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Post by jk on Mar 26, 2022 9:37:21 GMT -5
Without further ado, here is the iconic video that started me (and, it would seem, countless others) down this fascinating road: Well. I had long toyed with the idea of launching a thread on this topic but kept postponing it as being too specialized and simply not interesting. Then I thought of previous, utterly outlandish threads of mine and decided this one may actually have some genuine appeal! It has absolutely nothing to do with the current tragic events -- indeed, the late-ish '80s were a time of great promise in what was then still the USSR, when bands began looking to the West for newer role models, often among the synth-drenched likes of Depeche Mode in the UK and Kraftwerk in Germany. If nothing else, you can regard this thread as a companion piece to that other topic of mine, 1980s pop from former Yugoslavia. If uploader Dronemf S. was my guide in matters of Ex-YU darkwave and synthwave, this time round, at least to start with, it's uploader Oleg Parastaev (1958–2020), one of the two keyboard players in the classic lineup of Alyans (Alliance, Альянс) and the brain behind that band's greatest successes, most notably "Na zare" -- at dawn. Here he is in heart-warming conversation with uploader Dimixer, mere months before Parastaev's death aged 61. The subtitles are just enough to get the gist of the interview across: |
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Post by jk on Mar 26, 2022 17:20:10 GMT -5
Here's a second look at the song in the thread title, this time in an English-language video through the eyes of musician and synth pop freak Stephen Paul Taylor: The following is my slightly tweaked version of part of the accompanying blurb: "The author of both music and lyrics is Oleg Parastaev, keyboardist of the band 'Alliance'. Written in 1987, the song was recorded in record time (four hours) and was mixed the next day at the Studio of Muslim Magomayev by sound engineer Igor Zamaraev. It originally appeared on the 1987 album Alliance 87. According to the editorial board of the music site Sounds.ru, this is the song most people associate with the band. "In March 1987, the * official video for the song* was shot in the freezing cold grounds of Tsaritsyno Palace in Moscow. The clip was shown once at night on a TV show in the spring of 1987, but was soon lost. The digital version of the video was uploaded to YouTube on 5 April 2019 on Oleg Parastaev's channel. During that day, the clip gained about five hundred thousand views, after which the channel was blocked. On 9 April, the channel was restored and as of 26 March 2022 the clip has gained over 11 million views." Alyans wasn't a one-song act. This is the thrilling "Give Fire!”: |
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Post by jk on Mar 27, 2022 12:57:43 GMT -5
"The collaboration between [singer/guitarist Igor] Zhuravlev and [keyboardist Oleg] Parastaev lasted until 1988, falling apart when Zhuravlev decided to radically change the sound of the group towards rock music, which Parastaev, who planned to continue working in the spirit of new wave, opposed. He would leave the band to start his own project, 'New Russian Group' ('NRG')." [ Source] The album linked * here* combines what would seem to be the best of both bands, Alyans and NRG. It was new to me that Parastaev started NRG, and so soon after Alyans's finest hour. Odd, really, as side one of the LP is devoted to the later band. These are New Russian Group with the album opener, "Disturbing Dreams": |
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Post by jk on Mar 28, 2022 15:23:21 GMT -5
Before we leave the iconic mimed performance of "Na zare", there’s always this irreverent take on the video. I really don't know what to think of bloggers who tear other people's work to shreds, however much humour they throw into it. (I once saw a similarly damning but singularly unfunny blog review of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky.) In this still from the video, regrettably labelled "russian-weirdo3" by said blogger, we see singing along in the audience a huge Alyans fan, Alexander Yakovlev, and members of his then band Bioconstructor, which judging from their outfits must have been formed by then:  It turns out Alexander's voice is a lot deeper than that of Alyans's Igor Zhuravlev, as can be judged from these shaky copies of 1988 promo clips by Andrey (or maybe Mikhail) Makarenkov of what would appear to have been singles released by Bioconstructor in 1987/88, "Teleturizm" and "Bioconstructor". They illustrate the group's leanings in the direction of Kraftwerk but with a stiff dose of Russian melancholy thrown in. It seems neither clip was ever aired at the time: |
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Post by jk on Mar 29, 2022 15:27:37 GMT -5
So much of the information about these artists is in Russian, too much to dip into at random and get translated. This two-part English-language blog essay on Alexander Yakovlev (second from right) and his music ( here and here) is fairly informative, as is the information on this Discogs page on Bioconstructor (it will need expanding). Once again, I'm hoping I'm being fed the right information here but this, apparently, is Bioconstructor's (to these ears excellent) 1989 album Демонстрация силы техники, which if my spies have got it right translates as "Demonstration of the Power of Technology” (it contains the two tracks linked last time): www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nf8iPurxFDn9tvMq6xY8xW3IdYcIlixK8 As for success, it seems Yakovlev’s wife, the model and singer Olga Voskonyan, had more of it in the late '80s with a song called “Автомобили” (Cars), which has become something of a Russian disco classic, with music by her husband and lyrics by Yuri Shestakov. To quote her channel, the video was compiled from the TV programme Это вы можете. Аукцион, aired in 1989 and Olga V's performance at the "Interchance" festival in November of that year: |
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Post by jk on Mar 31, 2022 5:16:37 GMT -5
First off this time, my apologies to anyone who speaks or understands Russian for any inconsistencies or errors that may have crept into this thread, wholly reliant as I am on the internet for my information. Well, Bioconstructor imploded when Alexander’s fellow travellers left en masse to form the more pop-oriented and commerically successful Technology (Технология, see link below). All the same, Bioconstructor is held in higher esteem as a pioneer of Russian synthpop. Yakovlev would soon break surface again with the longer-lived group BIO, which is still active after various changes of lineup (more on BIO and the ambient project Geotronika later). "Странные танцы" (Strannye tantsy = Strange dances) is the third track on Technology's 1991 debut album Все, Что Ты Хочешь!!! (Vsyo, chto ty khochesh = All that you want). The video's 16 million hits gives some idea of how popular this band was, and still is. I confess I prefer what Yakovlev does. Linked here to give some idea of what Technology looked like in action, "Сигнал" (Signal) opens side two of their 1993 album Рано-Или-Поздно (Rano ili Pozdno = Sooner or later): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_(band) |
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Post by jk on Apr 1, 2022 9:08:38 GMT -5
And now for a slight detour... Кино (Kino, as in film or cinema) is generally considered the greatest Russian rock band of all time and their front man Viktor Tsoi (1962–1990) as the most charismatic of all Russian pop stars with a devoted following to this day throughout the former Soviet Union. They deserve a mention here for that reason alone. The synth strings in "Бошетунмай" (Boshetunmay) from Kino's 1998 album Группа крови ("blood type/blood group") remind me of that Lenny Kravitz take (whatever it's called) on the late-sixties Isley Brothers sound. Despite discussions raging online for years, fuelled by Tsoi's own obfuscations on the matter, the meaning of the word "Boshetunmay" is as obscure as ever (see here for some suggestions): From that same 1998 album, this is the title track as performed live by Viktor Tsoi and a lineup of Kino whose flamboyant stand-up drummer was Georgy Guryanov (1961–2013), later a famous artist whose works command high prices these days: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_(band) |
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Post by jk on Apr 2, 2022 4:54:02 GMT -5
For a welcome change of pace (literally), here is a two-part evening walk along the Moskva River in more peaceful times, set to music by Alexander Yakovlev's solo ambient project Geotronika. The music in part one (which takes a little while to settle) is "Love Of Life"… …and in the longer part two "Splash Zoom (Electronic Version)" followed by "Andromeda". All three tracks are from Geotronika's 2020 album Hypnosis of Happiness: |
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Post by jk on Apr 23, 2022 9:39:15 GMT -5
As a provisional thread closer (I may jump in with videos from the Biogroup channel from time to time), this is A. Yakovlev sans Bioconstructor (although I’m sure it was recorded with them) singing "Э.В.М." (which I'm informed simply means PC) in Moscow at, to tweak the video info, a concert in Ostankino TV Technical Centre as part of the Jurmala Festival 1988. Nice to see a rare smile from Alexander at the end: Lastly, to complete the circle with my thread of darkwave/synthwave stuff from former Yugoslavia ( here), this is my main ex-Yu man, uploader Dronemf S., with a track I'd often seen when scouring his channel for things but had always passed over -- until now. From 1987, these are Bioconstructor with "Bjurokrat", one of their best songs in my view: |
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Post by jk on Apr 25, 2022 4:27:16 GMT -5
Never say lastly, I suppose. Completing another circle, this is "Снежинки летят" (snowflakes are flying) performed by Olga Voskonyan & BIO, here in the Geotronika Mix in a wintry video premiered last year. Ms Voskonyan wrote the lyrics to music by the late Oleg Parastaev, the portly keyboard player in the "Na Zare" video who masterminded Alyans's career for a while: music.metason.net/artistinfo?name=Ольга%20Восконьян |
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Post by jk on Sept 29, 2022 6:56:28 GMT -5
Never say lastly, I suppose. Too true, JK. Well this is not synth-pop and it dates from long after the Soviet era, but it seems appropriate to link it here. Anyway, surely most if not all more recent Russian pop/rock is influenced in some way by what happened in the U.S.S.R., musically or otherwise. "When They Find You" (Когда Они Тебя Найдут) is the penultimate track in uploader Truckfighter's magnificent 1 Hour Of Melancholic Sovietwave 2nd Mix. Камни or Kamni (meaning Stones) is a psychedelic/stoner doom trio from Moscow. The lineup in 2013 was Paul (bass, vocals), Alex (guitar, vocals) and Gleb (drums). The above-named song is the closing track on their March 2016 LP Juche (Чучхе): |
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Post by jk on Oct 2, 2022 14:15:12 GMT -5
This splendid Soviet jazz-funk album from 1974 has a synth on it so it has some right to be in this thread. But pop it is not! I reproduce below the entire YouTube blurb in case the video does a runner:
Artist: Melodiya Ensemble (Russian: Ансамбль Мелодия)
Album: Labyrinth (Russian: Лабиринт)
Label: Мелодия -- С 60—05277-8
Year: 1974
Genre: Jazz-Funk, Psychedelia, Avant-garde Jazz, Prog
Band Members:
Alto Saxophone, Synthesizer -- Georgy Garanyan
Bass Guitar -- Igor Kantyukov
Drums -- Aleksandr Simonovsky
Engineer -- Aleksandr Schtilman
Piano -- Boris Frumkin
Guitar -- Aleksandr Bukhgolds
Saxophone [Soprano & Tenor] -- Aleksey Zubov
Trombone -- Konstantin Bakholdin
Trombone [Bass] -- Leontiy Chernyak
Trumpet -- Gennady Petrov, Konstantin Nosov
Tracklist:
A1 Labirint
A2 Marina (09:36)
B1 Lenkoran' (19:23)
B2 Ognennaya Reka (28:00)
I like the comment by roger Sun: "The cover image (appearing as a group of music science majors...) really does not give away the heaviosity of this fine album."
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