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Each summer, between late July and late August, the Kazantip festival becomes - arguably - the biggest dance-related event across all of Russia and Ukraine. Set on the sunny shores of the Crimea, Kazantip has long been an annual object of desire for more than 150,000 revellers. This year was no exception - in fact quite the opposite. Miserable market forces in the north inspired manque hoofers to rush seawards with even greater zeal than normal. Knowing the fond regard in which it is held by holiday-makers, Kazantip has for several years branded itself as a separate, independent state, in both senses of the word. The festival is constantly described in PR materials both as a unique, fenced-off region (tickets to the festival are called "viZas") and a special state of mind.
The official website makes this especially clear. When one enters the home page, three buttons are presented immediately to visitors. They are designated as "Past," "Present," and "Future." If one clicks on the former, nothing appears except a brief line of text, declaring that the past no longer exists. Likewise, a Flash-based game deeper into the site allows users to float weightlessly in a bubble-filled environment - all to the sound of some ambient, unpunctuated drone. Upon opening that audio-visual "state," we are reminded us that although we do not know what will happen in the future, "There Is Always Possibility."
Kazantip, therefore, is a place of endlessly unfolding potentialities, embodied in the heady, directionless movement of the dancefloor. These same rhythmic, endlessly remixed potentials have been unravelling in fundamentally the same location since the end of the USSR. They are maintained with the following kind of rhetoric: "Kazantip never really comes to an end. It merely pauses for a while [each 12 months]. All year long it continues circulating in our blood... and then, in the summertime, it bursts outward once more, in a crazy adrenaline rush!"
Kazantip never really comes to an end. It merely pauses for a while [each 12 months]. All year long it continues circulating in our blood... and then, in the summertime, it bursts outward once more, in a crazy adrenaline rush!
The man below on the far right certainly seems to have been taken by surprise.
The festival, despite its current grand scale and international renown, began both modestly and naturally. Initially, in the early 90s, music was used by holidaying windsurfers to mark the end of a day's sport. Little by little, the gatherings grew both in size and seriousness. A typical lineup for Kazantip nowadays will involve 300+ DJs on 14 dancefloors, all of whom will be cranking out the tunes for up to 21 hours a day. Apparently nobody needs more than 180 minutes of sleep. More important than rest is the state of blissful timelessness that, for official organizers, is embodied by the region's sandy beaches. After all, the area is home to more than just the festival and therefore associated by most people (especially those too old or stiff to dance) with happy family holidays. A quick image-search online, in fact, will probably produce more portly tourists than svelte ballerinas.
The following text in Russian, taking from the Kazantip website, is a good example of the event's worldview, revolving around an elusive, ineffable "something," a spirit of social and emotional maximalism. Once again, sand plays the role of a rarely-encountered, profoundly "non-northern" sensation, a feeling that's inexorably associated with a shared hedonism: "Do you recall where you left IT? Well, now you have found IT... you blew away the dust and underneath a familiar, smooth surface was waiting for you. It absorbs the sun. It absorbs the sea. It absorbs the wind, too. Can you feel it? Your eyes squint a little at the bright light of a new day and you hungrily breathe in the arid aroma of sea salt. Your ears sense the distance sounds of the Kazantip anthem and your legs move into sleepy action once more. Photos... the rustle of the wind... a sea breeze... smiles... and SAND. Time.... STOP!"
A moment of carefree suspension.
Sideways, even.
A series of albums have just been released to capture and perpetuate this moment a little longer, celebrating the 17th Kazantip festival, or - as it is already known - "Z17." One of these CDs is dedicated to the sets of Electrosoul System, behind which stands the figure of Andrei Burtaev (below). He is also the leading man behind Kosmos Music and the Steppin' Session agency in Moscow. Normally these projects operate from one central venue online, but for the moment Burtaev's output has to be chased across several indpendent sites. Normal service, we are promised, will soon be resumed.
That will be cause for much celebration.
Burtaev, whose reputation rests mainly on his achievements in the field of D&B, began his professional activities approximately ten years ago, when his elder brother introduced him to the wonders of musical software. This coincided with a youthful passion for breakbeat and happy hardcore, colored by an early, yet enduring respect for the 1995 "Timeless" CD from London's Goldie. By the time these enthusiasms had coalesced into the first outings by Electrosoul System, Burtaev was confident enough to declare that Moscow was witnessing "the birth of a new musical underground." Different styles were slowly introduced into his sets and CDs: downtempo, trip-hop, acid-jazz, deep house, "and so on." The new Z17 recording from Burtaev investigates just as many directions, perhaps most noticeably in the middle of the mix where he suddenly starts sampling heavily from Cocoa Tea's Jamaican dancehall classic, "18 and Over."
Over the last five years, Burtaev has focused his energies on studio production work and constant touring with Steppin' Session events, not only around Russia, but also overseas. Likewise, his tracks and mixes have been published through labels in England, Germany, Holland, and the US. He has also enjoyed DJ-ing stints on Relax FM and Megapolis FM, both stations being designed to test the edges of a primetime aesthetic with slightly more adventurous playlists. Fleeting from project to project, Burtaev maintains that it's musically and philosophically healthy to remain far from the grasp of anything stable, long-term, or comfortably prestigious. "Major labels, snowballing popularity, big money... these have never been Andrei's main stimulus. Instead he just keeps giving his time and effort to the composition of futuristic idm or atmospheric D&B."
Major labels, snowballing popularity, big money... these have never been Andrei's main stimulus. Instead he just keeps giving his time and effort to the composition of futuristic idm or atmospheric D&B.
The degrees of effort involved in hunting down good music can take their toll on sartorial common sense. The better the tracks, the worse the hat.
Nowadays, even though Burtaev has also managed (somehow!) to simultaneously graduate from law school, he gives his time wholly to the world of music. "Things have reached the point," he says, "where I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life. Earlier on, I wasn't entirely sure. It's fair to say that there's basically no hope of making big money through music. But, on the other hand, you don't always need large amounts of cash! At the moment I've got all I need. What'll happen in the future, I simply don't know. Currently I am happy with the ways things are."
This kind of jolly presentism is a virtual paraphrase of the Kazantip PR materials: a refusal to regret the past or fear the future, all in the name of the here and now.
This same isolation of the present moment is something that feeds into Burtaev's preference for working alone, too, one-on-one with the process of musical composition. "It's not often that I write tracks together with another person. I prefer to experiment on my own. It's not a matter of being somehow unable to sit down with somebody else behind a monitor and doing something decent. The thing is, that if I've managed to turn out something cool but half-finished, I'd rather see it through to the end under my own steam. Why send something half-assed out to another person for them to sort out?"
In the same spirit of lonely, though passionate effort, Burtaev makes use of several Soviet symbols, most often connected with the USSR space program, which - given the name of his Kosmos label - is a logical choice. Burtaev is especially fond of Moscow's Monument to the Conquerors of Space, the dramatic upward sweep of which represents the physical thrust of a rocket through the Earth's atmosphere, out into weightlessness. This, too, is a suitable, if not touching echo of all that Kazantip represents. Instead of viewing that same "upwards" labor through the prism of social progress and/or pragmatic benefit, however, Burtaev has crowned his own version of the monument with a rubber duck (below).
Years and years of work, all around Russia and further still, have been made in the name of modest, almost silly pleasures. Each year, on southern sun-grilled beaches, 150,000 people thank him for the chance to freeze a single moment of pleasure and dismiss all thoughts of distant, dreary actuality. In closing, it's worth quoting the Kazantip organizers one last time: "If you try and get to grips with the concept of time, you'll find that the line between the Present and the Future is so delicate and slippery as to be virtually elusive. Scholars try to comprehend this line; they dream of moving back and forth in time, breaking down the world into atoms as they do so. 'Psychonauts' will try to step over the same line by dissolving the world with the help of chemical substances. Wise men believe that there is no such thing as time. They hold that one can learn to exist in absolutely any dimension. It all depends on the strength of your imagination. Anything's possible."
If we take another quick look at the t-shirt logo below, we'll notice that Burtaev also includes the Latin phrase "Through Difficulties to the Stars." This slogan was used by early Apollo missions, not the Soviet space program. Consequently, the scope of Kazantip's philosophical "possibility" moves beyond the confines of anything specifically local or national, even, and becomes a reworking of the hopeful Soviet "Friendship of Peoples" that colored socialist rhetoric after Stalin's death.
Burtaev's version of diplomacy? Rubber ducks, a warm bath, and sunshine. A much happier alternative to nuclear hardware.
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