Dvar - "Raii (demo)" [1997]

Artist: Dvar

Title: Raii

Genre: Darkwave, Experimental Electronic

Country: Russia

Release date: 1997

Track List:

1. Ir
2. Laali
3. Schraii
4. Ud Rah
5. Khadash
6. Hwhy 

Dvar are a good example of a meme band that eventually became much more successful than many completely serious bands in their genre. The story of Dvar started very much like the stories of many other outsider music projects: their homemade demo cassettes were distributed anonymously under the premise of "esoteric" qualities of the music. This demo, for example, was said to cause a negative influence on the lives of its listeners - which is BS of course, but who knows?.. Anyway, happy April Fools' Day, and don't be afraid to check "Raii" out:

Download

The members of Dvar remain anonymous, but it's suspected that they're from well-known bands. In the cover art, they are represented by humanoid bees:

• General Bee - vocals, drums, tabla, percussion, 8-bit sampling
• Bee Warrior - keyboards, organs, vibraphones, horns, Commodore 64, Atari ST controller
• Bee Girl (2008 - 2009) - tastiere, theremin, loops,  additional vocals

At the time when "Raii" was recorded, the band was apparently a duo. Here's the one and only known photo which is allegedly of them:

According to their interviews, "Dvar" is the name of a supernatural entity that actually writes all of the band's music and lyrics, which are in a made-up language based on Hebrew. Leaving aside all these bizarre stories, the music of Dvar is indeed quite unusual. While it'd be fair enough to label it as darkwave, the presence of weird screeching vocals gives a strange "black metal"-ish feel to it. While it's hard to take Dvar seriously, they have been a surprisingly popular and long-running project that has released quite a few albums during 1995-2012. Some of them can be found here, btw (my personal favourite is "Taai Liira").