Stim Axel: Russia's Kosheen?

The new album by vocal drum & bass duo Stim Axel has just been released: "On the Radio Waves" (Na radiovolnakh).  The outfit consists of female vocalist Loona and her male colleague on keyboards or programming, Telly.  Stim Axel promote themselves as Russia's leading vocal D&B outfit, which is justified, given the general tendency of the genre to avoid vocals.

D&B is designed for clubs, not for minuscule speakers in the comfort of one's living room.  The sheer physicality of the style, together with its high bpm means that it has often cultivated a certain snobbery, both in Russia and the West.

Together with other, unjustified taboos in Russia, leading for example to the lack of female rappers, D&B is supposedly to be heard in a club and without vocals, which simply "soften or weaken" the sound.

As a result, one very rarely hears D&B on primetime radio: it's too fast and too pushy.  Crossover projects do exist, but usually find that because they sit between genres, formats, and prejudices, they're often ignored.  Listeners lack a clear framework in which to assess them.

In that context, one of the best parallels here would be with Bristol's Kosheen.  The band enjoyed particular success at the start of the decade with a radio-friendly melange of trip-hop (already a local staple) and D&B grooves, to which was added the voice of Welsh songstress Sian Evans.

The success of Kosheen, though, came at the expense of their street cred; the same could be said of Stim Axel.  In interviews the band have admitted they weather a fair amount of criticism from online purists.

The band was founded in 2005, by which time the strict formats of many Russian radio stations had already fossilized.  Early material was released on compilations, often in collaboration with Radio Record, one of the nation's few radio stations that would accept a D&B release with open arms.

In fact Radio Record declared Stim Axel "Discovery of the Year" in 2006.

The desire to at least introduce D&B to a wider audience, rather than remain within the self-imposed constraints of elitism, is perhaps understandable when we consider the activities of Loona and Telly before playing together as musicians.  Their previous experiences were very much of a world away from music, and - as a result - much more representative of widespread normalcy!

Telly in his school years had considered professional sports, since he reached the highest level possible as a pre-college swimmer.  Music was only a hobby.  Swimming was then abandoned in favor of a level-headed choice for university: Chemical Engineering, specifically in the fields of oil and gas.  A very promising career for a young man in Russia, especially today.

He even went into business - albeit as the manager of a pizzeria.  Music refused to leave him in peace, though, and so oil, gas, and Italian cuisine were all placed to one side.

Loona has equally broad experience of the modern job market, perhaps at a slightly less established level.  She worked in various offices as a secretary, together with related forays into high cuisine: she was employed for a while at MacDonalds.

All the while, in a somewhat more purposeful manner than Telly, she simultaneously entered a series of singing competitions.  She even received an invitation to perform in the high-flying Russo-Baltic competition, New Wave, which we have covered on this site several times.  That event would have guaranteed her national, primate TV exposure in various sub-genres of MOR pop.

She turned that down in favor of Stim Axel.  The ease with which Loona shifted from pop to D&B says a great deal about the band's desire to break through the condescension or snobbery that so often stops Russian groups from accepting any kind of crossover platform.  Edgier, more challenging outfits will frequently refuse to play on certain TV or radio stations, simply because of the unhip aura surrounding a particular media outlet.

The name of Stim Axel's new, very slickly produced album speaks clearly to a different, more flexible approach.  They keep the rough, rumbling bass of serious D&B, together with crisp breaks, yet interweave it all with vocals designed for small radios at 3pm, rather than cavernous clubs at 3am.  Russia's swimming pools and pizzerias may have suffered, but its pop music has certainly gained.