a much-vaunted reputation for good acoustics in the building.

Plaque on the wall of Shalkyma Hall dedicated to Bulat Syzdykov, the legendary Kazakh guitarist.

However, it is a seated venue and this was a rock concert. Being recumbent reduced the audience to passive spectators and the lighting banished the nocturnal quality needed for such events and the lack of a bar made the necessary abandon of a rock gig out of reach.

Mellow gathering.

The hall, with its capacityof about 200 people, was soon filled. The punters were Slavic in the main. There were few, if any, blue-haired boot wearing engineering students and many expanding waistlines and receding hairlines and some had their children in tow.

The band looked a decade or more younger than their fans. The mop-haired lead guitarist, Sultan Muratov, resembled a refugee from a Nineties slacker band and the deadlocked bassist one from a grunge band. The keyboardist was a studious looking Raikhat Muratali and providing the rhythm section (as well as trumpet at one point) was Kaset Nurpeisova.

The two warblers consisted of Alan Salpagaron, with an acoustic guitar on hand, and Roza Nurpeisova (the wife of the drummer, we were told). A statuesque Kazakh in leather trousers, it was she who provided much of the visual focus of this gig – for this ticket holder, at least.

Also eye-catching was the projected backdrop behind the band, courtesy of an `artistic director`. Sometimes this was all psychedelic mindscapes and at others we got clips from films and TV shows which the songs had some connection to.

Alan Salpagarov – before a projected backdrop.

Exhibition.

Over the next hour and a half, the personable half-a-dozen would lead us through a roll call of fourteen or so iconic Russian rock numbers. So well established were these that I recognized most of them even if I couldn’t put a name to them all.

Included were B-2 (`Varvara`), Kino (`Peremen`), Zveri, Total, Gorod 312 (`Ostanus`), Time Machine, Alyans, tATu (`Not Gonna Get Us`), Slot, Korol ii Shut, Spleen, Yulia Sachayeva and…whew!…beyond caring.

Something that I had not foreseen was the heartfelt delivery on the part of the band. Between the pogoing of the bassist, the excursions into spontaneity of the drummer and the smiles of the singers one might almost have thought that they were doing this for fun.

The medley was rounded off with a sort of lottery. With predictable sentimentalism, little ones were cajoled into coming on stage to read out from some random lists and from this a winner was decided. Someone on a balcony seat won a holiday in Turkey!

Memory lane trip.

In the row in front of me, a husband and wife sat with their ten-year-old son perched between them. Throughout the performance they both fixed him with questioning gazes. Would he appreciate this part of their youth that was being unscrolled before him? The event was a foray into the lost youths of the audience.

However, at no time did I feel bored by this gig. It was pleasant pure and simple. On the way out I saw queues of people waiting to come in. The same concert was due to be repeated in half an hour. A hard-working band – that’s Jazi Orchestra.

CATCH UP: Stigmata Eight Years On.

Saint Petersburg’s Veteran rockers tour Central Asia with their brand of Russified Metalcore.

I am perched in the darkness in my coat on the metal stairs which lead to an upper level. I sip now and again from a Budweiser which had taken me an age to get. Ahead of me, obscured in part by a throng, four men bathed in white light ooze a racket. I am trying to rewind to eight years ago when I first caught sight of this ensemble….

Established icons.

STIGMATA constitute a heavy rock outfit most often pigeonholed as `Metalcore` (stripped down heavy metal with a punk approach) or sometimes `Emocore` (confessional lyrics conveyed in a highly charged manner). As a part of the Russian subcultural landscape, this foursome has beavered away on the scene since they first picked up their guitars and mikes in Saint Petersburg in 2003.

Along with the likes of Jane Air and Distemper they were set in motion by Kap-Kan records, the self-styled `alternative to the mainstream` rock label who but a year after their formation released STIGMATA’S Conveyor of Dreams album. Since then, they can boast five more studio albums and a many single, their latest being `Polusa` (Poles) from this year.

