365: Anatoly, by Oligarkh

Oligarkh (Russia)
Anatoly (2016)
9 tracks, 38 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Over the course of this blog, I’ve talked about albums that have political significance, albums that are culturally important, albums that symbolise a musical movement or that rebel against the norm, albums that represent musical styles that are very rarely heard, albums that can tell us something about the histories of certain musics or cultures or peoples or that can hint at the future of the same, albums that have a particularly intense emotional connection for me personally, or strongly associated with a beloved memory. Then there are albums that aren’t any of those things and that I chose for just being pure bangers.

Readers, today’s album is in that latter category.

The concept behind Oligarkh is a simple one and that simplicity is its strength. Samples of Russian and other ex-Soviet folk music, Orthodox chants, old TV shows and readings from classic literature and fairytales are all chopped up, flipped, turned inside-out and otherwise mangled before being added to deep bass, heavy beats and epic synthscapes and rounded off by a live kit drummer. Together, it becomes the dirtiest, most unholy combination of trap, dubstep, happy hardcore, techno, gabber and hip-hop, all with that rich seam of the land’s old musical traditions running through it. All it needs from you is to blast it as loud as you can and have your own Russian rave.

Every track here is 100% built for making you dance as heavy and as hard as possible in whatever movements take the fancy of your limbs, so it’s hard to pick out any particular highlights in that way. The most surprising for Anglophone listeners, though, would be ‘Devochki’, built around a sample of the Ukrainian song ‘Shchedryk’ – you’re more likely to know it as the ‘Carol of the Bells’. It may feel strange to listen to it as an all-year dancefloor filler, but I can guarantee that as soon as that bass drops any of those reservations will go right out of the window. And, looking it up, it turns out that ‘Shchedryk’ was originally written to be performed as a New Year’s Eve song, so there you go, it’s fate: if you need something to power up your New Year’s Eve party tonight, Oligarkh’s ‘Devochki’ is your secret weapon.

Oligarkh’s music isn’t necessarily too clever, but it definitely is big, as well as being boisterous and loud. It’s just a massive heap of messy fun and it comes with a side order of Russian folk, so what’s not to love? Music doesn’t need some deep or intellectual message or meaning. When you have that primal need for music to facilitate an arm-in-the-air bounce around whatever space you happen to inhabit at any given moment, that’s the meaning of Oligarkh.

190: Lyubov’ Svyataya, by Doros

Doros (Russia)
Lyubov’ Svyataya (2004)
22 tracks, 59 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The music of the male voice chamber choir Doros is worth listening to for many reasons. A cappella music has the ability to be so powerful, touching in with our most primal brains in a way that instruments don't quite manage to. On top of that, their music is religious and represents a faith we hear relatively little about in this corner of the world: they are one of the premier groups performing sacred Russian Orthodox music today, to the point where they regularly perform in St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Their mix of incredibly precise harmony and complex polyphony shows them as true masters of the art of the voice.

But as interesting, worthy and musically stimulating as all these points are, it's not what brings me back to listening to Doros' album. Instead it's for just one of their number: the okavist. I saw the group perform as part of an evening of sacred musics a few years ago in Berlin, and it was the first time I’d ever even heard of an oktavist, let alone heard one sing. For the uninitiated, an oktavist is a singer whose voice is an octave below a baritone. That is very, very low. So low it sounds inhuman, creating more of an otherworldly rumble than clear tones. It is absolutely mindboggling, and chest-quivering too.

When Doros sing as a full septet, they sound like a mighty church organ, with every layer of pitch accounted for. You should definitely give them a listen; you may be transported to a higher plane, you may hear angels dancing between the harmonies, or, at least, you may hear a human sound quite unlike you've ever heard before.

140: Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike, by Gogol Bordello

Gogol Bordello (Ukraine/Russia/USA)
Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike (2004)
15 tracks, 63 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The first time I heard Gogol Bordello, their name had been floating around for a little while without me actually getting them in my ears, but their song ‘I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again’ was the first track on a Songlines covermount CD. It was so different from anything I would have expected from the magazine but it was electrifying. It starts with choppy, distorted guitars, joined by swirls of sawing fiddles and then a blood-curling, agonised scream before the song itself actually kicks off. What a way to grab the attention!

The band’s first two albums had already made them stars of the New York scene, but this album is what really blew them up around the world, and even started a bit of a vogue for Eastern European music among hip circles. The album’s title Gypsy Punks was really the perfect phrase for people to latch onto: it’s quirky and unexpected, but it also gives you a very clear idea of what they sound like. And it’s a combination that works really well – there’s something about Eastern European and Romani folk music that lends itself so well to the thrashing and screaming of punk, and Gogol Bordello pull it off flawlessly.

They actually bring in a much wider variety of sounds than you would actually expect from the album title, too. Punk is obviously the order of the day, but there are very strong elements of ska, dub and hip-hop all the way through, which blend just as well and only serve to add to the band’s globetrotting image.

An important part of listening to Gogol Bordello is not to take anything about them too seriously. Everything about them is a joke, or exaggerated or diminished for comic effect, or at least has the potential to be. I’ve seen them live a couple of times, but the best one (at the Manchester Academy, with Skindred in support), lead singer Eugene Hütz sang the most famous song from the album, ‘Start Wearing Purple’, entirely in Spanish, just to mix things up, make it different, and probably to annoy the audience a little bit too.

This album is probably the classic of the Gypsy Punk scene. It’s a distillation of all that made the style fun, new and exciting, and it is still an excellent choice to play loud and mosh around till your head hurts.