Пророк СанБой Remixed by Grey Lenses (2015)

Today’s album is really special, it’s the first time Concern Void collaborated with a guest musician who can be described as a “guest star”, it’s the only case so far but I hope the new cases will follow.

Пророк СанБой (Prorok SunBoy, SunBoy the Prophet) is a singer and musician from the town of Yartsevo who claims he was included in Guinness World Book of Records for driving a bicycle and playing guitar in the same time for a long distance; He also claimed he travelled around the world, met national leaders and completed several bicycle journeys within the countries of former USSR.

So he’s very bright and creative person, although I think he deserves more fame (he has about 6000 friends in social networks and about 500k views on YouTube which is way more than other Concern Void collaborators have, but it’s still less than he should have).

Пророк СанБой is active since the 80’s and he’s still composing new songs using an acoustic or electric guitar or electronic tunes, “borrowed” (cover versions with his own lyrics) or original. 

A friend of mine showed me a couple of СанБой’s videos, and I liked it; shortly after I wrote СанБой and I started to work on a remix of his song «Телефон» (“The Telephone”) for our annual sampler “In the Eternal Shadow” (2015). Then our collaboration went on to this release, a 7-track long-play web-album.

The title song «Раньше ругали за рок» (which can be translated as “In the earlier times they blamed us for listening to rock”) is about politics of Communist party which was constantly “blaming” the youth for listening to “wrong music”:

“In the earlier times they blamed us for listening to jazz

Then they blamed us for dancing twist

Then they blamed us for listening to rock”

This sense of freedom is very important to СанБой, as he says: “I stand for democracy”.

The second song, «Современная молодежь» (“The Modern Youth”), on the contrary, shows СанБой’s concerns about the youth of 90’s in Russia, СанБой accuses it in taking drugs, disobedience, desire to leave home, etc. This remix heavily differs from the original song by adding variety of new layers, sounds and effects.

The song «Телефон» (“The Telephone”) is funnier and “lighter”, despite its sad ending:

“Who has approached through the muteness?

Who has approached and what price has he paid?”

It’s interesting that СанБой tells his real phone number in this song (now it has been changed).

And the final track which I cherish the most is called «Черемуха» (“ Bird-Cherry Tree”) , it’s a fragile romantic story of the youth, gentle and sorrowful; lamentations of the lost youth (and time) are sincere and touching.

“Bird-cherry tree is like a bride,

Its top is bended and it looks so shy

Bird-cherry tree will touch my face

And I guess I’ll become gorgeous, too

And I’ll remember a girl from my youth

For whom I cared so desperately

A bride who didn’t become a wife

And I’ll remember her with a sigh“

Currently we’re working on new remixes, so I believe you find it entertaining. It’s less underground, less complicated and sophisticated than peculiar Concern Void music, that’s why it’s more popular, it’s just the way it goes. Enjoy!

Full playlist of the album (YouTube)

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Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey

Snowbringer – North and Melancholia (2015)

Hi everyone, I’d like to show you another non-Concern-Void release from a Concern Void collaborator. Snowbringer is a one-man ambient project formed in Russian Northern town around 2013, firstly named “The Creature Was Here”, then, in 2014 it was renamed to “Body in Space”, and, finally, in 2015 this project was called “Snowbringer”.

 

The discography of the project includes 14 releases (with EPs); moreover, Snowbringer participated in our annual sampler “In the Eternal Shadow”. 

“North and Melancholia” is a long-play album, it lasts for more than 50 minutes, and I suggest you to listen to it before going to sleep, as its smooth, “airy” sound can easily be used to cure insomnia. The clouds on the cover are flowing right to your mind while you’re listening to these ambient structures.

 North and Melancholia album cover (textless)

It’s not much a music, the founder of Snowbringer even confesses it’s more like a sound sculpture, and I must say, it’s like making statues of cotton candy, something totally ephemeris, everything goes easy while we, the other guys, tried to use concrete blocks in our post-industrial sound strategies. We are all different, that’s what makes us unique, hah. Some create “opaque sound”, while this is surely “transparent” one.

Snowbringer played live using a laptop as primary instrument, and its bootleg might be reissued sometime in the future. Now, let’s concentrate on North and Melancholia: switches between tracks aren’t always recognizable, like a collection of instrumental lullabies, Snowbringer leads you down the path of a dreamy state.

Dragons of Old Maps sounds darker, it’s an exception on this album: the rest of the tracks are as bright as winter morning in my native Siberia. Becoming Invisible, despite its “inhuman” character, made me think that it could be a sincere desire of its author, or, at least, he had considered such option :)

You know, this is the “proper” “bright” ambient, guys. You may check it out here, hope you like it!

Have a listen:

Download for free (mp3; direct download)

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Sincerely yours,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey

Mourning Dance – Tracks from “Superfluous Music” (2012)

It’s me again, Concern Void Blog is back with new interesting stuff from deep, deep Russian underground! Today’s band, Mourning Dance, doesn’t exist anymore; they split in 2012, shortly after participating in our annual sampler “Superfluous Music”.
 