Cover for the new single: `Poles.`
[Zuk.com]

During that time there have been many comings and goings of personnel, but the ones that I beheld were the were the same as the lot at the Red Club in Moscow eight years ago which included two founder members. The new boy is the clash-and-bang merchant Gregor Karpov who has been with the band for but a year.

They are beginning a tireless schedule of a gig each evening. Having come from Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan) on the 6^th October they will play in Tashkent in Uzbekistan after Almaty and then will turn their attention to a series of towns in their home country right until mid-December!

Here they are guests of Zhest Club, a somewhat hole-in-corner alternative rock venue. It has no cloakroom and it is all but impossible to buy a drink after 8pm owing to its packed nature.

Modest entrance.

On coming in from the warm October to hand in my ticket, I was surprised to discover that a band were already in full swing. The warm up was a chunky bespectacled chap and a willowy long-haired companion who churned out a very generic type of nu-metal. The crowd – a few hundred mostly ethnic Russians in baggy hoodies – responded with polite whoops and claps but here we had a reminder that in order to stand out something more is needed than musical competence and enthusiasm.

As nine struck the hour the band we had come to see obliged by getting onto the stage. They did so without the usual niceties of dry ice and light displays. Only the television screens on either side of the stage with their flickering images of the band’s name gave any sense of pomp and circumstance. In fact, going on appearances, STIGMATA could have been another support act. Compared to the Red Club this environment humbled them a little, yet perhaps provided them with a bit of authentic grit. They even seemed a tad unprepared, having to take time out to tune their instruments.

Their name promises Gothic theatricality, after all, but they are nothing much to look at. The lead vocalist Artyom Lotskikh could be the identikit Russian bloke: paunchy, bearded and pale-skinned. The two guitarists, Denis Kichenko and Taras Umansky, in caps and matching grey knee length shorts succeed in spicing up the visual aspect by favouring us with Saint Vitus dances as they play along.

Lotskikh is that rarest of animals: a lead singer who dislikes being the centre of attention to the point where he makes his way to the back of the stage after each song to recover himself. It is Umansky who takes on the task of laying on the much-needed interactive content with merry banter between songs and lobbing water bottles at the eager moshers at the front.

Another idiosyncrasy is their practice of playing at low volume recordings of their better-known songs just a second before going on to play the live one. As they grind their way through `Krilya` and `Lyod` and `Ostan Nadeshov` a svelte female photographer distracts us by crouching in the wings trying to get shots of with a long lens camera.

Quiet pioneers?

As much as STIGMATA get bracketed alongside their Metalcore counterparts in the States such as Killswitch Engage and Trivium, Lotskikh’s songwriting seems distinct in its Russianess, with a strain of folk about it. It could almost be as if they were forging, without hue-and-cry, their own subgenre of `Slavic power ballads` or something of the sort.

The set, at an hour and a half, was shorter than most. This gave me time to mull things over. Taken as a whole this had been a lackluster set by a nevertheless likeable group. Also, you can say this of their sound: it stays with you. The ringing guitars and soaring voice remained my companion during the long walk home.

Main image: UK: In Contact With.

A LEGEND FOR THE LOST.

On a street in Almaty there is a brass statue of Viktor Tsoi. Here’s why.

You stroll along the wide street called Abay Avenue which leads towards the Abay monument (dedicated to the poet, composer and reformer Abai Qunanbaiuly). You have a different poet and composer in mind, however, and just before you reach the gaping mouth of the Abay metro, you hang left and find yourself facing a large statue of a seated man and behind that an impressive fountain.

This is the entrance to the street which you take. The statue was of the composer Mukan Tulabaevich – the first Kazakh classical composer and author of the Kazakh national anthem. You, though, have another monument to another musician in mind and continue down the street You find yourself on a downward incline with trees on either side of you.

All of a sudden you are in the midst of some familiar verses as you are flanked by plaques all along the leafy pathway and these feature quotations from certain songs. You recognize some words from the legendary song Change.

Then you encounter the dark bronze statue. It has its back to you so you pass it and turn and find yourself facing an iconic tableau of a man in the centre of the path in the act of lighting a cigarette. Beneath him are the engraved word `Igla` – `The Needle`.

