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Nick Tremo is the stage name of a fundamentally anonymous musician/DJ from the ancient Ukrainian town of Uzhgorod. He has been responsible for a couple of releases this year, both offered through the net label/aggregator Qulture. More specifically, in mid March a one-hour, fifteen track instrumental album appeared with the title of "Three Walls." Grounded in acid jazz, trip-, and abstract hip-hop, it appeared from nowhere yet immediately begged a number of positive parallels with the superb work from Jet Peks, a resident of Tremo's hometown. Hope sprang not much eternally as immediately.
Jet Peks' output of the same season remains one of the most interesting dance releases of 2010, yet he, too, was less than forthcoming with information. Only after some serious detective were we able to say for sure that this man's real name was/is Dmitrii Grishko.
Vague outlines of artistic enterprise needed to be fleshed out with both performers.
Further efforts, en route to that clarity, eventually allowed to us to say the following, albeit with difficulty: "We have discovered that Grishko was born on 30 November, 1985. He is responsible for all the tracks on display here, most of which constitute a new release: 'Funk Me, Whatta Groovy Trip!!!' It can be downloaded for free at the Qulture netlabel. These extremely lively break/D&B/funk crossovers involve all manner of lovingly-reworked samples, the most obvious of which come from Louis Armstrong and Nino Katamadze."
Little by little, the small, respectfully chosen influences of these musicians could be reconstituted in ways that reflect the minor, comfortably jumbled appearance of Uzhgorod itself. Both the town and its two musical residents sample the past, be it sonically or architecturally, in order to fashion a "present" that's far from the shiny arrogance of wholehearted modernity.
The influences on Tremo's sample-heavy "Three Walls" are not dissimilar to those of Grishko, to the point where we wouldn't be entirely surprised if Tremo was, in fact, Jet Peks himself! It seems more likely, however, that the christian and surnames listed on Tremo's PromoDJ page are to be believed, even if they're deliberately avoided on almost every other web venue. On that same revealing page he documents himself as Mr. Nikolai Garaz. A password-protected page at Vkontakte has the same sparse information.
Once again we see a very hesitant stance towards the future: on display are lots of antique samples, little private information (to clarify the present), and zero PR (for the future).
Work, nonetheless, continues apace in 2010. The second Tremo release has come quickly on the heels of "Three Walls." Within a matter of weeks, Qulture announced the publication of a "Colour Pillz EP." As the name clearly suggests(!), this second work runs a much briefer fourteen minutes (over four tracks), mining the same crisp retro- or vinyl-beats as the album; the artwork shown below also draws on pre-modern iconography. It makes a passing nod to some very old metaphors in order to evoke thoughts of a heartfelt, if not spiritual commitment to one's craft.
Together the LP and EP, especially when combined with Jet Peks' instrumentals, suggest that Uzhgorod is a promising location to watch for tongue-in-cheek, jazz-tinged turntablism. Its residents make very productive use of the past, mixing and matching archival samples, rather than advocating anything akin to self-assured, arrogant novelty.
How, though, to nudge these sonic librarians out onto the streets? There remains a huge behavioral gap between the hushed diligence of Garaz and the self-aggrandizement of modern music, when seen from a careerist point of view. If, nonetheless, Garaz/Tremo is to maintain this rather counterproductive stance towards his "promotional" endeavors, a burden clearly lies on the public to make as much noise as possible. That, too, is not proving wildly successful.
Tremo's MySpace page contains one image, no audio whatsoever(!), and proudly declares its total number of visitors as eight. Most of those eight visits were made by ourselves in various stages of disbelief. Neither artist or audience are trying terribly hard. The music on offer at other locations, such as Qulture, is nothing short of wonderful; the levels of effort outside the studio, however, are a joke. How and why that disconnect endures is a complete mystery.
A few positive remarks have been posted at Qulture, but they're outnumbered by the observations that pepper the PromoDJ page. Here, though, yet another dilemma persists, one of quality, rather than quality. If the venues mentioned so far have been marred by silence and lackluster promotional work, the issue at PromoDJ is one of banality. The anonymity we encounter on MySpace here becomes faceless pleasantries, often designed to flatter the addressee who, in turn, may then pay attention to the spammer.
Some of the images employed by Tremo do not suggest much faith in these mechanical promo tools. Sooner or later, the workings of the outside world will have their evil way. Fatalism and advertising (the rhetoric of improvement) rarely operate to mutual benefit.
What, then of this audience-driven banality? At PromoDJ, we read phrases such as "Trip-hop rules! I really liked the tracks!!!" Vaguely more specific observations may appear from time to time, such as this: "I occasionally check your page - and always listen to your work with pleasure, cup of coffee in hand :) Thaaaanks!" Yet that, too, could easily be nothing more than a generic civility, distributed to several artists at once.
I occasionally check your page - and always listen to your work with pleasure, cup of coffee in hand :) Thaaaanks!
Without concrete names or specific discussion, the difference between genuine conversation and faceless chatter can be minimal. "I listened to the experimental and trip-hop works. I liked some things, but not everything. All the same, the compositions had a generally positive air. Everything was restrained - and varied, too."
If Tremo is unwilling to provide a concrete narrative, so to speak, and author his own significance, then - by default - he himself will be authored by his context, i.e., by his audiences and/or neighbors. His listeners, as we see, are tight-lipped, full of mere niceties, or perhaps even automatically generated.
If, therefore, neither the author nor his audience is willing to play an active role, what of an even broader framework, of his region? Below we see the wider purview available beyond the city limits of Uzhgorod.
As we found earlier, geography is undoubtedly an important issue for Grishko/Jet Peks. A few months ago, when speaking about his troubles in establishing an active, meaningful local scene, we remarked: "Our DJ reaches a rather sad conclusion when talk turns to Uzhgorod’s position on the map. Considering that his hometown lies as far west within Ukraine as possible, does he perceive any advantage to being 'next door' to Europe?"
Our DJ reaches a rather sad conclusion when talk turns to Uzhgorod’s position on the map. Considering that his hometown lies as far west within Ukraine as possible, does he perceive any advantage to being 'next door' to Europe?
His answer:"'Basically speaking, no. It’s not just a matter of physical borders. It’s a matter of borders between people, too.' Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain his logic further, so it’s difficult to tell whether he’s referring to issues of language, stubborn xenophobia, or something even more sinister. Whatever the case, Grishko is struggling with a rather moribund presumption that the weight of history and/or age-old behavioral norms will overcome one man’s diligence – all of which makes the insistent jollity of his music even more surprising."
That same weight is even more palpable in Tremo's music, since here we see the frequent downshifting from bigbeat to trip-hop, a style that arose amid racial tensions in Bristol. Put differently, it is a musical style whose slow, heavy progression speaks directly to the weight of prior decades on the present day.
Uzhgorod dates back to the ninth century, if not earlier, yet its population has never grown much above 100,000 people: deceased residents surely outnumber the living. The past again stifles the present. Uzhgorod has, over the centuries, been also shunted back and forth between neighboring nations. During WWII, the town was overrun by Soviet troops and thus became part of the Ukrainian SSR. Such fleeting grandeur has long since passed; Uzhgorod is now the smallest of all Ukraine's regional centers.
Cynics would no doubt attribute the enduring scale of Uzhgorod's status to the "inevitable" workings of history, in which major players manhandle smaller entities, time and again. The equally banal, ideological rhetoric that propels those processes will - at least amongst curmudgeons - be discerned not only in socialist ideology, but also in today's capitalist shoptalk. Hence the pleasant nothingness of the observations at PromoDJ. They reflect the (sad) ways things are.
Sincerity - the voice of genuine effort - is stymied by the lazy, fixed smiles of shop staff. The image below, used by Nick Tremo as an avatar, appears to be a caricature of John Walters, that great recorder of emotions bastardized by mercantile, post-war America. The very kitsch of his films comes from the fact that real, active, and spontaneous feeling may no longer be possible in a fiscally-driven culture.
Walters' cupid, for example, is not exactly the product of artless naivety. No wonder distrust and doubt abound.
Were we looking for an insight into banality’s long-term cultural significance, it would, strangely, be possible to find a positive spin. Its state of quiet repose needs only the slightest “disturbance of equilibrium,” so to speak, in order to create a radically altered state of affairs. The banal is a model of expression based not upon brave exploits or goal-oriented progress but - perhaps! - something else entirely. It is, possibly, both a safe haven from others' crude, destructive enterprise and a universal, if not eternal starting point for the nascent minutiae or rules of new effort.
Trite commonplaces are the only voice we hear around the promising(!) music of Nick Tremo. They are the product of local history and the language thereof. Simultaneously, however, these small-scale emotions and platitudes are the hiding-place of genuine sentiment, beaten down by the status quo. They may appear to be the lamentable remains of once-genuine affect, but they also harbor the beginnings of frank, unaffected, and candid feeling.
In short, the tendency we hear towards silence and shallow praise could, in fact, be the embodiment of new agency and new activity. We shall wait and see.
Once again, hope springs eternal. After all, many things come unexpectedly in Eastern Europe.
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