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This month a wonderfully unexpected EP has appeared from Evgeny Grinko (aka Evgenii Grin'ko) entitled "Cinematic Melodies." The artist is question is well known to us as the drummer of several ensembles. He may be most familiar to Moscow audiences as the driving force behind math-rock/free-jazz wizards Wogulow Taroutz Vermo, whose praises have been sung by this site in the past. Over above the droning, thunderous chaos of that band, though, he also plays for outfits such as Monroe's Pills (of whom we are also fans) and - more locally - the trio Describe from Grin'ko's hometown of Zhukovskii. This new EP was also very much a domestic product, being "composed, performed, recorded, mixed and mastered" in that same location.
Somewhere in one of those buildings is a piano.
Why the constant emphasis on the creative home of this music? Zhukovskii lies just beyond the city limits of Moscow, as the image above shows so effectively. It's a place where the concrete stops - and the mud begins. The entire history of the town seems a struggle against some lumpen aspect of existence, embodied today by those ubiquitous clods of sticky earth. Zhukovskii arose only with the development of Russia's railway system at the very start of the 20th century, suggesting that the existing road system was less than satisfactory.
Actually getting the railway to work, however, was very problematic, since WII and the Revolution both left a great deal of damage. Hospitals were being constructed faster and more often than train platforms. Everything being was designed and constructed purely in order to deal with everything else that was falling down.
Almost as an attempt to tear itself away from these leaden, burdened origins with even greater zeal, the town subsequently flourished under Stalin as a center of aeronautic design. That tradition has continued to this day, with President Putin signing a decree last last year to kick-start the development of a National Center for Aircraft Construction. In a word, therefore, Zhukovskii is a place both at the periphery of a stable urban center, yet in the minds of the public, it is also associated with the wonders of flight - of escape from dead weight altogether. Zhukovskii symbolizes the possibility of rapid, swift departure and new trajectories - which is more than fitting for a place whose name evokes a 19th-century romantic poet.
These same insistent movements towards novelty or extreme experimentation are the trademark of Grin'ko's work. Wogulow Taroutz Vermo, themselves closely tied to the equally challenging and wonderful I Am Above On the Left, mark a high point in Russian experimental rock, giving voice to the interplay of construction and collapse that we see around the fields of Zhukovskii. Somewhere between lengthy, free-form jamming, arcane time signatures, and brief moments of some insistent, Neanderthal thump, the sonic emphases of Grin'ko's various projects seek a middle ground that can somehow handle both structure and epic disorder.
It is, however, precisely this "tradition" or expectation of messiness/feedback that makes the new EP both so surprising and the start, perhaps, of another swift and surprising trajectory. The discographies of Grin'ko's other projects would hardly find a suitable place in any "pop" rubric, yet here we have seven brief and often beautiful instrumentals, lasting a mere 15 minutes, which his netlabel - RAIG - describes quite fittingly as music colored by "a certain cinematic tone or feeling. These tracks are a crossover between minimalist piano-solos and post-jazz compositions. Beautiful!" That final adjective would also be very much out of place in any discussion of Wogulow.
Grin'ko traces the logic of this volte face back to an equally unexpected change of direction during a previous project: "I once did an arrangement of Joy Division's song 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' for a military brass band. I changed the original a little....[!] By the time I was finished, it sounded like something between ska and an upbeat march! We performed it at a street festival - it was just great! I've been dreaming of my own street orchestra ever since…"
I once did an arrangement of Joy Division's song 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' for a military brass band. I changed the original a little....[!] By the time I was finished, it sounded like something between ska and an upbeat march! We performed it at a street festival - it was just great! I've been dreaming of my own street orchestra ever since…
The reclusive dreaming continues, 24/7. Night-lights burn and bedsheets become curtains.
This EP, we are led to believe, is the embodiment of that reverie. Cinematic elements run through the instrumentals, most clearly in the opening track - titled "Woody Allen" - and a number dedicated to Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Poirot, long the hero of screens both silver and small. The quiet, lightly syncopated air that hangs over most of these appealing tracks might lead one to expect that Grin'ko was taking a break from the dark aesthetic of his "usual" music and musing instead about movies...
...but another surprise is in store. Even Allen's name, synonymous with self-deprecating humor, might prompt a doubt or two with regards to the confidence of Grin'ko's cinematic romanticism. And indeed that doubt easily turns into a more substantial impression of dolor as time continues. The jazzier numbers sound less like the happy improvisation of a ragtime knockabout or the elegance of a cocktail lounge ensemble than the street musicians to which Grin'ko refers. Not an entire orchestra, but simply an upright piano and a browbeaten organ-grinder. And, in any case, what kind of orchestra would want to play in the street?
Our musician's chosen reference point for this EP yet again places a romantic yearning (the orchestra) side by side with the dead weight of ostensible existence (the grubby street).
And what's that large white object lying halfway down the embankment? A fallen pianist, perhaps?
In a sense, therefore, the aesthetic flip-flop that Grin'ko has apparently effected is, in reality, not a million miles from the despondency that's synonymous with most of his other works. His artwork gives an indication of that dour worldview even before the CD is out of the box (or the 'Play' button has been hit on the iPod). As we see below, a spiral is scribed over and over as an expression of some extreme effort - and little progress. Lots of dreaming... but not much gets done. A once-sharp pencil has clearly been dulled by extensive, obsessive dreams that might morph into unhealthy drives.
The beautiful poignancy of some of the tracks, therefore, crumbles by the end of the recording. The final track is called "Morning in Pripyat." That final noun is the name of a Ukrainian town that once housed the Chernobyl power station - and therefore bore the full blow of a nuclear meltdown in 1986. The morning sun of Grin'ko's title came up... and the lights went out forever. This music, it transpires, is not just just the soundtrack to the life of a lonely street musician; it has just much application to the fate of a entire social project.
How fitting that these sounds come from a place where social yearning, lyrical romanticism, and aircraft never quite get off the ground.
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