re-up'd: Аквариум - Акустика [1982]

Here's an album I've really been digging lately. Russian folk from the last decade of the Soviet Union. Aquarium (alternately known as Akvarium) was formed in 1972 by Boris Grebenshchikov and Anatoly Gunitsky. The band spent the first decade or so of its life doing mostly apartment concerts -- house shows with high political stakes in a country where "rock and roll" needed explicit state approval to play in the official concert halls. Aquarium is much more of a folk band though, in the style of бард "bard" music, which had since the 1960s referred to original music (one name for the genre is самодеятельная песня, literally "do-it-yourself song") by musicians who worked outside the Soviet musical/cultural system. From Wikpedia:

The first six years of Aquarium's history lacked cohesion as Grebenshchikov and his various bandmates followed the Soviet equivalent of the hippie lifestyle: playing apartment jams, drinking the low-quality port wine available from the Soviet stores of the time, and intermittently travelling to remote gigs, even hitchhiking on rail freight cars.

The album Akustika was made at the start of the '80s, just before the state music industry started allowing this kind of stuff to be more widely disseminated. It contains a dozen-plus real pretty folk numbers, mostly on acoustic guitar plus bass, violin, and the occasional flute. In contrast to a lot of the kitchen-recorded stuff by Yanka Dyagileva or Grazhdanskaya Oborna, this album is fairly high-fidelity (and a lot less noisy than GrOb), thanks to Grebenshchikov's access to academic recording facilities. The songs clearly demonstrate the influence of Bob Dylan on Grebenschikov, and Allmusic associates Aquarium with the likes of Neil Young, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, as well as Dylan of course. By the second half of the decade Aquarium were selling millions of records, which speaks to the popularity they garnered in their first 15 years of existence.

Boris G. is a huge name in Russian music, and when you hear his voice and songs it's not hard to understand why. Check out this video of Aquarium in what looks like a TV performance from 1986:

I should mention that I was turned onto this stuff by fellow St. Petersburghers Sonic Death (a band I can't recommend enough), who did a few Grebenschikov songs on their Boris Session EP, released in the summer. Needless to say the material is good and their take on it makes for some righteous jams.

Buy Akustika on CD at UkrMedia
My house is already not my home

Vice Versa - Rehearsal Tapes [2012]

 

If the blues stylings of the Chaw were a little too polished for your primitive ass, give these Russian mudslingers a listen. Instantly bringing to mind heavy Japanese sounds à la Blues Creation, High Rise/Mainliner, Leningrad Psychedelic Blues Machine, or American heads like Purling Hiss or an old Black Keys album mixed under the influence of cough syrup, Moscow's Vice Versa play the kind of feedback-drenched rock and roll that I should by all rights be sick of already, for all its simple premises. But bands like this keep dragging me back in. There are some really fine moments on this demo; at some points, like on the 10+ minute 'Stranger,' the racket reaches the stratosphere where you'd expect to find Les Rallizes Dénudés. During the less noisy passages Vice Versa sort of resemble the somberness of St. Petersburg's Sonic Death, but without the acoustic instruments. Highly recommended, especially if you're into the stuff mentioned.

This was released earlier this month and you can download it for free on bandcamp.

Sonic Death - Gothic Session EP [2012]

For those of you who dug the recent Wavepool Abortion post, here's some more '60s-indebted fucked-up rock and roll from a Russian two-piece. Compared to that band, though, Sonic Death have a darker, more folkish sound. Perhaps you could say Sonic Death are the Stooges (I'm thinking 'Gimme Danger') to Wavepool Abortion's Beatles -- or perhaps neither of those bands resemble these. In any case, the vocal harmonies and acoustic chord changes make some great tunes with that world-weary resignation that Russian bands are so good at communicating. The Gothic Session EP came out five months ago, and has been pretty frequent in my rotation since I heard it around that time.

