.RU

Underground tweenoise masters in the post-USSR.

Part 1: Solntsetsvety (part 1 first appeared in Stylus)

 
In mid 2010, I started billing myself as a DJ who played Solntsetsvety. Solntsetsvety, or Солнцецветы, a Russian word that translates to Sun Flowers (abbreviated СЦ in Cyrillic), is an artist network which has since the late 90s been spawning lo-fi tracks and albums ranging from harsh noise and pure experimental to transcendental kraut jams and lo-fi reggae, based sort of in cities Minsk, Belarus and Moscow, Russia, and sort of on their website, lesom.ru. The groups belonging to Solntsetsvety were hard to penetrate, even armed with digital translation and English articles on David MacFadyen’s Far From Moscow, but Solntsetsvety was magic – a mystery too intense to shrug off.

The groups belonging to Solntsetsvety are almost impossible to list. One is called Solntsetsvety. Then there are folky Magnit of Solntsetsvety, pop leaning Mohk, catchy Batmen of Grande Ukraine, noise-infused Simptom Pogremushki, pop concrète Sybarites, and, amid many more, the ever-shimmering, heavily manifesto’d Magical Unicellular Music (Volshebnaya Odnokletochnaya Muzyka, abbreviated as VOM). Perhaps the most famed СЦ projects, VOM are divided into countless factions in multiple countries (each labeled with a number: VOM1, VOM4, VOM5, etc), many of which have toured and recorded with Damo Suzuki.

Early on I tracked down a guy in Moscow, Аnton Krivulya, who seemed deeply involved with at least one Solntsetsvety project, Mokh or Moss. I sent him some DJ mixes, but he firmly denied any understanding of the English language. I accepted temporary defeat.

Fast forward to fall 2011: I’m at a Kram Ran show in Toronto with an original СЦ member, Aleksei Malakhov, who’s recently moved to Canada from Belarus. He’s trying to teach me how to pronounce Solntsetsvety; I’m making an ass of myself. This has been arranged by another СЦ-er, Belorussian Roma Bernstein (who has taken part in Solntsetsvety, Mokh, Sybarites, VOM and Simptom Pogremushki, among others), whom I met by chance while scouring the internet attempting replace some albums I lost in a hard-drive crash, and to whom I am completely in debt for organizing these interviews – which are at heart attempt to explain what Solntsetsvety is: an important apparition in the bleak, heroin-scar marked post-Soviet world.

Below are select answers I received from Roma, Roma’s young brother Tim Bernstein (Mokh, VOM, Simptom Pogremushki), old-school СЦ-er Aleksei Malakhov (now a Torontonian, past member of Solntsetsvety and VOM), and Solntsetsvety mastermind: recent Moscow immigrant Anton Krivulia: member or contributor to just about every Solntsetsvety project, described by some members as a magical genius. Many thanks to Roma for his help with translations* and organization, and to Anton, Tim, Aleksei, and past Mokh member Mitya Matievich (who helped out but did not answer these questions) for their assistance.

Solntsetsvety sound is bound by something unexplainable – it’s free, DIY, allows itself to blur the line between real and fiction, and the people who make it seem to know that the gross output of the collective is greater than themselves. In speaking with five of its countless members, I found a brilliant combination of humour and frustration: anger at the dysfunction of post Soviet life wrapped up in jovial, loose, sovereign spirits.

*Just prior to my second round of questions during this interview, Anton conceded that he does know English quite well, and would be communicating with me in English for all further investigations. Roma translated between us prior to that, and also assisted with other necessary translations.

What / who is Solntsetsvety (СЦ) and how did it begin?

Anton: In Minsk, as everywhere else in the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991, deranged teens appeared in large numbers, not on friendly terms with reality. They rejected the society and the state in all their manifestations; it was a revolutionary generation, for it was not possible for an intelligent young man to live in the late Soviet Union without feeling intolerable disgust. We were doomed to marginal existence and chose refuge in art – established a land of our own and named it Solntsetsvety. It’s not right to say somebody is a “member”– it’s more like mist that you can enter or leave. We call Solntsetsvety an artistic group just to set forth at least some kind of coordinates. [We] accept everybody in the world into Solntsetsvety in absentia: membership became irrelevant.
Aleksei: The band started as acoustic punk-rock duo – I remember their first gig on a degraded truck in the ruins of suburban Minsk. They soon went electric with a full line-up.
Tim: Solntsetsvety are everyone. Sun Flowers – it’s some kind of a plant, I guess.

How is Solntsetsvety pronounced?

Tim: ['sɔntsɛtsv(j)ɛ'tɨ]
Aleksei: / s-o-n-ts-Ə-ts-v-e-t-i/

What are all the projects of Solntsetsvety? Who is in each / where is each located?

