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"Contagi0us" - including that embedded zero - refers to a young northern musician, Maksim Krapivin, who lives in Arkhangelsk. More than 600 miles to the north of Moscow, this city is perched upon the edge of terra firma in ways that justify any "angelic" wordplay. Not only does the ancient port form a long, lonely ribbon across Russia's northern coastline; the winter weather also does its best to erase Arkhangelsk from view. Physicality has a tenuous presence, at best.
In fact, thanks only to the sturdiest of modern icebreakers is the region now able to accept shipping on a year-round basis. Left to their own devices, arctic storms can swiftly immobilize all human and maritime motion with blizzards, icebergs, or other heartless tools. Every inch of mobility is precious.
Equally important is the scale of Arkhangelsk's history. Viking records tell of nearby settlements as early as the year 800. Over the centuries, more and more people moved to the region as additional defense was needed against other, more bellicose "visitors" from Scandinavia. As ever, though, a horrific climate would inhibit any major population growth - and thus the area became a more important center of monastic faith than of trade. That seemingly timeless focus upon small-scale, fervent belief is recognized by our chosen performers, even today.
They reach for the skies, in several senses.
One of the uneven, uncropped images used by Contagi0us (Arkhangelsk)
The city, therefore, speaks of a marked distance - from things both physical and ideal. Hoping to capture these local attitudes of universal absence and yearning, Krapivin has jettisoned all language from his post-rock compositions. The ineffable - having no name and constantly evading capture - cannot be designated. Desire is therefore better expressed without the help of a dictionary. In sounds, not syllables.
On one small and well-hidden web venue, Krapivin recently said: "I eventually came to understand that I cannot [or will not] write texts. I've no desire to turn my life into a circus. Music allows you to express the internal experience of an individual: with words you'll only capture its external aspect." Language, it appears, simply leads to a pointless runaround that's better suited to a circus than a concert hall.
I once knew a man who choked on his desire
The long, prosaic titles of Contagi0us' tracks come from that same coincidence of things (logically) public and (strangely) private. Put differently, Krapivin's works often combine an everyday experience with something absent, yet fervently desired. Some of the tracks currently available at Soundcloud are titled as follows - if we translate them into English: "We Plunged Headfirst into an Overcast, Hungover Morning"; "I Knew a Man Who Choked on His Desire"; "It's Probably Pleasant to be One Step from a Constellation" - and so forth... Attempts to designate and explain peculiar sensations lead only to long, inelegant sentences.
Cosmic Weather Forecast (Rostov-na-Donu): "One Rehearsal Take" (2011)
Those same starry-eyed juxtapositions (and related problems of expressivity) are mirrored in the catalog of another post-rock instrumental outfit with new material, Cosmic Weather Forecast from Rostov-na-Donu. Formed only this year, the ensemble is a quartet: Denis Kuznetsov (drums), Viktor Ivanov (guitar), Andrei Bogomolov (guitar), and Vlad Mitell-Grabovskii (bass).
The theme of elusive, yet superior concepts comes to the fore once again - as a lyric (not lyrical) striving that's unlikely to ever be satisfied. Hope may dwindle, but desire pushes onwards. As a result, the group's explanation of its raison d'être soon involves some very grand imagery. Dry, business-like prose morphs into ornate phrasing. "The band's music has a clear thematic focus upon aspects of eternity. They range from our own, apocalyptic genesis to the origins of a new life." Where and when, nobody knows. And so there's nothing to say or sing about.
Wordless harmonies work in service of bigger, better - and vaguer! - equivalents.
Our rehearsal room is warmly lit by lamps from a Feng Shui store
Some of the tools used to fuel this heady romance are quickly name-checked: "This music is written in a comfortable place, filled with the gentle aroma of joss sticks. Our rehearsal room is warmly lit by some lamps from a Feng Shui store." The laws of heaven and earth are pondered with the help of ancient geomancy. Somewhere there exists a universally applicable system: it's better investigated with signs and sounds than with verbose texts.
Thus far we see a romantic striving for some absent, "starry" system that's viewed not as self-realization, even, but in terms of overarching, preexisting laws that simply need to be unearthed - and respected. These musicians are no haughty, selfish dreamers. There's a civic aspect to their wistfulness.
