Here and now: 10 new heroines of the local music scene
Text: Artem Makarsky, editor, Playbill-Wave
One of the main This year Russian albums were released by Nadezhda Gritskevich from the group “Naadya”, but besides her there are quite a few beautiful female musicians whom they know little, but they deserve no less attention. Very soon, under the curator of the singer Gali Chikis, on the Los Angeles label Not Not Fun, the collection She She Knows More Than She Thinks will be released, in which six very different performers from Russia and Ukraine have gathered. We are talking about ten performers from Russia and the near abroad, who are gradually merging into a new local scene - and who should be watched in the new year.
Olga Ukhanova
"The main thing in Russia is if you are a girl, sing and compose songs, do not look like Zemfira. If you look like Zemfira, then you have nothing more to do," says Olga Ukhanova in Kaliningrad’s interview to the local portal. For the first time on the horizon, she appeared four years ago, recording the album "Calm Cabal", which consists entirely of samples taken from YouTube, - in early 2014 she released the first part of the album "Itself," beginning with the words "It does not happen any worse, this is the final ". On it, she sings by herself, uses the help of her friends, who are the backbone of the distinctive Kaliningrad scene, making music at the same time and timeless, and very precisely responding to the spirit of the moment. When the second part, lighter, will be released, it is not yet clear, but Ukhanov can be caught along with the group Brodsky and Yevgeny Milovanov; she also records music for films (including animated ones) - and it will only get better.
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Tosilia Chaikin
A girl with the beautiful name Tosilia could be seen in a St. Petersburg duet (and at some point a trio) “Sea of Clouds”, but the day before the end of spring the group just broke up. Now Chaikin participates in the concert lineup of Sunsay and writes music under the name TosyaChai. However, not so long ago, she announced that she would soon have two more projects. Tosilia is incredibly productive in general: she constantly writes poetry, writes songs, but the main thing is her debut album. It is called, of course, "Dreams". In the compositions on it, only occasionally a voice breaks through - it looks like, say, Julianne Barwick, although sometimes she prefers simple acoustics. This composition is not for everyone: in her only interview for the time being, she says that she is not trying to attract an audience, but often refuses to give live shows; at the beginning of the month, however, she still had one.
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Mustelide
“Singers who want to look odd are a true nightmare. There is an opposite story about how a strange girl pretends to be ordinary, but she doesn’t have to hide her wild, inexplicable inner world,” Tatyana Zamirovskaya, a Minsk-based student of music journalism, writes about Minsk women. . Mustelide songs are really an interesting case: pop songs with which obviously something is not right. It seems to be nostalgic, but not very much looking around at this very nostalgic; a bit low-fiyny, but obviously without reliance on such a sound. Having outgrown the rather ordinary indie band Clover Club, Mustelide successfully shows that the transition to an independent and accessible ass is quite understandable in 2014. By the way, for quite some time now she performs with the Silver Wedding, which last month also performed such a somersault.
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Bryozone
Odessa Anna Bryzhataya started with acoustic songs under the piano or piano under the name Anniebri, but at some point she was interested in electronics. Remarkably, the songs with keyboards have not gone away, and the more experimental project Bryozone is another side of what it does. Best of all, Bryozone sounds when the song format coincides with the winding and strange techno, such as in the songs "song" or "Day After Darkness". While the Kiev scene is known to us much more - for example, Nastya "Ladan" Vogan and Oksana "Blablarism" Zmorovich participate in the above-mentioned compilation on Not Not Fun, we know practically nothing about music in other cities of Ukraine; as the experience shows Gryzhaty, in vain. I want to believe that for rare songs and compositions will follow something else.
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Lucidvox
Muscovites Lucidvox were spotted last year thanks to the EP The Other Man. Texts inspired by ancient history and dedicated to our place in the big world, set on the clingy near-psychedelic music, could not but be interested. Those who are in the same team with no less interesting groups of the capital - “Thank you”, Jahroom and “Electroproject” - at the moment they go even further. After the well-received June album "In Motion", they presented a new program last month, inspired by Russian ethno: accordion, harp and the atmosphere of the Russian forest. After a couple of days after that, the band recorded several new songs in Petersburg - I want to find out more quickly how the new source of inspiration will be reflected in the fresh material. By the way, from the young Russian groups, Lucidvox is one of the few who constantly use the flute.
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NV
Katya Shilonosova is most likely known to regular readers of Wonderzine - she was one of his main characters at the time of opening the site. Not so long ago, she traveled to Tokyo, where she participated in the regular session of the RBMA, simultaneously playing a concert there at the karaoke club, where they shot "The Difficulties of Translation" (but, apparently, it was not possible to save its broadcast). Why is all this - the Japanese trace in Shilonosova’s music is very noticeable: the first track, recorded by her together with the duo of Stoned Boys, was not for nothing called "Arcadegame", in all this there is the spirit of classic video games, Asian pop of the eighties and the latest music trends . The singer herself says that she simply does not get to write dark music - it should be noted that this skill distinguishes her favorably among others.
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greeneyed meganekko
Sixteen-year-old Anastasia Shvets lives in Tallinn and is clearly inspired by Grimes and Ryan Hemsworth, but because of the characteristic accent, it can be compared with other well-known Estonians: Inga Copeland and Maria Minerva. She calls her “hikki-kor”, which is very suitable for millenials, for her somewhat stuck and boring compositions devoted to girlish fears and doubts. From the muddled and Chiptyun-inspired songs, she slowly moves to compositions with a little more thoughtful, but no less sincere - something noticeable can clearly come from this. Something similar, by the way, is done by the Omsk singer Seilarmoon (sic), but the Russian colleague has much more reliance on the deliberately low-fi, unsettled sound.
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OMMA
The track about the giant squid that is stuck in memory is definitely what it is, after which the artist should be watched. Starting her creative career as a DJ, Olga Maximova decided to go on to create her own music and, in general, did not lose, but now it seems that it takes exactly the song form, which is even more interesting. The interest in techno in the last track "Squid" has not disappeared anywhere, but something Asian is also making its way, and something that you cannot really explain with words - a sort of ordinary insanity. Maximov is not limited to DJs and songs. In addition, she is engaged in the project Playtronica, where the extraction is made from the most unexpected things, and her interest in the combination of audial and visual does not need a separate presentation.
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Atariame
Of all the aforementioned music, the Izhevsk Natalia Salmina living in Petersburg right now (from time to time she lives in Berlin) is closest to the Lucidvox group - they, in general, performed at one point on the same stage. Her compositions are somewhat hidden in the noise, quite minimalist songs, which immerse themselves in this air because of this very air. Looking at the video from Atariame’s recent performance in the Lutheran Church, you can think of comparing with Chelsea Wolfe, but there’s much less gloom here - rather, it’s something like Grouper or something like, for example, Angel Olsen would have buried herself under noises and dense sound. Everything will not be limited to this cunning acoustics - according to Natalia, she wants to come to a sound based on a synthesizer.
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wedntndwrds
Visitors to the concerts of the “Greatest Prime Number” could definitely see Alexander Zakharenko: up to a certain point, she played drums in a band. Now she is a part of the community for the most part of the Moscow musicians of John's Kingdom, who prefer a bit cold, aloof techno flavored with ambient music to all other styles (by the way, the aforementioned Bryozone is also not alien to them). The wedntndwrds debut album, "R.V.S.P.", consisted rather of fragments of compositions, some outline and sketches. The last two currently recordings of Zakharenko, "Onetwoonetwo" and "Protection", in this sense represent a big step forward, besides, the mood in them is transferred much better.
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