Unsurprisingly, I find the experimental electronic part of Yuri Morozov's vast discography much more interesting than his blues rock albums that he was primarily famous for (and not only because it's much "darker" in terms of atmosphere it creates). This album, recorded in the second part of 1970s, consists of 5 untitled instrumental tracks of synthesizer improvisation with some psychedelic rock elements mixed in.
Unsurprisingly again, this album is/was unpopular in the mainstram rock community, but it seems to be highly valued among the fans of more experimnetal stuff. I even have seem it being compared to Throbbing Gristle by industrial fans, and to Henry Cow and Aksak Maboul by RIO fans. Of course I won't go that far - after all, it was recorded just for personal satisfaction by a guy who managed to get his hands on a synthesizer and professtional recording equipment. I highly doubt he could know about any of the aforementioned bands at the time, but nevertheless, I have to agree that the material on this album strangely resemble a lot of much better known experimental music from the mid-1970s.
Yuri Morozov's name is largely unknown to modern Russian rock fans, but he was a cult figure during the 1970s, mainly because he was one of the first to record several proper rock albums in the USSR. He started his first band in late 1969 when he lived in North Ossetia, but his early works were far from rock music - it was mostly acoustic singer-songwriter stuff usual for the 1960s Soviet independent music scene. Three years later, he started to work at a Melodia studio in Leningrad as a sound engineer. So, he was lucky to have access to the professional recording equipment, which enabled him to record several albums in good quality (if you really want to know how awful most amateur recordings from that time were, check out this or this).
In the early 1980s he became increasingly religious and quite reclusive in his lifestyle. During the late 1980s Russian rock boom he formed a new band which wasn't particularly successful. Until his death in 2006, he worked mostly as a sound engineer and a writer, yet he's now remembered mostly as a multi-instrumentalist and a pioneer of Soviet rock.
His discography is quite vast, consisting of 50 or so albums, ranging from psychedelic rock and hard rock to electronic/ambient. This album is his best known work, recorded at his workplace in 1976 and released on tape in 1977. The vocals for a couple of songs, which had some "risky" lyrics, were recorded at home. Lines like "I'm a cretin and I love it!" would indeed fit into the lyrics of any early punk band quite well, but as a whole, this album is fairly typical psychedelic/hard rock of the early 1970s. It is also noticeably different in tone from his early recordings, which were more lighthearted, with fairly inoffensive lyrical topics of the "wine, women and songs" variety, while this one is much gloomier, with a prominent theme of death and suicide; the topics of spirituality and non-conformism are also present. Overall, this album might be nothing special by the measures of the Western rock scene of that time, but it was a breakthrough for the Soviet rock scene, and it certainly doesn't deserve to be forgotten. Enjoy:
Here'sthe one and only solo album of Igor Len, a Moscow Conservatory-educated composer and sound producer who was an important member of Николай Коперник. His music can quite fairly be termed "dark ambient" with its depressive atmosphere unusual for most early Soviet electronic music. Anyway, he had a luxury of having his album released on vinyl by Melodia in 1989. It contains material from two his earlier demo tapes, dedicated to the works of Arseny & Andrey Tarkovsky. Download link for the MP3 rip shamelessly stolen from this blog (which I already have credited several times on here):
Named in honour of Nicholaus Copernicus, this band was formed in 1981 by Moscow-based composers Yuri Orlov and Igor Len. Their music has very little in common with what's usually called "Russian rock", and to be honest, that's a good thing. They released only one full-length album on tape in 1986, and one more 7'' officially released by Melodia in 1988-89, but these releases were good enough to earn them a cult status in the Moscow underground scene. The band reformed in 2005 and released a new album (which is very good as well) in 2012.
As far as I know, they had chances to work with such musicians was Peter Gabriel and Frank Zappa, but they never became a particularly well-known band - likely because their music was too experimental for an average Russian rock listener. This album isn't an exception, yet the level of songwriting on it is well above many much better known Soviet rock bands. Interestingly enough, there's even a song dedicated to one small tribe in the far Northeastern Siberia that not everyone knows about :)
"Дурное Влияние (Bad Influence) was a Russian coldwave
band featuring members from earlier band projects Механический Балет
and Монумент Страха. The band released their debut album Неподвижность
(Immobility) in 1989" (last.fm)
As far as I know, they were one of the most influental Soviet post-punk bands of that time, and they're widely credited as one of the first Russian gothic rock bands. The band existed from November 1987 to the summer of 1990 (according to other sources, 1991), and made a reunion during 2011-12. Their only full-length album was recorded in November 1989 at a home studio in Peterhof. The quality of production is unsurprisingly poor, but isn't it something to be expected from an obscure 80's post-punk band?..