Soviet Cinema’s turning point.

From Kazakhfilm in 1988, The Needle was a film which kickstarted an all too brief trend of Kazakh New Wave cinema. Taking its cue from French New Wave films, this trend was willing to grapple with less than ideal social conditions (The Last Stop from 1989 about a soldier returning to his home town is another key example from this era).

For all its Avant-garde gestures The Needle brought in the punters, becoming the most watched film over the coming year. Furthermore, it made a superstar out of the leading man, who plays a character just known as Moreau. He is played by Viktor Tsoi, the lead singer and songwriter of the band Kino. Soviet Screen hailed this relative newcomer to the silver screen `the cinema actor of the year`.

Directed by the then 34-year-old Rashid Nugmanov, The Needle was shot in Alma Ata (then the capital of Kazakhstan, now known as Almaty and relegated to being `the capital of the South`) and took the St Petersburgian Tsoi to the land where his Korean father grew up. (There are many Koreans in the Central Asian states having resided in the Far East at the end of the Nineteenth Century).

One one level the film is a topical thriller. In it, an enigmatic stranger returns to his hometown to meet up with a past girlfriend and becomes embroiled in a feud with drug dealing gangs (this theme being something of a hot potato of the late Soviet period). Then again, the narrative uses the stylistics that are more common to modernist theatre than popular cinema. For example, Moreau’s girlfriend spends one sequence wearing a mask without explanation. In another scene, Moreau and some allies arrive to make a revenge attack on one of the drug dealers who is in a bath house. The men simple stand stock still on the edge of the pool and in this way some kind of violence is implied rather than depicted. Moreover, extended shots the parched wasteland of what was once the Aral Sea anchor the whole production in a dreamlike landscape.

Nor is The Needle just a showcase of Kino’s music. Sure enough, there is the presence of Kino’s mid-tempo interwoven guitar melodies here, but the songs do not dominate the tale. (Review of a Kino Album here)

The most famous song (written for the film) is `Blood type` which plays at the film’s denouement when Moreau stops to light a cigarette just before being knifed by one of his drug baron enemies.(This is the very scene recreated by the statue – which has been erected on the precise locale where it had been filmed some three decades earlier).

Eurasian superstar.

Viktor Robertovich Tsoi came into the world in June 21^st 1962 into a respectable family composed of an engineer father and P.E teacher mother. One crucial fact is that he spent his formative years in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). The proximity of this city to Finland made for a lot cultural interpenetration between it and Western Europe. Tsoi, somewhat set apart from his peers by his Asiatic appearance, came to idolize Bruce Lee. He was also enamored of the pop-rock scene of the Eighties in Britain and was familiar with such bands as Joy Division, The Smiths and Duran-Duran. He would flog his own hand-drawn reproductions of album covers to people in his circle.

Later under the moniker Garin and the Hyperboloids – a reference to a Spy-fi thriller by Alexei Tolstoy which was both filmed and serialized on Soviet television -became a part of the officially sanctioned Leningrad Rock Scene (a period of history examined in the film Summer – my review here).

We should be grateful for the Soviet policy which insisted that bands could not do covers of Western songs but had to write their own material – without this edict one feels that Tsoi and others of his ilk might well have remained cover bands.

Instead, throughout a twelve-year period, from 1978 to 1990 Tsoi, with a lean black-clad rock-hipster-cum-Kung fu fighter persona, put Russian rock on the map through his guitar, bass and piano playing and, of course, his portentous low register voice – but above all his zeitgeist laden lyrics. Kino would release some four hundred songs, many of them still sung by young buskers throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They played to a huge crowd as Luzhniki stadium in Moscow before Tsoi met his end in a car accident in Latvia in 1990.

In the meantime, a great deal of `Kinomania` had been generated. It is said that some fans took their own lives on hearing of the loss of their hero. In the longer term, conspiracy theories abound as to the exact nature of Tsoi’s death. There is also much lively debate about just what Tsoi would have made of the end of the Soviet Union, which he had got so close to but never got to see.

There is also a deep irony in the fact that some of Tsoi’s songs have been requisitioned by the Putin regime and turned into pro-war anthems sung by military choirs! (Needless to say, Tsoi was a draft dodger).

Metal Ghost.

In the presence of Nugmanov, the lead guitarist of Kino band Yuri Kaspyarin and (a real sign of the times) the Mayor of Almaty, the statue was unveiled on the thirtieth anniversary of The Needle’s release – June 21^st 2018. The sculptor – one Matvey Matushkin was born on the year that Tsoi embarked on his musical career.

Tsoi’s metal ghost continues to haunt this former country of the Soviet Union, forever lighting a cigarette in grim reflection….

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 26^thNovember 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.

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).

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

GHOST SHIP: premier hard rock exponents CHORNY OBELISK at Izvestia Hall last year were SO last year.

I thought it would be good to check out a new venue for a change. Izvestia Hall is located in the former building of the publishing and print plant of the first Soviet newspaper – Izvestia – no less.

The publishers of this, after six years since starting in 1918, needed a new headquarters for their flourishing concern. In 1924 architects were invited to compete for the honour of being the designer of such a new building. Urban planner Grigory Barkhin’s Constructivist number won the day and it began to be built a short time thereafter. Izvestia itself closed shop in 2011. The current building, now an all-purpose venue for all manner of social events, has been restored to something like its former Modernist glory by Ginsburg Architects headed by Alexey Ginsburg.

Such a renovated relic seems like fitting host for a band like CHORNY OBELISK. This act too has lost its original driving purpose: their charismatic lead singer and bassist, Anatoly Krupnov, died 25 years back at just 31, after forming the band in Moscow in 1986. The current assembly – a string and drum four piece combo lead by 54-year-old rock veteran Dmitry Borisenkov – represents a reboot undertaken in 1999 which continues to sail despite the loss of its captain, like some sort of ghost ship.

They are at least gifted with an evocative name – Black Obelisk (and extra points to them if this is a tribute to the German novelist Maria Remarque’s first novel) and overall have some thirteen studio albums in their name. Their main rivals on the same turf – Aria – are often called `the Russian Iron Maiden` and in the same way CHORNY OBELISK could be seen as (although it fails to do justice to the variety of their output) `the Russian Motorhead`.

Grand old men of Russian metal.[drive2.com]

This event was packaged as being a special 35-year anniversary. Just as, from this year Elizium’s and Lumen’s shows were anniversaries. (What does this tell us about the state of the contemporary Russian music scene?)

Mature set.

A crowd of about a thousand forty and fifty somethings filed in from a snow-bound Sunday on December 19^th last year to have their QR codes and vaccine status scrutinized. They seemed to be in groups of friends composed of husbands and wives and had not brought their children. I saw few people below their age except for one or two blue haired and dreadlocked students here to show their respects.

The entrance of the main attraction was drumrolled by a lit backstage legend announcing their 35^th year. Then a telescopic rifle sight seeking a target circled on the screen against a brick walled background. Bee Gees disco music played (I gather that this was some kind of established in-joke). The masses meanwhile chanted `Chor – ny Ob-El -isk!`

The band played onstage for around three hours and thrashed out quite a beef goulash of a sound for four people (albeit sometimes aided by pre-recorded keyboard additions). The fans, in high spirits, joined in with plenty of rhythmic clapping and `Hey-hey-hey`s.

Borisenkov, with a caul covering his bald pate, was a genial host but seemed more the musician than any kind of ring leading front man.

The bassist and backing vocalist, Daniil Zakharenkov – resembling a piratical Robbie Coltrane -tried to compensate by working hard to whip up a `rock and roll party` ambience by gurning at the audience and so on.

The axe wielder – and original band member – Mikhail Svetlov – by contrast seemed a little bored. After pointing to some individuals in the crowd with mock-familiarity, he lapsed into dead-eyed mode, looking like an economics lecturer worrying about the state of his car.

This being a birthday bash, some `unexpected` guests clambered onto the stage to help out. I recognised none of these stars but can tell you that one of them was a white-haired plump guy in all denim with a growly voice and another was a tall dark young man in some sort of uniform-like get up who resembled a sinister leader of some kind of neo-Nazi cult.

