Indiecator: The Second Compilation Album

The portal known as "Indiecator" has just released their second sampler or web-based compilation in order to bring thirteen bands into the public view.  In doing so, in continues a long and important tradition from the West.  After all, the socialist music industry wasn't exactly operating according to the rules of today's market...

Compilation records or samplers appeared after WWII, initially in the area of folk music, and were designed to do for the music business what trailers did for cinema.  Contracts would be signed with artists allowing the labels to take one track from each new LP and use it for promo-purposes.  The resulting compilations were primarily meant for radio stations, but since they were produced for very little (the artists got nothing), labels soon realized they could make a pretty penny by delivering the discs to shops, too.

Who could refuse an offer like that?

Oh.

The second wave of significance for this format came a few decades later, with post-punk.  After punk had inspired young and men and women to sell their belongings and start pressing vinyl, the number of little labels around the UK and US became such that a once-centralized industry turned into widespread battlefields, populated by tiny soldiers.  Miniscule labels and little-known artists went head to head in the name of niche markets.  There were bigger prizes up for grabs, too: should the BBC give your single three minutes of airtime, you'd suddenly be heard by an entire nation.  

If singles were dedicated to one artist, and an EP (sometimes) to two, then a sampler could struggle for the attention of a style, an entire label - or a town, even.  It was a profoundly communal expression.  In planning the tracklists to maximize any chance of success and/or sales, one better-known band, more likely to capture public attention, could pull ten lesser-known ensembles behind it.

It has been said that the compilation album is a dead format today, together with albums per se, but surely in a time of even greater (if not excessive) choice, samplers can play the same vital role as aggregator sites.  To boot, a couple of the bands here are indeed/already a little better-known, and therefore are doing eleven other groups a big favor by sneaking them into IPods all across eleven time zones (where they'd otherwise not be found).  

Sample albums operate like teams of gatecrashers - who come bearing gifts.  Would you let this threesome into your kitchen?

The two purportedly more famous groups here are Moscow's Moi rakety vverkh (My Rockets Up), whose sound is redolent of various bands from Seattle, and Ukraine's funk-rockers I drug moi gruzovik (And My Friend Truck).  The Moscow ensemble is shown in the top two images.

The Ukrainian trio work under the overt influence of the Chili Peppers - and so, with no more than these ensembles operating as initial flagwavers, it's nice to see the CD's editors championing variety - both generically and geographically.  The two bands live approximately 500 miles apart.

For all their pleasant surprises, though, samplers have one major obstacle to surmount, over and above the universal issues of public attention: nobody asked to hear or own most of the songs beforehand.  Listeners can fall out of love with tracks very quickly - which will then be skipped over on subsequent occasions.  The songs that constitute compilation albums need to work faster than the audience's boredom threshold...  

And, as a result, this CD is full of a band's most trusted tool: the riff.

Poisk seti, also from the capital and shown here at a Moscow marketplace, need no more than one minute, forty-eight seconds to manipulate some uncomplicated, catchy guitarwork that sounds a lot like the legendary licks of the Undertones, way back in 1979.  There are worse places to borrow from than the pop pantheon of Northern Ireland.   

In essence Poisk seti have always aimed for that thin line between the raised stage and the levelled dancefloor, following the footsteps of their other European idols as they do so, like The Arctic Monkeys,Franz Ferdinand, and The Hives.  Unashamed pub-rock for the hairier half of the population.

Lest we be accused of moscowcentrism, however, some of the other, equally catchy riffs reach our ears from the furthest possible distance - from Vladivostok and two of the region's finest young groups: Mari! Mari! and Slaidy (The Slides).  As we can see, the CD is making admirable efforts to run not only the length of a north-south axis, but also to look as far as possible eastwards - all the way, in fact, to the shore of the Pacific Ocean.

Both of the Far Eastern tracks on offer here are a joy, once again in something of crowd-pleasing vein reminiscent of Oasis, Kula Shaker, The Vines, or Sigur Ros.  The bands frequently namecheck those influences. 

As this list grows, one final - and glaring - problem remains: that of generic constraints.  Despite our chosen adjective "independent" and the broad geographic sweep that this CD encompasses, its style - thus far - is very much a labor of love that's happy to stay within the framework of guitar-based, college- or pub-rock... with which the term "indie" is now synonymous, especially in the United States.  In that light, it's pleasing to see that the compilers of Indiecator leave the most atypical tracks for the album's intro and closing slots.

Given the CD's title, in other words, we'd expect skinny young men wielding oversized guitars.  And that, in fact, is what we get (thus staying on the right side of the Advertising Standards Commission).  Opening the release, however, is some female Ukrainian lounge, in particular from Pur:Pur (below).  That's surprise #1.  And then, as track #13 rolls around and we've been been royally treated to a dozen plectrums or pick-ups, there's another surprise.  

Synth-based IDM from the banks of the Volga...

The staff at Indiecator define their home site as a place "conceived and created for people with an interest in today's independent subculture, whatever the meaning of that adjective.  We believe that it's pointless limiting yourself with some form of [preexisting] restraint.  Each person decides for himself what 'indie' means."  In other words, if you're looking for lovable, laddish guitar riffs, they're here in abundant supply. There are also a few snapshots of melodic activity all the way from Ukraine to the Pacific.  And, last but not least, the CD both begins and ends in an unexpected fashion.  If you've been looking since the start of 2009 for a little help in mapping the decentered, limitless, and independent music of the "runet," this would be a good place to start.  

Fun from start to finish.