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In the Russian D&B/dubstep scene, one of Moscow's up-and-coming names is that of Oleg Kazakov, shown below and known to local audiences as Polymorphic. Having released his first compositions through a US label in 2008, he has gone on to work increasingly with domestic projects and venues, specifically with the capital's Mako Records. Founded a couple of years ago, Mako hosts the kind of sounds that Kazakov advertises as "nuclear warfare for your ears." That metaphor of impending destruction will prove to be important - while Mako's logo above sets the same dramatic tone.
"Aggressive" would be a suitable adjective with which to begin.
Nuclear warfare for your ears
In a recent, absolutely minuscule interview that Mako put together for Mr. Kazakov, he managed - quite literally - ten words or so for an inquisitive English-language audience. More specifically, he attributed the initial appearance of his musical passions to the childhood discovery of a cassette player. His interest, however, had been piqued less by the machine's lo-fi sounds than by its internal operations. In order to discover more, he would take the mechanical elements apart. Pleasure, in other words, came from dissembling a perfectly adequate tool - and that same subversive spirit endures to this day.
Enjoyment is tied to the act of dismantling - or destruction, even. By way of illustration, we might note that in the same conversation, Kazakov claimed to have spent his pre-school years in prison, whilst dreaming one day of the chance to play live at various funerals. Hope, happiness, and a counter-productive wit go hand in hand.
Since neither reticence nor wisecracks will help us build an objective context for Polymorphic and Mako, we turn instead to a loyal - or at least garrulous - fan base. In the past, audience observations concerning these bass wizards have tended to gravitate around a few stable emphases. The first of them concerns the striking artwork employed by many Mako releases: "I haven't heard this music yet, but the cover looks really promising!" Volume is promoted with a strident style: understatement, therefore, is not to be expected.
That celebration of punchy, original graphics, however, is sometimes overshadowed by comparisons of Mako's output with related bass- and dubstep efforts from Western artists: "On one hand, this all looks pretty interesting - and entertaining, too - but on the other, we might have heard it all before..."
I haven't heard this music yet, but the cover looks really promising!
Which characteristics, in that case, might nudge domestic releases beyond the dangers of epigonism? "Make things more danceable - and individual!" A label already famous for its joyful celebration of chromatic and sonic excess is asked to go further still. Only through some kind or surfeit will Western standards be matched and/or surpassed.
"Individualism" and possible breakdown walk hand in hand.
What, conversely, needs to be avoided is: "The tendency to gather [haphazardly] a load of sounds or heavy-handed effects. They're often thrown together with an entire chorus of distortion, plus some tweaks and twiddles... Maybe people just want to outdo Prodigy with the dirtiest sounds possible - even if that means forgetting the music altogether." Despite these risks, Polymorphic's most widely-used logo speaks both to an international challenge and the need to reestablish some (wavering) sense of self-worth, given that the motif below is taken from the Soviet Union's 1980 Olympic Games.
This same "record-breaking" extremism, however, finds plenty of admirers. Virtually all the images uploaded from Kazakov's live shows involve the amazed, maybe troubled faces of clubgoers. The example offered below is one of the happier. In other words, pleasure and pain begin to merge under the influence of wall-wobbling basslines. When we looked at some other dubstep, grime, or D&B exponents last month, this same extremism came to the forefront of our attention.
At that time we noted there's an argument to be made - albeit a rather cynical one - that dubstep on occasion is less of a style than a form of brinkmanship. Given its structural similarities to drum and bass, dubstep has often run the danger of being pigeonholed as a quintessentially "male" style, driven by the (undying) challenge of louder and louder sounds - to the point of discomfort. This willful, even self-destructive form of musical posturing has long since given birth to some unwanted offshoots - such as "brostep."
Here the classic wobble-bass of dubstep is emphasized to the point of self-parody, yet without many of the super-low registers that allegedly made co-ed dancing unlikely.
Instead of embracing this more manageable form of bass music - and welcoming moderation! - dubstep's most ardent fans have dismissed it out of hand. Derogatory terms such as "mid-range cack" have not been uncommon. If pure dubstep is to endure - or even respect itself - it should, apparently, be incredibly loud and disconcertingly resonant. No middle ground has thus far been acceptable. This maximalist stance - against all logic, even - has long been evident in one of the most famous dubstep credos: "'If your chest ain't rattling, it ain't happening." Mainstream culture, say the purists, is always intent upon removing risk, danger, and excitement - in the name of profit.
If your chest ain't rattling, it ain't happening
A similar penchant for pure volume, not speech, is evident in the new recording from Yekaterinburg's SerJah500. His identity also remains a secret, over and above his Christian name, Sergei. This noiseless stance is justified by a quote he takes from the Zen-like Russian animation series, "Ezhi and Petruchio": "Not all things need to be designated by their names. On a certain level, you can get by without names altogether." A silent pose has now led to a new five-track EP, entitled "Out of Wood." It comes via Sub-Line Records, who are based in the same city.
Before we even begin, the associations of bass-heavy output with happily inverted norms are established once more. Everything's topsy-turvy.
Sub-Line was founded in 2009, the same time as Mako - originally as a series of hour-long podcasts, dedicated to the bass and dubstep scenes of Russia, Ukraine, and Estonia. Since the end of last year, however, matters have grown in scale. Sub-Line is now a fully-fledged netlabel.
Those same efforts have recently taken the form of an appealing compilation album, showcasing both local talent - such as Flakes428 - and a wide range of other folks. They come both from other Russian towns and neighboring Ukrainian dancefloors. Here we've chosen some representative material from Partyson (Kaluga) and a Ukrainian colleague Crim (Kiev). The album covers a great deal of aesthetic territory, too, moving far beyond the limitations of standard, growling D&B. Various styles are "tweaked and twiddled" in order to foreground lower, rumbling registers. Even the usually delicate, jazzy hip-hop instrumentals of Flakes428 are here colored by a bolder, ruder foundation.
By playing - ruthlessly - with the volume levels, flipping them up and down, Flakes428 manages to hide the bass. Tempted by snatches of rhythm guitar, we find ourselves craving(!) the warm, reassuring thump of some rhythmic building blocks. The raison d'etre of a track is brought to the fore - by dismantling or discarding everything else. Emphasis is reached through major reduction - or structural damage.
Placed side by side, the output and outlook(s) of Mako and Sub-Line sketch some common reasons for the appeal of dubstep, over and above any associations of the style with excess testosterone. The absence of vocals - if not speech overall - is one popular facet. Another is the application of shockingly low bass in order to somehow "outdo" Western competition. And, in (re)producing those potenitally destructive wavelengths, one has to wonder whether an element of masochism comes into play. The graphic tools employed by both labels certainly speak to a simultaneous experience of death(!), destruction, and display.
The broad, brave smile on the front of Mako's missile-logo implies that the pain threshold is set at dramatically high levels. The risk, however, is apparently worth it. Some UK dubstep forums have reported the benefits of these low notes! They range from the serious to the (extremely) silly. Here are some examples: "All cats purr at a very low frequency, between 20-25 Hz, which has been observed to promote bone and tendon growth." Or, elsewhere: "The bass was so heavy and raw, it actually moved one of my kidney stones. It floored me... True story. No joke."
If one, however, one were looking for a timeless, even metaphysical reason to suffer these body-bruising sounds, nothing trumps the following: "The low soundwaves actually bend the space-time fabric and make dubstep listeners live milliseconds longer than everyone else." Audiences in Moscow and Yekaterinburg are more than willing to try.
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