And that brings us to a new, wantonly anonymous project from St. Petersburg called Maygley. These musicians, it should mentioned, sometimes write their name with a combination of Latin and Cyrillic characters, giving us "MAYГLEY" - which looks rather similar to the Russian spelling of Kipling's "Mowgli." Perhaps some laws of the jungle are also under consideration. In fact, as the Western animated character famously said: "The jungle speaks to me because I have learned how to listen." Systems are prior to selfhood.
The sound of 'hazy sessions'
Whatever the case, the two members of Maygley would rather not advertise their identity. (We can at least reveal that one of them is a professional colleague of Galya Chikiss.) Five tracks have appeared so far and can be downloaded from various locations. Once more, texts are absent, or least hard to discern. These dreampop and shoegazing compositions do much to hide their female vocals deep beneath a wall of sound. Thankfully the Siberian blog Big Echo has salvaged a few bits and pieces of information from that sea of imprecision.
It seems that Maygley not long ago sent some brief, explanatory phrases to Novosibirsk, whence we learn that "These tracks are taken from some live sessions. They've been slightly reworked and supplemented. They're what we call 'hazy sessions.'" Audible surf plus an invisible horizon equals "hazy" symbolism.
Maygley (St. Petersburg): "Crystal Games" (2011)
Any such haziness, in the mind of Big Echo, is best represented by the closing track "Stan' Slabei" (Grow Weaker), which is based upon a 1962 poem by the Soviet lyricist, Robert Rozhdestvensky (d. 1994). That same poem is a fine example of the early '60s and the time of a cultural "thaw." Some parallels can be drawn between Rozhdestvensky's context and today's dreamers.
After the demise of Stalinism and its angry, goal-driven narratives, Russian audiences of the early 1960s were desperate for a different kind of purpose within films, novels, and poems. Surely there were value systems other than loud ideology? What would inspire the heroes of modern tales to be socially responsible (and attractively, convincingly so)? Civic values had to be rebuilt — and levels of trust reconsidered, after decades of denouncements.
We hurried to say whatever troubled us. In fact, to shout it out... (Rozhdestvensky)
And so, in the late '50s and early '60s, we see themes such as childhood and family life coming to the fore. Literary and cinematic figures reconsidered their commitment not to a faceless Party, but to girlfriends, wives, and colleagues. Little social units were remade - and celebrated. For that reason, children were also depicted in lots of movies and novels, going through the anxious process of maturation. They were negotiating their way through new friendships or allegiances. The world was investigated empirically, and love was a more promising guide than party politics. Rozhdestvensky's poems speak directly to this risk of romance - and they still appeal to a couple of St. Petersburg musicians in 2011.
Robert Rozhdestvensky (1932-1994)
The poem's title - "Grow Weaker" - comes from the request of a young man that his loved one drop - or lessen - the confidence of her professional life. After the faceless, even genderless workings of Stalinist society, people yearned for the old - perhaps anachronistic - roles of husband and wife, no matter how retrograde they seemed. The poem's speaker tells a girlfriend that "I'll become special - and carry you from a burning building as you sleep. I'll pledge myself to all that's unknown and irrational! Ill throw myself into the sea - the churning, ominous sea - and save you! That's what my heart will demand..."
Private honor would hopefully take the place of public rant.
I'll pledge myself to all that's unknown and irrational! (R.R.)
That lofty tone of 1962 matches what we hear from these three ensembles. It also suggests that their talk of "cosmic" or "apocalyptic" processes may, perhaps, be inspired by some (modest) relations much closer to home. Rozhdestvensky's poem bridges the gap between them. Love, after all, is full of jeopardy - and involves a process of willing "weakness" or surrender. The advice of others, though, is little consolation to the anxious or amorous members of society - and so we have yet another reason why these grand, romantic compositions would involve few words - or none at all.
Rozhdestvensky's poem ends with the statement that only through commitment to another person can we gain self-confidence. It's a "social" gain offered us through loss - and those paradoxes don't lend themselves to wordy debate, either. The sound of something grander and greater resonates in all these compositions, and access to its "hazy" dimensions may reside very close to home. Hence the kind of imagery we see below, superimposing an insistent, clamorous ocean upon some Soviet, domestic wallpaper. Small dimensions, grand desires.
Maygley (nobody in sight)
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