According to the fellows at Aphonia Recordings, this is what the band had to say about making this record:

After a little break we started work on a new session. Seven fresh songs were recorded on a Tascam cassette Portastudio, sitting in the already known bathroom. At this time we used a clean slightly reverbed guitar sound, the drum section was shaded with maracas. The sound is soft, psychedelic vibrating, like The Cannanes meet Vivian Girls on The Seeds cover party. The lyrics are all about dark love emotions and solitude. All of this has been called GOTHIC SESSION. The first track with the western spirit and refrain “I take off all of me/ You will not get pleasure” is entitled ‘Pleasure’ and is like a roll call with Stones ‘Satisfaction’. The second called ‘Now (Son Of A Bitch)’ and has at the end the converted quotation from Misfits “I am goddamn son of a bitch/ you better think about it baby”. Third song named ‘Marzipan’, and has a sample from an amateur slap porn video, whose plot is about pining for the attention from a girlfriend. The fourth acoustic-postpunk song ‘Streets’ laments the loneliness in the city. Fifth ‘To Me’ is classic garage-y amateur guitar rock. The sixth track ‘Huuuh-uuh-uuuh’ is an acoustic ballad for two voices. The last one ‘Floor’ is a confluence of The Jesus and the Mary Chain with Buddy Holly and back again. On the cover, we photographed against a background of the crucifix as Bible sellers in East European chic.

Gothic Session is available at Sonic Death's bandcamp for a mere $5 of your mortal money. They also have a self-titled release for $0, and while they're both good, Gothic Session is the better set.

Wavepool Abortion - ЖЕРТВА АБОРТА [2011]

Don't remember how I came across these guys, but the songs have been more or less stuck in my head since I first heard them. According to their bandcamp page, Wavepool Abortion (charming name, right?) are from Moscow, and they churn out blissful pop tunes that swirl 'round and 'round the toilet bowl until being ultimately flushed into punk oblivion. As the toilet metaphor might suggest, the fi is pretty shit on this tape, but not in a 'oh they're just playing an aesthetic for the sake of itself' sort of way. I don't know why I feel the need to defend the lo-fi-ness of everything I post matching that description -- this shit is streaming below so my scribblings on the matter are entirely unnecessary.

Originally released by DZ Tapes on cassette in a batch of 100, I don't know how many (if any) are left, but you can order one from the link below. Or just download for the wonderful price of 'whatever you want.'

Order ЖЕРТВА АБОРТА at DZ Tapes
More insanity available at DZ Tapes

Grazhdanskaya Oborona - Svet & Stulja [1988-1989]

This is a band I have hinted at on this blog a couple of times, so I figured I had better post something from them. Гражданская Оборона (English: 'civil defense,' or abbreviated GrOb 'coffin') is the most famous and probably the most influential of the 1980s Soviet punk bands. The only constant member was Egor Letov, who was active right up to his death in 2008 (many of his friends, bandmates, etc. ended up committing suicide in the '80s and '90s). I don't speak Russian, but the songs seem to be about anarchism, running from the KGB (they had Letov committed to a mental institution in the mid-'80s), totalitarianism, depression, feelings of powerlessness, and all that kind of stuff you'd expect to hear from a punk band from a country with an overtly repressive government.  Musically, it's lo-fi punk (most GrOb recordings were recorded to tape on boomboxes in various apartments and kitchens) with chord changes and melodies characteristic of Russian folk music. Letov has an extremely expressive singing voice, and, like a good deal of other Russian punk musics, he communicates a desperate pathos commensurate with the fucked-up conditions in which he lived. Complete and total outsider music.

Egor was seriously prolific in his lifetime, with most of his earlier work coming in the form of homemade tapes traded among the Russian punks. My own collection of his stuff doesn't even scratch the surface, but this is a  double album of two live performances (which, you must understand, were risky and infrequent events) from 1988 and 1989 in Novosibirsk and Moscow, respectively. It's as good an introduction to GrOb as any, and the songs are all great. If none of this intrigues you, I have no idea what would. I'll finish by saying this band is one of the inspirations behind Pink Reason, who I recently posted. Here is a WFMU show on which Kevin Failure of PR plays GrOb and a bunch of other great Soviet underground bands, and shares some knowledge. The Russian sites linked below are pretty readable using Google Translate, so have at it.

GrOb official site (Russian)
GrOb fansite (Russian)
Polish blog with more GrOb albums
Everything is going according to plan

Гражданская Оборона

Been away from this space for a while, and am about to leave the country. When I get settled in posts shall continue. Til then, enjoy some pitch-perfect Russian punk from the end of the Cold War: