KLVKVA

Just a little note about one of the uncommon bands in the world. 18 years ago Eduard "Redt" Starkov, leader of "Химера" (Chimera) has commited suicide. I just want you guys to listen that band: there are really nothing to compare with them.

You know guys... there are some bands that had so much influence on your life, taste or whatever important abstractions that it's really hard to describe them to others (especially if you're not good at eloquence at all). But i should try this time :O

"Дубовый Гаайъ" * was found in late '80-early '90 and probably it was one of the first russian alternative rock groups. And i'm pretty sure they were the first whom started to use grim reality lyrics about heroin junkies, common murders, breakings, youth suicides, suburb depressions and other significant social thrash. Music usually was a mix of funk, psychedelic rock, grunge & hip-hop (which was rather unusual regarding to another alternative rock bands during early ninetieths such as "Югендштиль" and  "Химера"). Someone could call it rapcore, but it wasn't too much "core". Compared to other bands which sang about different decadent things or USSR dethronement enough nicely these guys was really earth-shattering bastards with dirty lyrics, misbehaviour & different dope addictions. Band is rather known to stakeholders for particulation of Dolphin — one of the most unusual modern russian musicians.

They sounds like you started day with drop your only piece of hash. Then you was beaten by fuckers within an inch of your life when you went out to buy a cigarettes. Aaand you complete this wonderful day finding your girlfriend dead from overdose of muddy desomorphine.

Guys released two damn cool albums: "Stop Killing Dolphins" and "Синяя лирика №2" in 1993 — i guess you won't have problems with finding both (there also was super-rare 1000 limited demo "Суицидальное диско" which is unreal to find and rehearsal demo "К.А.М.А.-З" released under an Dolphin name in 2002).

After disbanding in 1996 two no less noteworthy than "Дубовый Гаайъ" bands were formed: IDM/Electronic "Alien Pat. Holman" (which released some of their albums as "Дубовый Гаайъ" because of terms of the treaty with record company) and ideal continuation of "ДуГа" — "Мишины дельфины" but i surely will write about them next time.

Late soviet & early russian music scene is enough teem with mad sick bands. I had knew that "Апрельский Марш" (bands name is a play on words — "April March" — which doesn't imply the same meaning in Russian, but still sounds pretty impressive) played psychedelic rock (the style that i usually don't give a fuck) and i never get around to listen them carefully till now. I like their "Голоса" hit a lot , but random listening to their early stuff didn't gave me any reason to proceed with "unearthing deep".

And today I accidentally found this one:

The broken and chaotic track "Люди мира" by strange forgotten moscow band "Николай Коперник". Song released in 1985 on cassette album "Родина" (which was re-released on CD in 2005). Whole album is unexpectebly super fuckin' awesome and very non-typical for whole soviet music scene. I'd like to write a post in near future about that band & album, so stay tuned!

Haha, i'm currently in process of discovering Great Вишня talent, so here is another one song from "Танцы на битом стекле" LP — "Ты не пришла" *. I especially enjoy the lyrics, but after some attempts to write song meaning i decided to share a "spooky" handicraft clip which probably could help you to understand a song's drama.

Oh yes, the 40 seconds initial period is a caption & theme song of TV show "Музыкальный телефон" (also performed by Вишня).

Oh, sorry for long calm within KLVKVA. Here is one nice song by Алексей Вишня (Aleksey Vishnya) to clear the air. The song called "Танцы на битом стекле"* and it was released on similar titled LP on "Мелодия" at 1991. I like the way pop music and madness were combined in that tune. Enjoy please!

Вишня is probably one of the key persons in soviet new wave music, so i'll recur to him in future by all means.

As far as i know it was May 2008 time and my band played first concert on clumsy punk-rock related party at terryfing club called "UNDERGROUND" (mostly known to everybody as "TUNNEL"). Nevermind. 

Let skip the all boring details of that event. There was a one brilliant thing amazed me a lot - crust-punk band called "くろしみ -ミゼリー-Kuroshimi -Misery-". I'd called them "fairly usual obscure d-beat" but... they sang in japanese and used haiku as lyrics. Don't you think thats rather unusual for Russia? I'd say that's fuckin' unbelievable by half!

So here it is, the very first post in KLVKVA — a blog about the most strange & obscure russian music. I guess lot of people outside Russia heard something about "Кино" or "Аквариум" for example but it rarely goes deeply. Well, i can say a lot of people in Russia didn't hear so much local bands — same "Кино" and "Аквариум" + 2-3 popular dinosaur bands.

Well, i never liked russian music much, cause most of local well known bands is actually an ordeal for my ears. There is a special term to guard normal people from this kind of music — "Russian rock". Term "Russian rock" presupposes an availability of some main components:

Spirituality — just imagine the drunk kolhoznik Ivan who is reflecting on the Meaning Of Life. That's it.

Slovenliness — slovenliness is an anarchy. And its good for a rebel image.

Lousy (and sometimes hoarse) voice — that means that artist love folks and crave for identify himself with people. You know, homely folks and stuff. So i can draw a conclusion: poor voice=to be closer to The People.

Enormous Quantity of Using an Acoustic Guitar — that came from bards and taken root for some reason.

There are much more distinctive features, but ones that indicated above are primary. It are these features which do music crappy.

Let me cite an example:

Well, up to a certain time i thought that most russian rock is something like song mentioned above. And every new band i found out was reaffirmed my apprehension. It goes on until i visited a concert of local band "X-Bat" sometime in 2003/2004. That guys gave hope to me.

They were totally goth at that time and theirs music was too simple, but they were kinda good alive and well.. they have a pretty monotonous melodies. And they were so darkwave. Two songs were especially  sick — "Человек из сна" and "Цветущий сад". In the sequel they became more psychedelic/ebm-like and neat but i assume that there were no recordings. Unfortunatelly X-Bat didn't release anything, so the only available tracks are from some doubtful bootleg which you can grab here. The shit can be found a pain for your ears if you don't stand pathetic darkwave at all. :D

I surely must say sorry for my poor english. I hope that all my unceasing mistakes would attach a necessary national colour to posts.