Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Сонанс - "Шагреневая кожа" [1980]

Artist: Сонанс
Title: Шагреневая кожа
Genre: Art Rock
Country: USSR
Release date: 1980

Track List:
  1. Встреча
  2. Дискомания
  3. Честный парень
  4. Маленький сюрприз
  5. Песня о Любви (Шагреневая кожа)
For the sake of historical completeness, here's the band where Nastya Poleva made her debut as a singer, when she was a student of Sverdlovsk Institute of Architecture (her voice can be heard in the last track of this album). It was formed circa 1975 and split up shortly after this album was recorded. The name "Sonance" is probably was intented to be antonymous to "dissonance", although I'm not sure.

Normally I don't listen to this sort of old school rock, but this is an interesting release with a significant historical value. The track names suggest it to be just another standard pop-rock release of these times, but in fact it's art rock influenced by ELP, Yes, Sergey Prokofiev and the Europan classical music of early XX century. The quality of recording isn't that bad considering the circumstances (say thanks to Alexander "Colonel" Gnoevykh, the best sound producer in Urals' underground rock scene of that time, who managed to get an acceptable quality of sound using quite primitive equipment). This album was largely unnoticed at home (and their live performance at a local rock festival in 1978 was met with little enthusiasm too), but it received some attention abroad (I've heard it was aired on BBC, but I'm not sure if it's true).

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