KLVKVA

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.

Sasha Sup,
at your service