Elefant: Big Troubles with Small Sounds

The ensemble known as Elefant make claim to rare territory on the Russian scene; classically trained musicians, they perform witty instrumentals on the cusp of jazz and chamber music.  They remain woefully overlooked by today's media, even if their style and volume-levels aren't exactly designed to fill football stadiums.  Maybe they could start with an impromptu concert in the changing room and experiment with speakers as they go.

This unassuming, modest group of performers has been in existence now for five years, thanks to the initial efforts of Konstantin Khasin (guitar) and Mikhail Anton (viola).  They were subsequently joined by Aleksandr Ovechkin on guitar and - intriguingly - vocalist Galina Denisova.  Her contribution was especially interesting: given the ensemble's Indian name, Denisova added a very culturally specific nuance, in that she had spent several years studying South Asian mantras.

These academic passions - and performance skills - are put to good use in the nine-minute number entitled, fittingly enough, "Mantra."

Eventually the quartet would be supplemented by cellist Taisiia Bykova and percussionist Il'ia Chistiakov.  We list these names because as each member signed up for active duty, Elefant's cultural purview would shift, moving further and further from a traditional, conservatory context...  Chistiakov is perhaps best known for his involvement with the Russian/Congolese project Kimbata.

That offshoot band, something of a staple on the Moscow circuit, plays not only traditional material from Central Africa, but a far amount of reggae and ska, too.  Examples of their work - on stage - can be seen here.

This happy muddle of styles - across three continents - leads Elefant to declare that "any attempts to define our music are bound to fail.  It has been called neoclassical, avant-pop, even psychedelic chamber-rock!  That's nothing more than the terminology of multiple music critics, though.  We don't have any one style, or - more accurately - we do have a style all of our own... It's an elephant-style!"

A definition like that might lead an unsuspecting audience to anticipate bananas or circuses: on that score, they'd be sorely disappointed.  As, indeed, would a circus-going public be if a slender violinist understudied for an eight-ton pachyderm.

Elefant's own vision of the big top, shunning generic expectations of jugglers or trapeze artists, sounds like the above number: once again ignoring the element of surprise, it's called.... "Circus."  In proud self-celebration, in contains no lion tamers or dancing seals.  Instead there are lots of violins and, at the track's conclusion, the apparent sounds of the Fat Lady.

Only then do we know it's over.

A slightly more systematic effort at pigeonholing the ensemble reads as follows, although it, too, falls back on the same "inapplicable" adjectives within a couple of sentences.

"The band's style is hard to define - it could be called anything from acoustic avant-prog to neoclassical.  Elements of minimalism in these compositions become complex musical narratives as their scale or rhythm metamorphose, eventually concluding with gorgeous melodies or some kind of psychedelic chamber-rock structures!  Elefant are known both for their high cultural standards and for individual mastery.  There's a blend of passion and artistry here, leading to music that's both beautiful and insightful."

It's certainly not rock 'n' roll: the nearest we get to a stage dive or similar drama is a slight lean to the side.

Given the essentially instrumental nature of the band, any more attempts to drag clarity from a dictionary would indeed appear to be fruitless.  Even the elephantine images chosen by the band - and shown here - show no sense of graphic continuity.  Let's start, therefore, on a more modest scale: what about their name and the choice of a huge elephant to describe small-scale musical filigree?

Their justification bears quoting:  "Sigmund Freud associated conscious thought with a monkey, and unconscious thoughts with an elephant.  The monkey rides atop the elephant, thinking that he's directing its movement.  The elephant, however, walks wherever it pleases; only he knows the direction both animals will take."

Sigmund Freud associated conscious thought with a monkey, and unconscious thoughts with an elephant. The monkey rides atop the elephant, thinking that he's directing its movement. The elephant, however, walks wherever it pleases; only he knows the direction both animals will take.

"When it comes to defining our music, music critics are destined to play the role of that monkey.  Our elephant, so strange and exotic for this part of the world, moves in a calm, unruffled manner along its leisurely musical path."

As indeed it should.  These realizations that Elefant are a special group of performers should dissuade us from forcing them into traditional rubrics - even though we have to do so in order to tag and publish this post!  Out in the big, wide world of Russian music, any marketing or PR ploys to "sex up" the band, to pass them off as something alien, will likely come to naught.

One such attempt to "redefine" an elephant can be seen below; it, too, has struggled somewhat.