The band did showcase quite a spectrum of song styles. Of course, there was state-of-the-art Eighties style Metal but we also got some speed core punk as well as the inevitable sing-a-long ballads. They even dusted down some iconic golden oldies such as `Ya Ostanous` (`I will Stay`) from 1994. When the audience started getting showered by glitter bombs I decided to take my leave.

Tribute act.

It is hard not to feel that CHORNY OBELISK would have cut a more significant profile back in the mid-Eighties when Gorbachev had not been long in the Kremlin and they were offering something fresh and with a more characterful kingpin. They now appear to be going through the motions a bit even if they do still deliver some satisfying adrenaline friendly riffs.

I feel that Borisenkov’s standardized vocal contribution provides no substitute for Kuprinov’s Kilminster-like roar. Indeed, at times I felt myself wishing that I could switch off the singing the better to bask in the rock instrumentals.

All that said, in comparison with Aria, the Obelisks are the edgier and more authentic of the two bands.

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.

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.

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`.

2020: WHEN THE KISSING HAD TO STOP.

`Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel` – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.

In wishing you and the other guy that reads this All the Best for Etcetera, let us revisit some of the more promising signposts in sight and sound that were served up in these last leaden twelve months.

I opened last year with a write-up of the film Invasion and in this opined:what a roaring way to welcome in the Roaring Twenties!
Alas, it seems that we are not so much in the Roaring Twenties as the Rasping Twenties!

Aspects of this – the Zoom pandemic year – were presaged by the grim military fantasy Avanpost from 2019 with its quarantine zones, mass infections and blackouts but even more so by the television series Epidemia (from the same year) – starring The Sniffer’s Kirril Karo – which was serialised on Netflix with subtitles earlier this year.

There have been some small mercies. The Mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin only visited one Big Stop on us all (between late March and early July). There have been no more since then.

So – I never thought I’d say this -but a Big Thank You to Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin for not being a fanatic for Big Stops! He may have put an end to Gay Parades in Moscow, but he hasn’t put an end to the gay parade that is Moscow life itself.

The main casualty of Rasping Twenties so far has been the ability to join a crowd and see rock/pop artists perform in front of you in darkened halls. Even the venues for this are being decimated: Glav Green Club is limping along but Red Club is an empty property and Mumy Troll Music Bar is likewise hollowed out.

(The same is true for pivbars. Kamchatka – the street mecca of central Moscow – closed its doors forevermore last December in order to be replaced by yet another Adidas retail department. The Kruzhka chain is still around though).

I did however manage to turn up to see the theatrical cosmic rock act Sunwalter. They were playing alongside fellow nu-metal exponents like Blackthorn in an event styling itself Metal Against Corona at Live Stars on 2nd October – just before further restrictions would have made such an event impossible again.

The cinematic breakthrough of the year has to be Sputnik. Premiering online last April during the Big Stop, it made it into the cimemas in August and has been welcomed with a string of appreciative comments by Western European and North American cineasts.

Let us hope that its vaccine namesake Sputnik V proves to be every bit of a success!

(By the way, if you like scary Russian movies then join me on my Facebook page Russian Horror is Cool. This gets more hits than this here blog, which is damned annoying!)

Although I have yet to review it The Man From Podolsk must constitute the other significant film of this year. A Harold Pinteresque absurdist take on culture rifts in contemporary Russia, it reminds us that literate and awkward films can still make it in the current environment. It is the Zerograd (1989) of our time.

As for the popular novel, I was a latecomer to the Labyrinths of Echo series. This is not my genre and I will not be thumbing through the whole series, but fans of Fantasy should make the acquaintance of Max Frei. Apart from anything else, his sense of fun is so contrary to our times.

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GENERATION P: alone in uncovering significant cultural signposts from the Other Russia and subjecting them to the critical gaze of a Western European.

Do stay onboard for this quirky but important guided tour!

FOR MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND CO-OPERATION BETWEEN NATIONS IN 2O21!

I went to an Irish pub to watch an acoustic performer: what was I thinking of?