Russia's branch of the Red Bull Music Academy has just just chosen ten young musicians to join its "Bass Camp" in Sochi. We take a look at some of the newer names, especially among the house and juke exponents.
For all the musical inspiration that Russian rap takes from a US heritage, things are very different when it comes to lyrics. We offer three examples of new recordings from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Some tech-house and dubstep recordings, released simultaneously in Kiev, Murmansk, and Tallinn, all give voice to an escapist aesthetic. They speak, however, with varying degrees of confidence.
Grusha (i.e., "Pear") Music is a Moscow house/post-disco enterprise involving various aspects of the capital's mainstream club scene. As a result, Grusha is an accurate barometer of changing fashions - and business life.
These artists come from very different locations: Moscow, Chelyabinsk, and rural Lithuania. What they have in common is both a shared interest in post-dubstep or hip-hop textures and a penchant for nostalgia. Over and over...
Continuing our investigation of Highway Records, we look at four of the label's other projects. These Russian musicians have spatial and stylistic connections that do much to advocate Highway's credo of "decentralization."
Here we focus upon new recordings from three cities: Samara, Barnaul, and Syktyvkar. All of those locations might suffer from assumptions of "provinciality," yet one needs to consider the style(s) in question. Some actually benefit from great distance...
New instrumental hip-hop from St Petersburg, Saratov, and Minsk offers a range of comforts - in the face of daily woes. Both political and physical failings are corrected with ease
Moa Pillar has just released a remix of equally new material from Modul. His reasons for doing so form an interesting parallel with other beatmakers this month - both from Russia and Latvia
These two outfits have nothing in common, musically speaking. Nonetheless, their new mixes say a great deal about the relationship between maximalism and somehow making songs "better"
