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Pavel Lenchenko and Nata Zhizhchenko (Tomato Jaws, Kiev)
One of the season's boldest advertising campaigns in Eastern Europe has come courtesy of the Kiev threesome Tomato Jaws, often championed on this site. The image above shows two of the band members - Pavel Lenchenko and Nata Zhizhchenko - during the shoot. The resulting footage is designed both to promote the music of Tomato Jaws and help the financial wellbeing of cosmetics brand Nivea. Four videos were shot over several days in Los Angeles, titled together as "Singing in the Shower" (Poiushchie v Dushe). These collaborations suggest that Tomato Jaws are associated locally with a style that's redolent of a certain hedonism - be it vertical or horizontal. A little attention to band members outside the bathtub might help to explain why.
The water and music both flow... (Nivea, Ukraine)
The most recent release by these artists has now come from Mr. Lenchenko, who - in his alter ego as Playone - has just published a full-blooded house EP with Vadim Griboedoff (below) on Kiev's High-Jack Records. It includes remixes from other Ukrainian performers also showcased on this site, such as Komponente (a resident of Kharkov) and the capital's own Yaroslav Madgreen. With the assistance of colleagues and cosmetics, Lenchenko's reputation is spreading.
Today his growing influence - first across local and then national dancefloors - has led to experience on a European scale, as we've mentioned before. Lenchenko has performed in various countries around the continent, whilst adding to the house compositions in his Playone catalog. Currently they number more than fifty. And then, to these physical movements around the map, we should also add web-based collaborations with artists from the US, Germany, Finland, England, and France.
Vadim Griboedov (aka Griboedoff, Kiev)
Any implicit associations of that success with dancefloor panache or sexual assurance were certainly made explicit in the Nivea campaign. Sounds, colors, and even surfaces were all harmonized with the music. The PR company responsible for the ads explained things in a rather straightforward manner: "Pavel and Nata took the opportunity to try their hand at some acting. In this web-based project for Nivea, the musicians had to refashion themselves as a couple of lovers... The four little video-stories correspond to the mood, color, and packaging of Nivea's new shower gels."
Should we wish to play along, the company has also provided some karaoke versions...
Although these little fantasies are orchestrated to the downtempo style one might usually associate with bathroom business, Tomato Jaws and Lenchenko remain champions of urban, upbeat electro- or tech-house. Those sounds speak to a widespread yearning for pleasure away from soap and bubbles: they're (stereo)typically reminiscent of busy places such as Ibiza - especially in the middle of a Ukrainian winter. The same profitable assumptions can be found elsewhere.
Simultaneous to these Kievan publications are some related tracks from Moscow's Highway Records. They're advertised to us as directly beneficial to the "mind, body, and soul." These sensuous associations are unlikely, for example, to be offered by a severe techno compilation... Instead, label owner Mike Spirit uses a range of deep-house cuts to showcase the talents of FFM favorites SCSI-9 and Andrey Burtaev, who also performs as "Electrosoul System."
Andrey Burtaev (Moscow)
Burtaev, whose reputation rests mainly on his achievements in the field of D&B, began his professional activities approximately ten years ago, when his brother introduced him to the wonders of musical software. This coincided with a youthful passion for breakbeat and happy hardcore, colored by an enduring respect for the 1995 "Timeless" CD from London's Goldie. By the time these enthusiasms had coalesced into the first outings from Electrosoul System, Burtaev was confident enough to declare that Moscow was witnessing "the birth of a new musical underground." Different styles were slowly introduced into his sets and CDs: downtempo, trip-hop, acid-jazz, deep house, "and so on."
What'll happen in the future, I simply don't know
Nowadays, even though Burtaev has also managed to graduate from law school, he gives most of his time to the world of music. "Things have reached the point," he says, "where I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life. Earlier on, I wasn't entirely sure. It's fair to say that there's basically no hope of making big money through music. But, on the other hand, you don't always need large amounts of cash! At the moment I've got all I require. What'll happen in the future, I simply don't know. Currently I am happy with the ways things are."
This sort of jolly presentism is a refusal to regret the past or fear the future: everything's done in the name of the here and now. Certain styles realize that vertiginous goal better than others.
Years and years of Burtaev's work, all around Russia and further still, have been made in the name of modest, arguably "silly" pleasures. Since we began with a few thoughts on those same dancefloor desires in a Ukrainian setting, it makes sense to mention briefly the Kazantip festival. Since the mid-90s, this event has been the biggest celebration of domestic house music (among other styles) - played to the biggest crowd, under the brightest sun, etc. The event's success has been so considerable that this year it moves to Portugal.
Each year, on southern sun-grilled beaches, 150,000 people thank the nation's exponents of crowd-pleasing dance music for the chance to freeze a moment of pleasure - and dismiss all thoughts of distant, dreary actuality. On that note, it's worth quoting the Kazantip organizers verbatim:
Wise men believe that there is no such thing as time
"If you try and get to grips with the concept of time, you'll find that the line between the Present and the Future is so delicate and slippery as to be virtually elusive. Scholars try to comprehend this division; they dream of moving back and forth in time, breaking down the world into atoms as they do so. 'Psychonauts' will try to step over the same [temporal] line by dissolving the world with the help of chemical substances. Wise men even believe that there is no such thing as time. They hold that one can learn to exist in absolutely any dimension. It all depends on the strength of your imagination. Anything's possible."
So how does Andrey Burtaev capture and express this southern fantasy in his own music?
The classic retro-aesthetic of a Kos.Mos.Music publication (Moscow)
As we see above, his promotional materials often include the Latin phrase "Through Difficulties to the Stars." This slogan was employed by early Apollo missions, not the Soviet space program. Hence Burtaev's use of the famous Moscow monument, "To the Conquerors of Space" - for whom anything was apparently possible. He brings international romance much closer to home.
Some of those "difficulties" en route to the stars are nicely captured this week by new DIY tracks from Yarus Yarikimoto. That stage-name hides a young man from the village of Gamovo, near Perm - maybe 700 miles from Moscow. Here various house and tech-house traditions are treated with considerable irony: it's hard to imagine these fragile instrumentals enticing thousands of holidayers onto a Portuguese dancefloor. Yarikimoto's music speaks instead to daydreams and self-deprecation... simultaneously.
You need knowledge to anticipate - and anticipation to avoid danger
The only information forthcoming from this snowy location is a series of small (and old) tweets, seemingly broadcast into the empty ether, if the picture below is to be believed. Most of those mini-messages are designed to gather courage before a social challenge. "You need knowledge to anticipate - and anticipation to avoid danger." "May the force be with you"... and so on. These are intertwined with a few semi-serious folky or chivalrous sayings - "Where may my maiden be?"
Ahead of this young man, therefore, lies a challenge: he imagines a better, fuller life in terms of some heady (albeit mythical) romance, soundtracked to the hedonistic rhythms of a tub-thumping house track. Life, however, rarely allows for that freewheeling romance - and so the music's toned down. A lot. This, in other words, is romance composed in a bedroom - as opposed to any bathroom glamor, audible in the room next door.
Yarikimoto (Gamovo, near Perm)
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