This is how I imagine it went down. Real footage from a day out with the 4 year old.
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11 mins by train!
If it is indeed Gaz Williams, I ran into him leaving Elevator Sound in Bristol.
Mate, it was fucking carnage.
Went to a couple of museums, but she saw a big fuck off spider on the wall and decided she was shit scared of everything.
Went down the docks for a bit, but it was so fucking cold and windy and fucking raining we just gave up.
Needless to say I don’t think she’ll be hurrying back to Liverpool.
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Unless it’s raining/too sunny/a bit windy, then it’s 2½ hours by bus, via Newcastle.
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Love this. I lived in Russia for a while. They have a great heritage in synth pop, a sort of USSR parallel to Depeche Mode, OMD and all that. Here’s a fantastic example.
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Soviet synthesizer advertising 1984
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Im sorry for offtop but this is necessary for the complete picture
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I don’t think they’re off topic at all.
It’s all excellent.
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“one ping only, Vasily”
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This is quite an interesting cultural phenomenon. Despite the ideology of the time, the culture of other countries managed to seep through the Iron Curtain, being reinterpreted through the lens of the average person and often acquiring peculiar myths. Despite all the drama, this created a very intriguing vibe. In this sense, the Soviet and later post-Soviet electronic scenes existed—and continue to exist—in parallel, almost like an endless counterculture.
In the 90s, anyone who wanted to make music couldn’t afford to buy musical equipment. But we somehow found ways. I ended up with my father’s old computer, where I started composing in Fast Tracker, sampling anything I could find on music CDs. At the time, I knew nothing about sound engineering or music theory, but my interest was so immense that I spent days on end immersed in it.
Some people even managed to get their hands on old synthesizers from cultural centers that had stopped functioning because the factories had long since gone bankrupt. One friend acquired a worn-out Polivoks this way, which he studied thoroughly and used to create what I thought back then was very interesting ambient music inspired by Brian Eno. Incidentally, Brian often visited Russia at one point and helped some Russian musicians reach a new level by simply lending them his Macintosh.
Despite the circumstances, many musicians continue to create, producing a lot of music as a way to escape into internal emigration. Perhaps, years later, all of this will resurface in yet another wave of internet exploration, just like some of the musical instruments made exclusively for the local market.
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^^ this is why I’d love to know what’s going on in Chinese (PRC) experimental electronic music. But people keep telling me that art that makes no money is considered politically suspicious and thus dangerous to know about. 98% chance they are fucking with me and just don’t know or care to know.
A very interesting turn of phrase, and a situation that is probably not uncommon globally.
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That same group
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Have a look at SVBKVLT records, from Shanghai. There’s a bit of a range, bit of club music, but some pretty experimental stuff too. 33EMYBW and Gooooose are my favourites.
Also there’s Meng Qi, who not only makes some pretty batshit music, he also makes batshit musical instruments.
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art in spite of circumstances. The famous Polivoks filter, as is known, was created due to a shortage of components. Kuzmin (the creator of Polivoks) himself said that they came to look at some analog Korg and then went to draw a diagram purely based on their engineering knowledge. Then they simplified everything they could because there were not enough parts. In fact, it was built from the remains of components that did not go into the production of military equipment. Lev Termin also invented the thereminvox as a demonstration of motion sensor technology, which they were going to use against shoplifters.
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I’ve always been kind of obsessed with the later period of the Soviet Union. Not that I think it was good or right or whatever, but there’s this weird sort of otherness to everything. Like you say, a lot of western culture found it’s way under the curtain, but the way it expressed itself was strange, almost dreamlike.
There’s this weird phenomenon that smarter people than me call Hypernormalisation, where a system is failing and even though everyone knows it’s failing, they all just sort of carry on, because no-one can think of anything else to do. People often refer to the last decade or so of the Soviet Union as the ultimate example of this phenomenon, but I don’t know, because I wasn’t there. But maybe it’s exactly this phenomenon that makes the era stand out to me. Much like the system that created them, the synths from this era are all kind of broken, but somehow that’s what makes them special. Like the bands in your videos, they’re not “better” than their western influences, but there’s this sort of feeling of triumphant failure about it all.
I don’t know. I try not to fetishise it too much.
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You must be happier than a pig in shit right now.
But I agree with your main point. Nearly all of my close friends in college (late ‘90s) grew up in former Soviet states and were by far the most interesting (and nicest, when they weren’t fighting among themselves) people I’ve known.
Maybe the next decade will be really cool.
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I understand you very well but being on the other side. Just imagine when you suddenly see star wars after this.
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Well yeah.
But if you want to find the gold, you’ve got to dig through a fair amount of shit.
They can’t all be Stalker or Solaris, can they…
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The two characters at the beginning remind me of something…Maybe Clive Barker was watching Soviet era sci-fi when he came up with this:
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well, there’s also the magic of fading brutalism. There’s a whole district in Belgrade in this style. it’s very interesting when these cold minimalist gemometry are gradually absorbed by greenery
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