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In the first few days of February, a new compilation CD appeared in Moscow with the title of "No Oil, No Stress, No Noise." It was - and remains - the editorial work of Snegiri Records and music journalist Aleksandr Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev contextualizes the CD - in Russian - as follows: "This compilation is something of a Utopia. It represents a place where the sky is blue, the wind blows freely, and there's plenty of open space. This is a place of big feelings, not big business. It's a place of joy, but without any pomp or circumstance. There's sadness, but no contrived pathos. People write summertime melodies and sing with magical voices. The words we hear need no translation, since they speak of life's most important values. This is a kind of 'internal empire' with room for one and all. It's a reality that does not lie in the future, since it already exists. A reality you need only to hear..."
The text continues: "The CD you're holding is a compilation of young Russian music. It's novelty is not so much in the sound as in its emotions. These are the kind of fine feelings that only our youthful years truly value: these are feelings free of slogans or prejudice. They speak in various languages, but understand one another. They live in another, parallel land, a place without oil, endless hassle, or the clamor of excess information. No oil. No stress. No noise."
No trains, either.
This introduction ends with three programmatic phrases: "The first decade of the century is over. The next one has begun; it resonates from this compilation." Twenty acts are thus brought together, many of which we've celebrated already and - of course! - we are happy to see in one place.
The first decade of the century is over. The next one has begun; it resonates from this compilation.
In the early to mid-1990s, cassette/CD compilations played a vital role in establishing a stable pop market within Russia. Nowadays, however, that format has been greatly devalued by the frequency with which well-funded, unappealing "producers' projects" were thrust into the pubic eye. Given the fact that major pop performers in Russia rely more on television and touring than the sale of hard media, it remains a mystery why provincial "sponsors" would bother funding such discs anymore.
The desired effect on the world of Russian showbiz is often disappointing.
Online, however, the story is now different. Compilations act as mini-aggregators and play a key role in creating nodes of visible activity or places of shared purpose. When the web offers us the chance to look anywhere we want, knowing where to start - or whether to care - can be difficult. CDs such as "No Oil, No Stress, No Noise" help to attract attention. This, in turn, begs the question: What does the CD offer in terms of a common thread between these 20 performers or bands, and why should we care if we happen to stumble across a copy?
We've already mentioned that Snegiri Records and Mr. Gorbachev stand behind the project, and the ensembles on display to a large degree reflect either the Snegiri roster or artists similar in nature. Newcomers to "No Oil" would therefore be right to expect quiet, intelligent, and clever pop songs. The tone is set very well indeed by an opening instrumental.
Samara's Day2K is the alter ego of Evgenii Uvarovskii, shown in our initial images and who has been working in the self-declared fields of idm, experimental electronica, and abstract hip-hop for the last half-decade. "Over the last three years," he says, "my project has moved on a great deal and lost its relationship to any one style in particular." Progress therefore becomes synonymous with eclecticism: this is already one healthy step away from the generic rigidity of TV pop.
Over the course of two and a half minutes, Uvarovskii's toytown trip-hop plays several quick games with a range of childish instruments, a sampled/looped giggle, and some closing applause.
The first track, in other words, applauds its own modesty.
If the spirit of Lemon Jelly is audible in those initial 146 seconds, the second number - from Masha Era (above) - recalls early Tracey Thorn. There's a very British sense of smallness at work here.
Masha Era has collaborated with various experimental dramatists and musicians not only around Russia (e.g., Il’ia Shapovalov), but also abroad, most notably with Bruno Schnebelin in France. When we commented on her work back in 2008, it seemed that she embodied something of a willfully decadent aesthetic, full of references to the styles - both sonically and theatrically - of the Silver Age. Those, as we can see above, still continue in her lasting respect for Aleksandr Vertinskii, but her sense of elegant decline is not typical of the CD as a whole. Gorbachev's promo-text, as we say, has a different emphasis: Utopian escape and the declaration of a new decade.
