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The picture above was taken with a Soviet Chaika ("Seagull") camera, produced during Brezhnev's term in office, yet still capable of refashioning the past in warm, fuzzy tones. For that reason, it enjoys popularity with amateurs even today: the camera's clunky, metallic casing houses a unique ability to create very soft images. The nostalgic, sentimental photo above was taken with a Chaika by Vitalli Stodolya, to whom we introduced readers last March.
Stodolya works as the guiding light behind Eventual Groove. His house/post-disco project first came to our attention for geographic and musical reasons - simultaneously. In other words, Mr. Stodolya's story began, once upon a time, in the small, distant, and very unfashionable town of Novovoronezh. Home to maybe forty thousand people in southern Russia, the location only grew to its current dimensions in the late 1950s.
Those few facts would suggest that Soviet industry played a swift and decisive role, and indeed Novovoronezh is where we'll find an enormous nuclear power plant - no doubt because of its distance from major centers of population. Establishing a dancefloor project here would not be easy. And yet, despite it all, we discovered the stubborn and impressive talents of Mr. Stodolya. Hard work had achieved a great deal. Keen to draw upon local metaphors of strength and endurance, he still refers to Novovoronezh - because of the nearby power station - as "the town that turns the lights on."
Faintly.
The appeal of electricity as a way to overcome geography began at an early stage. At the age of ten, Stodolya was already dispatched to music school, where power and harmony would begin informing one another: he discovered electric instruments. More importantly, a couple of years later the Soviet Union came to an unattractive end - and new forms of battery-driven music also appeared on the marketplace. As we see above, his enthusiasm continues, captured once more with the unwieldy, yet fondly remembered cameras of yesteryear. The present is quite literally seen through a prism of the past.
The early tools that spawned his musical, rather than visual tastes included a Korg Poly 800, which due to its affordability also inspired a wave of amateur performance in the West during the 1990s. In this particular instance, Stodolya acquired his instrument through personal connections in the Baltic. The synthesizer was soon joined by a Vermona drum machine, a model both designed and built in East Germany. With a couple of tape recorders, Stodolya finally got to work.
By the late '90s he was manipulating those sounds on an early PC and another quantum leap forward occurred. Only in 2005, though, did Eventual Groove come into being. The project is now part and parcel of St Petersburg's Konura Recordings. A grander location has led to a wider range of influences.
Konura proclaims itself home to compositions from the overlapping fields of techno, house, nu-jazz, broken beats and soul, to mention but five. That range has now been extended further still with a new release, "Lesis." Published through Miami's Grouper Recordings, it draws - yet again - upon the charm and allure of prior styles. The folks at Grouper are themselves keen to speak of a "classy, loungy, and jazzy vibe." The Latino connection implied by a Florida address is indeed important, since "Lesis" comes with remixes not only from Northern England (via Roland Nights), but also from Colombia (Andrew Chibale) and Spain (Mauro B).
The warm, antique sound of Stodolya's toolbox clearly has broad appeal.
...a classy, loungy, and jazzy vibe
A similar trajectory can be found in the work of another newcomer to St Petersburg, Stas Simonov (above), who has just released a three-track EP on Ukraine's Magnit label. Entitled "Toro Morn," the recording includes a remix by Petersburg's Nikita Zabelin, so Mr. Simonov is already in good hands.
His hometown is faraway Nizhny Tagil, which lies just beyond the point where geographers like to divide Europe from Asia. Not surprisingly, the reason for urban development so far from any major city began with investigations into (or the plundering of) nature's bounty. Iron ore was discovered locally at the end of the seventeenth century. That led to long-standing industrial traditions in and around Nizhny Tagil; Russia's first train, for example, was built in the town.
Regional engineers directed some of their earliest efforts towards a mode of escape.
Heavy industry has long since lost its appeal for young people, and so - reflecting that social shift - Mr. Simonov himself looked further afield. Trains were probably involved in his move to the Northern Venice. Now ensconced in that cold, classical city and playing sometimes upon a suitably Petersburgian quote, he has publicly declared his belief that "music will save the world." How, though, to apply concrete planning to that sentimental, if not quixotic goal? How to transform desire into deeds, especially in today's web-based, virtual contexts?
Our hero looks unflustered.
In search of inspiration (and a game plan) Simonov has drawn upon the blog of colleague Zabelin. The reason for doing so is that Zabelin himself has quoted substantial sections from the self-help texts of UK-based Mike Monday. Here we find numerous sage quotes to encourage and/or further the efforts of a new artist in a new town. Much of Monday's work is dedicated to the issue of risk, be it creative, emotional, or financial.
Lest Simonov fear failure in the disconcertingly chic environs of St Petersburg, Mike Monday steps forth with a few pearls of wisdom. For example: "'Success is 99% failure' (Soichiro Honda). Your endless quest for perfection has its roots in fear of failure. But if you build your courage you’ll learn to accept and expect failure as a natural and important part of the creative process. Fail, fail and fail again. Because when you fail you learn." Such is the logic - and law - of the industrious. It forms a very hard lesson, though.
Fail, fail and fail again. Because when you fail you learn
And, should homesickness prompt - subconsciously - a need to return to Nizhny Tagil, our English guru again has words of advice: "Learn from experience, but don’t let it teach you anything about what you can’t do. Instead let it show you where you can improve."
The past, to use a suitably industrial metaphor, is grist to the mill. It is not, however, a burden. Both Simonov and Stodulya employ the past. Raised in small cities, themselves the product of aging industries, these men have moved to another, bigger location: Saint Petersburg. And, having shed the (localized) social pressures of their prior experience, they then apply a similarly bold attitude towards the presumed limits of musical convention. Dance music, after all, is a fine realm in which to develop a cut-and-paste, even rhizomatic attitude to linear chronologies.
It's a serious business, conducted within an entertaining framework...
...which brings us to the work of Vilnius duo Marijus Adomaitis and Vidmantas Cepkauskas (aka Mario & Vidis). Extending the validity of a traditional aesthetic, they also like to speak of their own work in terms of a "future classic" style. The two men first combined their ideas four years ago in order to conjure "the freshest-sounding, most adventurous house music in Lithuania." Those joint efforts found attention far and wide: Gilles Peterson, Pete Tong, Jazzanova, Atjazz, Laurent Garnier, Ewan Pearson, and Toby Tobias all voiced their support.
...the freshest-sounding, most adventurous house music in Lithuania
At home the success was even greater, with early vocal tracks topping domestic charts for an entire six months. The duo's debut album then extended that sphere of influence, synthesizing the experience of both Adomaitis and Cepkauskas in the overlapping fields of DJ-ing, radio production, and event promotion. Together, with concerted effort, Mario & Vidis achieved a great deal. As with Stas Simonov and Eventual Groove, these demanding, though promising trajectories all have deep roots in the past. Adomaitis, for example, told the following tale in a recent interview, echoing the stories from Stodolya:
"When I was eight years old, my father brought home a synthesizer for the very first time. I was amazed and inspired by the ability to play 'different instruments.' Everything from strings to drums could be reproduced on a keyboard. That first sense of amazement has never left me... in fact, it gets stronger every day."
Both men credit their families - and their parents' record collections - for nurturing what would become public careers. The fixed recordings of the past, shaped - it should be said - from within a monolithic music industry, have now been lovingly spliced and interwoven in new, unique patterns that turn the canon into blossoming patterns of potential. Change is therefore inherent in any "final" cut.
Tradition becomes an enabling process, not a dead-end: it makes lines of flight possible. It is simultaneously an artifact and raw material. Any finished work can be reconsidered from another angle.
Mr. Cepkauskas has a few wise words on the same subject. "Obviously the biggest trend of late has been the absence of trends. The walls dividing scenes, styles and genres are falling. The lines between them are being erased further and further... More and more DJs are playing material across the board. And that's the future, I think: soulful techno played alongside disco or trance... and then spiced up by deep dubstep, [perhaps]." New sounds are mapped out.
He continues: "After all, what exactly is 'soul clap'? Is it electro, disco, or house? It's probably just a good groove that combines the best elements from thirty years of dance music. It's done with the help of modern technology - and a funky attitude!"
That final adjective is key. Although notoriously difficult to pin down etymologically, the term "funky" certainly has roots in those aspects of jazz closest to life's rough and tumble. Put differently, funk places a "bass"/base emphasis upon some difficult, corporeal, yet vital aspects of experience: upon work. That nuance of toil is what creates the double entendre with "funky" as malodorous! And so we find that the attitude best suited to today's virtual excess is one rooted in hard labor: metaphors of sheer physical effort are applied to future, virtual potentials.
A good groove that combines the best elements from thirty years of dance music
From the towns and times of heavy industry comes a worldview best suited to web-based production. It admits that the effort required to reconsider and reconstitute styles of the past is precisely that: effort. Especially for those working in a(n underfunded) club environment. A work ethic is prior to any kind of aesthetic, even. In that light and in closing, it's worth recalling the words of James Brown: "I only got a seventh-grade education, but I do have a doctorate in funk, and I like to put that to good use."
Changing and/or rewriting the canon takes ostensible, tangible effort. Take it to the bridge, if you can.
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