Three Tune Tuesday #165

In the same year of 1996, when Radiohead were recording in Bath the main rock album of the 90s, the first studio album of Mumiy Troll have matured - and right at the beginning of 1997 blew up the Russian music scene; refreshed it, gave a powerful kick in the ass, set the vector of movement - you name it. A characteristic detail is that the album was recorded in a London studio, and British session musicians were to blame very much for resulting sound and the stunning refreshing effect of the music.

The band appeared in Vladivostok (a remote province, the easternmost region of Russia) in the mid-80s - they recorded their first self-produced albums in 83-85. Let's call them homemade demos rather than real albums. It took a $20,000 investment into a London studio sessions to take their music to a next level. By the way, now the founder of the band and its heart, Ilya Lagutenko, has left Russia and moved to London, to live on a happy life - like many other rich Russians, who managed to squeeze solid cash from the native country in 90-es...

Now, a few words about style. You can't really consider it as 'rock', no. Lagutenko intended to mix the sound of his fave bands, such as Blur, Cardigans, Garbage, Space, Sleeper, Dubstar, Orange Juice, Squeeze, ABBA, Sex Pistols - the parallel to Britpop is obvious and legitimate. Music journalists sarcastically labelled the result as 'rockapop', i.e. rock + pop - isn't this an oxymoron, a mixture of the impossible? What do you think?

Anyway, some of their songs fit into 'rock+pop' tag just perfectly. But in fact, the question of style is not that important. What is important is that the band's leader had (and still has) charisma of a huge, rare caliber (perhaps this is the only thing that is needed at all?). In addition, he had poetry, humor, a crazy sparkles in his eyes, the ability to have fun and desire to share it with others. All above is perfectly demonstrated by one of their first videos for the song 'Cat loves cat'. NB - the clip was created by Mikhail Khleborodov - the famous and fashionable Russian video director N1 at that time.

For me, this pop number ranks roughly next to Bregovic's 'In the death car' - a sweet pop tune, non-native ears might not realize that the song is about a maniac, haha. Just in Bregovich case everything is deadly serious, while MumiyTroll’s song is all ironic and postmodern, flavored with 'lalalala' and saxophone solo. Shopping mall-friendly! NB - the video plot is as simple as two plus two: the vocalist as a hairdresser cuts off a beautiful model's hair till zero :)

One more bonus to present you how the band and its music has changed over the past 20 years. A new version of an old song, one of the key songs for the band. 'New Moon of April' was the name of the band's first demo, and a knowledgeable person should probably be reminded - what else? - Durandurand's 'New Moon On Monday' ofc!

The whole era is gone, disappeared, erased as if it never existed. We're left with artifacts... and bad digital artifacts. Notice that the aged vocalist has become... I would say he has aged in a manner similar to David Bowie.