Some of the artists on the CD are either deeply "provincial" or very much unknown; several of them, like Belarus' Tanin Jazz (above), offer nothing more than a bare-looking MySpace or LastFM page with a few hundred hits. The romantics among us would declare such smallness to be the sign of a new generation; the cynics would see nothing but public disinterest in those same low figures. It's clear that the sunny outlook of Snegiri is putting its time and effort behind the former option. Tanin Jazz's track, "Virtual Love," continues the kindergarten kitsch of Day2K in ways that help to shape a worldview of initial, "childlike steps" towards a new pop ethic after the grand gloss and glitz of the last ten years.
Lithuania's Migloko - above - makes that same move from squirms, squeaks, and other sandbox noises to something more adult. We celebrated her work last summer, at which time there was almost no information available. We were left only with the passing observations of Russian journalists who spoke of her "as a small girl with sky-blue eyes and the longest eyelashes in the world.” Since 2009 she has shown even less desire to operate along standard PR channels: the best way currently to follow her work is through a growing community at Facebook.
That social benefit, though, is quickly canceled out by the fact that she and her Vilnius cohorts rarely speak Russian to one another...
Within the space of several tracks, therefore, this compilation has already thrown us back and forth with admirable gusto across erstwhile Soviet lands. This breakneck travelogue is conducted in the general good spirit of Evgeniia Borzykh and Dsh-Dsh!, who are also in the running order.
That Soviet observation may seem irrelevant or, at best, offhand, but there is most definitely a historical aspect to the CD that bears mentioning. Put differently, "No Oil" is undoubtedly designed as a template for the near future of Russian pop; it is suggesting ways in which songwriting can free itself from the moneyed, monstrous traditions of the last ten years or so. That way forward is, we're told, possible only after looking backwards. Not only is the compilation saying that Russian pop music ought to recapture the happy innocence of its youth; it also implies that there are elements of the Soviet tradition that deserve to be reinstated.
Not long after the collapse of the USSR, Boris Grebenshchikov gave an interview in which he said that Russian songwriting had been unaffected by recent political events. In other words, the public's love for a good song was longer-lasting than the fickle ebb and flow of ideologies. If a song was loved, it remained relevant, despite or apart from the outside world. This is the kind of "sonic Utopia" that Gorbachev speaks about, a better place that need only be heard.
Some of us (again, the cynics) might counter that this is nothing but nostalgic escapism. Here, though, is where "No Oil" is different. Three things are thankfully lacking in any references to a Soviet heritage of songwriting. The 20 works on this CD are, in other words, blissfully free of three problematic elements that have often hounded attempts to "reconnect" with a living tradition. These songs are neither slavishly copying those antique wonders, nor are they cynically mocking them. The third absent trait is irony.
On several occasions, songs and singers of past decades are invoked in ways that imply a serious, affectionate, and normal respect for one's artistic forefathers.
The best place to start seeking evidence for this theory is in the contribution by Moscow's Pinball (above).
Among their stated influences, all of whom are Western, they unexpectedly include Maiia Kristalinskaia (1932-1985). This petite woman came to Soviet pop music during the Thaw as an equally normal figure. Her less-than-glamorous appearance was designed as a counterweight to the post-Stalinist divas like Edita P'ekha. Kristalinskaia was the Everywoman: average height, average appearance, and yet - to quote Aleksandr Gorbachev once more - she represented a capability for "big feelings, not big [political] business." She brought dignity to the most typical or forgettable lives. Pinball's track - which sounds as much like Anna German as Kristalinskaia! - sets the vocals of the past to rhythms of the present. It does sо with affection, respect, and playfulness.
No pandering. No cynicism. No irony.
We need only wait three minutes for the same approach to appear in the number offered by Evgeniia Tedzhetova and her band, Saliut (above). Tedzhetova's mini-PR texts speak to the endless charm of this Soviet tradition - and the difficulties of embracing it wholeheartedly. Loving the past is tricky after years of disrespect. Tedzhetova says she plays "the most charming lyrical-romantic-sarcastic type of bossa nova, together with some twists, too. It's a kind of 'new retro' that harks back to Soviet light entertainment, especially P'ekha, German, Kristalinskaia, and Miansarova. These are songs about the moon, Jupiter, and Moscow."
That closing phrase steals back the romance of Russian lyrical pop from the early 1960s and builds upon it - in all seriousness and with all possible respect. These same enthusiasms run through other tracks on this CD, from performers of various ages and multiple towns, such as the capital's Novye Prazdniki, whose semi-acoustic lyricism is designed to save (once more) the mores of Russian songwriting from the "shaggy paws of Russian showbiz."