So, these two tracks, as their vocalist claims, is their only legacy – they were active in 2011–2012 only. Not much is known about them, I don’t even know who was playing in this band, except for their vocalist, a guy who’s studying his BA program, interesting but very modest person who was singing in a church choir (Russian Orthodoxal), and currently he’s studying in college to become an orchestra conductor… so he’s closer to classical music than any Concern Void contributor (he’s also a professional piano player). Anyway, he’s not contributing to us since 2013, and I must say, it’s a sad thing because I really think he’s talented.

But Mourning Dance was not a neoclassical band, they turned to post-punk and coldwave (“indoor post-punk from Siberia”, that’s how vocalist described his band), the sound is really cold, low range but tender vocals with Russian accent add even more charm to the tracks; on the contrary, the lyrics can hardly be recognized if not listening carefully.

Mourning Dance live

My personal favorite is “Museum of Weak” as “Depths” is too guitar-driven for me (it even includes a solo, ooh). I wish I had more words to say about Mourning Dance, but they were too obscure, that’s all I managed to dig out, folks.

Have a listen: 

 Or download for free (mp3)

Contact the vocalist

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Yours sincerely,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey

Лосины Маршала Потемкина – Сны безработного провинциала (2012)

While just a week ago Лосины Маршала Потемкина released their fourth album, we’ll take a look on their second one now, as I believe this “band’s” story is more like a story of evolution, so it’s necessary to get known with their discography in chronological order.

A year after their debut LP, Лосины.. released this one, showing deeper and more serious approach. The title (“The Dreams of Unemployed Province Dweller) aimed to alienate the songs from “the crowd” (big cities – province; society – unemployed; and even reality – dreams), which was sort of escapist manifesto, but only sort of, because in particular, it was heavily realistic, sometimes even topical album.

Photo by Pavel Chainichkov

It was still neofolk / folk with primitively sounding out-of-tune acoustic guitar, harmonics, found objects… not much has changed, but generally the sound was a bit “brighter” and closer to bard music, popular in Russia, but there’s a huge distance between real “bards” and Лосины Маршала Потемкина, while saying “closer”, I mean that previously the distance was like between Earth and Mars, and then it has shrank to the distance between Earth and the Moon :)

Some songs were really inspired by the dreams I saw («На мелководье» — “In the Shallow Waters”), some songs («Лишняя песня лишнего человека», «Я хочу быть котом Феликсом», «Лужа» — “A Superfluous Song from a Superfluous Man”, “I Wanna Be Felix the Cat”, “The Pool”) were written in a sick mood after being hit on the street by some criminal bastards trying to steal my cell phone (a common situation in a remote Russian town), and appeared earlier on our annual sampler “Superfluous Music”.

You might know that “Superfluous Man” was a typical character of the Golden Age of Russian literature (I suggest you to check out the true masterpiece of Russian realism, “Diary of a Superfluous Man” by Ivan Turgenev), and it’s kinda funny that this song was a true improvisation, I just took my guitar, pressed “Record” and started to play, composing the lyrics on the go, there was only one take, and the result was quite impressing.

When you don’t know where to start

Think about what could be the end

While the 1^st album was ~90% humorous, the 2^nd was only about 50% humorous. Amongst humorous songs «Медитация №9» (Meditation #9), «Ксива» (The Pass) and especially «Случай на стройке» (A Case on the Construction Site) deserve mentioning. In this song, a “passer-by” Petya tries to save a boy who was hit in the head by a brick while walking on the construction site… and it’s also a common story, I mean – haven’t you ever wanted to take a walk on the construction site? I guess every boy wanted.

“In the Shallow Waters” is important for me as it shows the structure and even the “tectonics” of a dream I experienced, its music is closer to industrial and lyrics are one of my favorites, it also includes a brief quote from “The Possessed” by Dostoevsky. 

“What have we inherited? A sense of shame.

What will remain of us? Only the sorrow”.

“They have discipline – they have submission”

“An overpopulated shoebox – it’s our favorite town, it’s the whole world”

“I will be swimming in the shallow waters

Because I can’t swim”

The line “I was born on Herzena Street” comes from quite popular in the Russian web Soviet recordings of mentally ill people, released in 1962, and this line was illustrating schizophasia aka “word salad”. Alexander Herzen, by the way, was famous Russian 19-Century writer, publisher and journalist, I highly recommend you his desperately unknown work “Dr. Krupa” (sorry, couldn't find a free-access English translation). Herzena St. is also peculiar as there are Herzena streets in various Russian towns.

Industrial sounds can also be heard on «Сказка про вахтовика» (“A Fairytale about a Shift Worker”), while closer to album’s end there are two short acoustic songs «Похмелье» and «Обидный факт» (“The Hangover”, “An Offending Fact”), which are totally sombre.

“If there is any freedom in this world,

Then there’s not much freedom has left”

“Though different people are tortured by different demons,

We’ll hang all the demons on one rope

And we’ll bury all the demons in one grave

And we’ll cry one tear for all the demons”

I believe this album reflects my own and even people’s state of mind back in that time, I dare to say so, I dare to tag it as “folk” music, as this is what Russian folk music should be like. It’s half funny, half depressing, a very bipolar album from a representative of “bipolar nation” as some YouTube user commented on a video about our country. Who knows, maybe he was right, I refuse to judge and, certainly, refuse to condemn anybody. I’m just a regular guy, you know.

Download for free from BandCamp:

 

Still yours sincerely,

John “Grey Lenses” Grey