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It would be reasonable to say that Sochi is Russia's most famous summer resort. Made popular by Stalin and his own holiday preferences, the town was recently given a major boost when it won the right to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. This victory came hand in hand with then-President Putin's own desire to spend increasing amounts of free time in the region.
As a result, the city has become very modish. It's certainly able to absorb these new investments of outside money, time, and stately energy. At almost 90km in length along the shores of the Black Sea, it is - allegedly - the longest city in the world.
In any case, prices in the area are going up, which is - on occasion - making it impossible for local people to vacation in Sochi. There have always been opportunities for the financially challenged to stay in Abkhazia, Ukraine, or Turkey for a similar climate, but now Sochi itself is starting to move away from its own environment. It's standing out with increasing clarity as a singular venue of local wealth. A lot of this region - the Krasnodar district - suffers from woefully underdeveloped agriculture and high unemployment.
Not far beyond Sochi's limits, the picture is pretty sad.
These social disparities have an influence on music. Sochi, not surprisingly, has a well-developed club scene, but the glamorous aura of presidential attention brings with it a moneyed clientele - and more expensive forms of entertainment. Face control, too.
Cheaper, consoling. and collaborative forms of entertainment are required. Drum&bass is a good example of the kind of style that's both popular in the Krasnodar region - and feels itself to be a very long way from all things glitzy.
D&B, as a style that grew from the the UK of the late 1980s, was always democratically open to a myriad of influences. Starting initially with a debt to breakbeat and rave, it began to adopt deeper, growling sounds that appealed to Britain's reggae communities - despite all 12-inches being played infinitely faster than any self-respecting dub.
Sonic effects, syncopation, and funkier breaks all helped to bolster this new sound. It was felt physically rather than heard, being so deep and bassy that sound waves could be sensed across one's chest. This was - and remains - a very visceral style; it's a fundamentally material reaction to the world.
D&B forums in and around Sochi document southerners' first encounter with the style in other cities, most commonly in St Petersburg. The wordless, crushing thump of much D&B is nowadays appreciated by those local fans as a musical state, rather than the ongoing enjoyment of anything linear, such as a story or traditional song-structure. They're "in" the music, as they'd be "in" an event - or in love, even: "I fell in love with D&B at a party this winter. I really didn't want to go at all. Then, at the very last minute, my mood changed and the inevitable happened...!"
I fell in love with D&B at a party this winter. I really didn't want to go at all. Then, at the very last minute, my mood changed and the inevitable happened...!
Dancefloor epiphany.
A couple of weeks ago, one of Sochi's biggest online publications dedciated to D&B celebrated its second birthday. "The sounds coming out a club have always attracted us, like the smell of fresh bread from a bakery! Balloons everywhere created a real festival atmosphere; after a glass or two, everybody felt like joining in. The D&B music, flowing freely both around and inside us, weaved its own special magic."
It's a physically sensed transformation that, with crushing basslines, crowds out the surrounding world.
The sense of being "in" D&B - of an alternative, tangible event - is very important if we take a look at some studies of the genre that have been conducted in the UK this year. Here the authors note that several social states are being reconsidered amid working-class fans of the genre - in ways that are both useful and promising.
First of all, since D&B grew out of a competition with the bassier elements of dub, it's often linked to drives for a "darker," angrier aesthetic. This, in turn, creates gender-specific tendencies: D&B is traditionally perceived, at least from the standpoint of DJ-ing, as a male style. The same assumption makes it popular among young, sidelined Russian men in an uneven economy.
The second benefit of D&B is that due to the expense - and unavailability! - of dub plates on a distant Black Sea dancefloor, the snobbery over using 12" cuts alone has lessened, making CDs and mp3s a more common sight in mixing.
That's a technique that most people can afford. It allows for a broader form of self-expression in the cheaper nightclubs of the Black Sea; it permits a process of "collaboration, circulation, or production" to begin. To quote in closing the British study above, it engenders a process of "fragile empowerment."
For that happy reason, we offer three tracks by Sochi D&B outfit, the CMOS Killers. If they leave our readers with a similar sense of well-being, much more can be downloaded here; the band members - just as our dancers who feel the bass across their bodies - promise "an interaction of the bass with your brain marrow."
You might want to sit down first.
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