Those hirsute, grubby paws are replaced by a gentle handshake.
Once we've established an open-armed attitude towards the past - an inclusive stance that rejects the strict formats of primetime pop - anything becomes possible. The second half of the CD promises a great deal in terms of these future developments.
Take, for example, Snegiri's new signing, Varia Demidova, who maintains the singer-songwriting credentials, for example, of Alina Orlova, yet looks like a magazine model. There's no room for the strict and shabby dress codes of bohemian chic here: the line between "cultured" songs of the intelligentsia and catwalks is blurred with admirable effort. In Demidova's PR materials we find the invocation that "it's never too late to turn on your internal receiver and tune it to a signal that broadcasts every hour of every day." This is the endless timeframe of an adorably banal, ahistorical approach to music that throws stylistic squeamishness to one side.
It's never too late to turn on your internal receiver and tune it to a signal that broadcasts every hour of every day.
(All jokes about the bright future requiring sunglasses are hereby avoided.)
We're not stuck entirely in the realm of wistful dreamers, though. Moscow's 19:84 provide a stirring track, "Zima" (Winter), with enough drama and thundering drums to keep most football terraces happy. Yet even here the (happy) weight of the past is felt. The band themselves describes their song as marked by "a drawn-out, minor melody, the unobtrusive use of some quotes from [poet Joseph] Brodsky and a general air of well-established fatalism. It's not something that comes from any frustrated ambitions, though. It's just that one day you wake up and you realize that you're already 25[!]. You've got to a raise a family or do something else..."
The sense of ethically proper inclusion here is uppermost; it's a moral obligation to enter the kind of social grouping that will, hopefully, produce the spirit of modesty so important for "No Oil..." The proud arrogance and isolation of the last ten years become a new team spirit.
Nowhere is this shown better than in the ramshackle work patterns of KDIMB (i.e., Krasnoznamennaia diviziia imeni moei babushki or The Red Banner Division Named in Honor of My Grandmother). As that long and silly name would suggest, this is a band that has no time for po-faced exclusionary habits. Their shows consist of the maximum number of people and instruments possible; their on-stage aura is always shaped by enthusiasm, rather than academic propriety.
Anything goes, as long as it's fun.
The group, in fact, came together in 2008 after putting out a web-based call to "Anybody Who Can Play Anything." This results in gigs that employ between seven and fifteen people, all of whom are "jumping, running, fighting, hugging, kissing, smashing crockery... and showing psychedelic cartoons, too." KDIMB's members "rehearse in bath houses and record demos in peoples' attics whilst eating sponge cake and drinking tea."
These same ideas and activities are furthered in the closing tracks of the CD. Thankfully we see here the inclusion of Kostroma's superb Komba Bakkh, exponents of slapdash Orthodox rap/hip-pop. (Yes, it's as interesting as it sounds...) Surely there could be no more locally relevant, historically respectful, inclusive, and yet happily formless outfit.
This acoustic jollity continues to the closing curtain with the junkyard jams of The Retuses - who themselves namecheck pre-Revolutionary chanteur Aleksandr Vertinskii once more - and Rostov-na-Donu's Ritmika, whom we've happily showcased in the past. The Retuses include an image (above) that perfectly embodies the historical relationships under discussion here.
Before the whole affair closes with a predictably classy performance from Lithuania's Alina Orlova, we're invited to consider Ritmika's statement of artistic intent: "We Sing Songs and Reinvent the Wheel."
Put differently: We Move Forwards Whilst Redoing the Past.
This, surely, is a fine antidote to the sad extremes of some Russian pop music since 2000, especially on the TV screens of Moscow. Ritmika's turn of phrase suggests that domestic songwriting can, perhaps, make use of its own spectacular heritage in ways that forget the political systems that once tried to manipulate it. Sentimental and/or Orthodox forms of social involvement in these songs - no matter how small or modest - are offered in ways that could outdo the various factions of politics. Once again, these are songs of "big feelings, not big [political] business."
Such is the worldview of the happiest and most hopeful CD compilation in quite some while.
No stress, indeed.
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