|
The Yankees of Moor are from Minsk, Belarus and openly declare themselves to be an "independent collective." That adjective takes on the specific meaning it had in the UK twenty years ago - both aesthetically and politically. In other words, DIY songwriting and a vigorous, left-leaning agenda are foregrounded. Should we have any doubt about this band's happy debt to that tradition, the members themselves write: "The Yankees produce a cocktail of genuine rock music and other aspects of that same culture - in the Western sense."
The major ideological statement on show, however, appears to be that of insistent apoliticism. Live shows are accompanied by the jumping, dreadlocked figure of "Jack" - who helps to insure that any sense of "tedium on society's edge" is forgotten on a hedonistic dancefloor.
Our songs come without a happy ending. Listeners can decide how things turn out...
The Yankees released a debut EP less than a year ago, made of songs "without a happy ending. Listeners can decide themselves how things turn out." Put differently, the outside world does a relatively poor job of providing any satisfying conclusions to private narratives. As a result, it's probably better to shun inferior story lines with a few beers and some snappy dance moves. Aimlessness is preferable to a dead end.
A second release in March 2011 was "dedicated to people who've discovered that the world and its population are not what they expected. Society's ideals make no sense to those folks." The most recent publication from the band, offered here, is called "Escape." Made from the (impolite) radio conversations of local police, the song "reflects the spirit of social oppression we've all encountered [at home]. Or, at the very least, it's something we've heard about. We just want to say that there will be some light at the end of the tunnel..."
Our generation is already tired of all the lies we hear on TV
A few more trenchant observations can be found elsewhere: "Our generation is already tired of all the lies we hear on TV. We're tired of the stagnation that endures beneath a cloud of lofty rhetoric."
This sense of cynicism or growing despair leads, not surprisingly, to other - more extreme - forms of expression. In that light, it's interesting to consider the work of Dmitrii Peitsch, frontman for Moscow sludge-and art-rock outfit, Motherfathers. Of late, Peitsch has moved from (abused) guitars to even harsher forms of noise, sometimes through collaborations with electronic kingpin Alexei Borisov. Those shifts from strings to plugs and pedals already take place in a number of side-projects, such as Iad (Poison).
His most recent forms of discord and feedback come under the name of Ninja Glam, specifically after a mid-July festival in the capital that was called "Shum i Iarost'" (Sound and Fury). Some garish, poorly cut, and unfocused artwork with live recordings from that event now leads us to expect both grand spectacle and mild disorientation.
The choice of that title for a festival of experimental (and extreme) music brings, of course, two reference points to mind. First and foremost, it suggests Faulkner's novel - which in turn leads us back to the famous lines from "Macbeth": "[Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, [yet] signifying nothing." Taken at face value, those allusions prompt us to believe that the very raison d'etre of politicized songwriting is fading fast. Protest songs, being essentially pointless, become instead the sounds of protest, pure and simple.
Debate becomes discord.
...full of sound and fury, [yet] signifying nothing
Hence, too, the movement of Mr. Peitsch's catalog towards more dramatic forms of wandering, wanton feedback and an increasing tendency to see society's excess in terms of lewd, sexualized violence. Titles such as "F***ing a Car," "Kalalishnikov Aroma," and so forth set the general tone.
The title of the new EP is, therefore, more than deceptive - and sarcastic, too.
A similar downward path towards civic cacophony is noticeable in new recordings from a couple of already-noisy outfits: "Klad Yada" ("Poison Trove" in English, perhaps) and Dya (of whom we've written before). Both have connections to the Russian city of Togliatti and the work of musician/painter Mikhail Lezin. His work often maps a slow breakdown from lo-fi rock instrumentals to pure electric tension; guitar chords are manipulated to the point where they eventually become long, drone-like textures, bordering on white noise.
Lezin's artwork does a fine job of expressing that interplay of structure and disarray in wholly visual terms.
Mr. Lezin completed his school years within the Soviet Union and therefore had direct experience of its painful exit from "purposeful," civic evolution. He started experimenting with visual forms around 1988, at which point Soviet society was undoubtedly in tatters. Lezin took particular inspiration from the formal, fin de siecle radicalism of absurdist poet Kruchenykh and the Revolutionary graphic artist Malevich.
He was still a teenager at this time: "I was taking it all in. During those years, however, everything was so chaotic. There was no kind of social structure in Russia that might allow people to create a proper place of higher education in the arts." In short, he taught himself.
The absence of that purpose today informs both of these recordings. The roots of Klad Yada actually go back to the early 1990s, when Lezin was working with playwright Iurii Klavdiev - but only now has a series of recordings appeared. The most notable of them is - in translation - entitled "Hydrocarbons" - and it comes with a seemingly (or tragically) ironic image as a commentary upon modern fuels and chemical "industry."
The other project of Dya has an equally long heritage. Even in the early 1990s, Mr. Lezin was referring to it as a "psychedelic-noise project, working along several specific trajectories: pure noise, electro-acoustic compositions, and sound experiments created with select tools." This joyfully shambolic response to prior law and order wasted no time in going public. Using the youth club of local auto-maker VAZ, the band set up jam sessions throughout 1991. These gelled in a 30-minute album that was committed to tape. That same tape, however, was quickly mislaid; to this day, nobody has any idea where it might be. Performing and archiving practices were less than organized in the wake of socialist media.
...pure noise, electro-acoustic compositions, and sound experiments
And, as we know, some members of Russian society would hold today that nothing has changed. These Togliatti ensembles all imply that the most accurate expression or reflection of social reality would be bedlam. Even our classic Belarusian protest or indie-rockers step back from anything regarding a manfesto, since they associate a wholly political or ideologized life with absurdity. One, after all, cannot counter illogicality with a rational agenda.
For that reason, the more lyrical texts we hear from Dya (penned and performed by Tat'iana Povaliaeva, below) come in specific forms. Not only is her happy face colored in yellow(ing) tones that suggest impending obsolescence; her voice on the album is almost drowning in echo and reverb. Lyricism, as a result, sounds humbly from the middle of nowhere. Or the bottom of a well.
And so we turn to Kobyla (or, to give the Moscow musicians most of their full name in translation: "The Mare and Corpse-Eyed Toads"). Although their latest outing is, with marked common sense, referred to simply as "Number Ten," there are few signs of quantifiable law and order outside the studio. The ensemble's trademark absurdism persists: we're offered at least five alternative titles in the sleeve notes! - plus the freedom to fantasize about a sixth, seventh, or beyond. We can call the album whatever we like: apparently it makes no difference.
There are several techniques here - such as the use of woefully cheap drum pads - which suggest that Kobyla are referencing the toolbox of a Russian songwriter in the late 1980s. Modern observations are being made about the past. Those (quickly outmoded) instruments, even now, are redolent of late socialist music-making at a time of supposed promise. Rock musicians dreamed of social change; pop performers of mass appeal. Judging, however, by the endless, insistent nonsense we hear from this band, nothing has changed. Progress was (and is) thwarted by the kind of "stagnation" mentioned in Minsk.
What can I do if the same ideas keep repeating [in these songs]?
We're warned that several poetic motifs keep returning or repeating as a result: "Yeah, I know. We've got two songs on the same theme here. They're both about some 'tiny dinosaurs' that've gone missing. But what can I do if the same ideas keep repeating? Must be my hang-ups, I guess." Various cyclical, even obsessive patterns take precedence over progress.
One again - this time visually - individual expression is positioned against nothingness. And goal-driven practice is replaced by vicious circles.
One of the "dinosaur" songs from Kobyla throws that viewpoint into bold focus: "Hussar's Day." In suitably nonsensical fashion, we're informed that the appearance and disappearance of an archaeopteryx(!) is tied to the calendar, specifically to each and every September. In the meanwhile, other fragments of text speak about horses operating as company directors, elephants as teachers, and some bison that keep following people into canteens... From that point onwards the ratio of logic to lunacy tips heavily in favor of the latter.
In much of this music, therefore, even though some concrete, purposeful traditions of Russian and/or Western rock are referenced, there's a sense that daily life operates rather differently at home. Musical styles may have come and gone, each with its cherished intentions, but some destructively bestial aspect of local experience remains frustratingly, even mercilessly illogical. The sounds of coherent debate and/or protest therefore tumble into both sound and fury.
One of the photographs on offer from Togliatti draws a visual or architectural parallel. Against a backdrop of dead-straight streets and angular civic architecture we see a small, private kiosk offering to repair car tires. Below that DIY sign are a number of animal terms, including "sable," "carp," and "cat." Tentative industry, already falling apart, is replaced by the (returning presence) of muddy flora and fauna; exit humans, enter the animals.
The process is both inevitable and yet inexplicable. Whatever the case, it's noisy and brutish.
Comments
Login / Register