Named after the best known work by Gustav Meyrink, Der Golem was a short-lived project formed by Roman Sidorov (Старуха Мха, Sedativ, Fatal) and Dmitry Zubov (Hypnoz, Zuboff Sex Shop) in a small town near Moscow. They have released two albums during 1999-2000, the first one (which is presented here) being mainly post-punk, while the second one is mostly industrial noise/drone.
Roman Sidorov committed suicide in September 2003, and Dmitry Zubov died in October 2011. Their legacy was mostly unknown beyond the most committed fans of underground music, until Der Golem was rediscovered by hipsters in early 2010s. Anyway, "Zmet" is very good (if not a masterpiece) and certainly doesn't deserve to be forgotten. The opening track, in particular, is one of the most depressive compositions I've heard in my life (and I've listened to quite a lot of depressive music)...
This band was formed in 1986 in Magadan of all places. Even this very remote town in the Soviet Far East was experiencing a rock music "boom" at the time, and the local bands were known for their quite specific guitar sound. Initially, M:A were playing glam rock and something that was described by A.Kushnir as "some unknown sort of grunge", but this particular album sounds like typical post-punk/new wave from the 80s (not surprising, since the Magadan scene of that time was strongly influenced by such bands as Japan and Talking Heads).
The whole tape was recorded during 3 days in Moscow on a professional 24-channel tape recorder, and the quality of production is very good for a Soviet post-punk band. The best track on the whole album is undoubtedly #4, which would be a very fitting theme song for the late perestroika times. Interestingly, the band still exist in some form, although their Facebook page isn't very active.
Here's a quite curious discovery I made just yesterday. I've never heard of this band before, but their sound is surprisingly close to that of the much better known industrial rock and no-wave bands of the 80s, to the point of being hard to believe it was recorded in Saint Petersburg (which was still called Leningrad back then).
According to Discogs, it was "recorded in February 1991 by Andrei 'Teacher' Nikolaev at Y.K.Home, Saint Petersburg. Edition of 30 copies". Apparently there were at least two more band members, one of which played such unconventional instruments as an electric saw and various metal objects. The end result is slow and repetitive post-punk/noise rock with distorted vocals. There's at least one more release from them, recorded in 1989-90, which I definitely will search for.
Yes, that's a school band that would later (around 1981) become Облачный Край. It was recorded by S.Bogaev, O.Rautkin and the Lyskovski brothers when they all were in their teens. The only instruments they had back then were an acoustic guitar, a homemade 3-string bass, and a toy keyboard called "Mickey" (not counting various so-called "percussion" such as saucers and garbage cans). Strangely enough, the end result turned out to be much more listenable that you'd expect (at least listening to it isn't going to cause ear death, contrary to what the band's name would suggest). However, these tracks were never properly released until 2009, when this album (more like a collection of rehearsal demos) was included in the band's anthology.
This is a "supergroup" formed by some of the biggest figures in the Siberian punk scene (namely Egor Letov, Oleg "Manager" Sudakov and Konstantin "Kuzya UO" Ryabinin) in 1988. By that time, all kind of Russian rock already have broke into the mainstream, but Letov and his friends weren't happy about their sudden popularity at all. That was the main reason as to why their sound became more and more experimental by the end of 1980s, culminating in this project, which is considered by many people to be one of the first industrial rock bands in USSR/Russia.
They have recorded two albums in 1989 and 1990, the first of which has gained a cult status in the underground music circles. Well, here it is, and it is definitely not the stuff for everyone. It's full of absurd lyrics sang in many different styles, from spoken word samples to aggressive schrieking, combined with the noisy wall of guitar sound. Truly something that only could be conceived and recorded in the atmosphere of late perestroika in the USSR. Not an easy listen for sure - but it wasn't intended to please the listener, after all.
