Tatu Mentu – Портрет Сэма Райли (2011–2012)

Hi everyone, we're back again! You might remember my post about Man With a Dictaphone, right? So this is a project of the same person, and its sound is completely different.

“Tatu Mentu” means “A Tattoo for a Cop”, this name appeared when future founder of this project, together with his friends, was having a beer in the park, and a cop joined their company. Then the cop asked if someone could make a tattoo for him, and so that’s how the name appeared.

Tatu Mentu was founded in 2010, and it was very chaotic “band” which tended to have improvisations, its sessions were recorded basically on live underground (I mean, unofficial) gigs in quite Lo-fi quality, and Tatu Mentu perfectly fits Lo-fi aesthetics.

They took part in our annual sampler “Low Ambitions” in 2011 with a song «Портрет Сэма Райли» (“A Portrait of Sam Riley”), in which I participated as a guest vocalist and the co-author of the lyrics. The song was very ironic; it was mocking the hyping hipster subculture in Russia back in those days.

“A portrait of Sam Riley hangs above my bed

Forgive me, you don’t have to understand

A portrait of Sam Riley hangs above your bed

Write the word “HATE” on the asphalt

Tell all your friends, post in your blog

You’re a philosopher, just like Poushtchin on katorga”

A funny thing is that word “HATE”, which was written on the back of Ian Curtis’ coat, as in Russian you read it as «Нате» (“natye”) which is a title of popular poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, great poet of Russian futurism. 

And Ivan Poushtchin was one of the Decembrists, a Russian 19-century revolutionary organization. Poushchin was also a friend of Alexander Pushkin, “the sun of Russian poetry”, and Pouchtchine indeed was arrested and spent about 30 years (!) in Siberian katorga.

Another Tatu Mentu track which is worth mentioning is «Поп Василий» (“Vasily the Priest”), an improvised chant against greedy priests, accompanied by dreary lo-fi instrumental, quite close to industrial / post-industrial.

“Vasily the Priest, take all my money!”

This is real Lo-fi from Russia, hope you like it!

Download for free (mp3; exclusive re-upload of these tracks especially for Concern Void Blog!)

Contact the founder

Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey