The techno label Pro-Tez appears on this site with relative frequency, since their roster makes a clear and enduring distinction between issues of quantity and quality. As we noted back in 2008, "Pro-Tez operates between Moscow and Los Angeles. That’s the pedestrian description. The more elab...
Nick Tremo is the stage name of a fundamentally anonymous musician/DJ from the ancient Ukrainian town of Uzhgorod. He has been responsible for a couple of releases this year, both offered through the net label/aggregator Qulture. More specifically, in mid March a one-hour, fifteen track instrument...
(The) Maneken is an increasingly important figure in Ukraine's house scene - and, as a result, we've cast an inquisitive eye in his general direction on more than one occasion. Not only does the solo work of this performer, aka Evgenii/Zhenia Filatov - stand out as extraordinarily well-produced cr...
The music in this post, for all its modern wizardry, comes from one of the oldest towns known to Slavic culture: Uzhgorod in Western Ukraine, near the border with both Slovakia and Hungary. Uzhgorod dates at least to the ninth century, when the creation of a castle allowed safe and settled growth...
It bears mentioning at the outset of this article that the Moscow jazz musicians under consideration here have nothing to do with this man. With all possible confusion now out of the way, we can say with confidence that the members of Venger Collective do have a lot to do with the following indi...
The summer of 2009 saw the appearance of a new name on Russia's R&B/pop horizon: Ika, shown above in a fairly unflustered state. Thanks to a concerted effort by Moscow's Gala Records, the hit "Hold My Hand" (Derzhi menia za ruku) was heard from coast to sunny coast on radios, iPods, and lapt...
At the risk of stating the obvious, this Moscow duo takes its name from the long-running Hanna/Barbera cartoon series that first aired in 1940. Those world-famous shorts centered on the relationship between a cat (Tom) and mouse (Jerry) who coexist in a state of constant tension; each and every...
The Moscow ensemble Jasny-Svetly (i.e., Iasnyi-Svetlyi) take their name from a couple of Russian adjectives that, one might argue, evoke a folkloric air of brilliant clarity. Literally these two terms mean "bright" and "radiant." In the modern context of the web and the band's website, that bril...
The Stephen Frears film of 2000, "Hi Fidelity" has something of a cult status among music lovers. Based on the novel by Nick Hornby and transposed from London to Chicago, it follows the rather unhealthy passions of three record collectors in their mid-20s. One distinguishing factor of these youn...
D-Pulse categorize themselves as a "house-quartet, originally from Izhevsk." The reason for making such an observation is that the town of Izhevsk, located in Central Russia, is often associated with grim industrial electronica in the minds of many young Russians. Older music fans will remark t...