Tim: All is changing constantly, and new projects arise from time to time. As for the persons behind the names, they could be counted. Don’t waste this paper with the names, though.
Anton: Solntsetsvety came about as a survival method; the projects of Solntsetsvety emerged as such, each for its own moment. What made it possible for us to survive in the 00′s was our set of projects. The group was already nonexistent as a collective, but it did exist as an alliance of people with similar interests; each member could introduce creative projects [and] strengthen the common concept.
Aleksei: To name “all” would be pretty ambitious.

What binds these projects together and makes them Solntsetsvety?

Tim: This is a unique feeling. It’s like a wave of an ocean that will ruin the world to the initial stage; to its basic state.
Aleksei: It’s hard to tell what the kinship is based on – it’s inner feeling rather than musical style or lineup. For example, [my band] Green Brain Arts Band, Inc. had three Solntsetsvety members, but it had nothing to do with Solntsetsvety.

Why is everything on lesom.ru free to download?

Anton: It is impossible for a musician or an artist to make a living with their art in our country. Ones who cherish such illusions put in jeopardy their own lives and the lives of their family members. There are more effective ways to earn money.
Tim: I guess it began with “who will ever be interested in what we do”. Wanna listen – download, visit live shows or come on, do something better.

What labels have released Solntsetsvety albums?

Anton: We don’t exist for them at all, I think. For the local ones we’re not profitable, and for the foreign incomprehensible. Only one album – The Stone (Камень) was released with VOM4’s own money and administrative support from Moscow label Otdelenie Vyhod (Отделение Выход).
Tim: Clinical Archives net-label welcomes our music. Haze net-label released some.

Can you describe what makes Simptom Pogremushki different from other Solntsetsvety outfits?

Tim: SP-ki is a one-man project, with help from friends if they want to collaborate. It’s not bound to ideas or manifestos; it’s more personal and intimate… the word ‘pogremushka’ is compared with a ‘rattle’ (a childhood game; to conjure), ‘noise’, ‘thunder’, or a ‘pogrom’ massacre.

I’d like to hear more about the Sybarites project.

Roman: That was a funny story. Summer 2006, Mono and Anton [are] running around, telling me they invented a totally new way to record things – THE ULTIMATE ETHNOFUFLO recording method: everything unplugged. Bass guitar in a plastic bucket, the resonating sound picked up with a mic. Bass drum made by thumping an umbrella upon a cardboard box; distorted guitar solos sung by voice; lots of flutes and all kinds of percussion. They invited me to join and… we recorded an EP in one day.
Tim: Sybarites: “those who appreciate the finer things”… It’s connected with everyday life, all things / sounds crazy.

What is Magical Unicellular Music/VOM’s manifesto?

Anton: VOM is a musical form without musical text. Formally it’s discreteness of the constant. Units of discreteness are not equal between each other, because of the fluidity of consciousness into which they are immersed: each listener has his/her own subjective composition. Such is the principle, but the problem is that not all listeners perceive music purely, without allusions or matrices: many attempt to listen to VOM as Krautrock or minimalism.
Tim: It was a great idea to create a form of music which could be felt by everyone. Extremely primitive and soulful… popular among the trance scene.
Aleksei: The concept is even the most primitive form can make great music. Different incarnations have different lineups and sound, but what unites them is musical minimalism. Live in Detroit is based on one chord in different positions: it sounds like Bo Diddley was released from mental institution; like Kraftwerk decided to outsmart Can in being monotonous.
Roma: The best definition: ‘the people in the audience stare at the guys on stage playing instruments, but nothing seems to ever change. Then it clicks: the music starts playing inside the heads of the listeners, while on stage there seems to continue to be nothing happening’… for me, when that click happens – I enjoy that like few other things. My silly dream [is] to play with VOM5 on the main military parade in Belarus where they showcase their tanks and rockets, on one of those giant wheeled platforms that they use for transporting nukes. VOM is very emotional music for me.

How many factions of VOM exist? Who / where are they?

Aleksei: Oh no, never counted them.

What is a Solntsetsvety live show like?

Tim: You never know what will happen next. You get this feeling even if VOM is playing.
Aleksei: Depends on project, lineup, and Anton’s mood. In the beginning, СЦ was a typical punk outfit – shaven heads, dirty jeans, cheap guitars, lots of raw energy. Anton was often drunk. Then the image started to evolve. I remember one show in Bobruisk that had lots of death and black metal bands in it (I don’t know why this is so popular in Belarus – we always made fun of them). There are those drunken headbangers, leather jackets, inverted crosses and all that jazz, and sober Anton comes out in a white shirt, with a scroll of poetry in his hand and says “Hi, goblins”. They in turn yell “crippled faggot” (Anton held a cane due to injury). Then the band goes into high-tempo hardcore punk, and those guys can’t help but start dancing to it. Between songs, mutual insults resume. Great!
As time passed, СЦ floated into psychedelic… performance elements started dominating.
Roma: It depends. A good VOM concert is like a therapy (or surgery), other projects work other ways.
Anton: A classic performance of Solntsetsvety is when on stage come out many (many!) people well prepared for the gig, with neat haircuts, in nice suits, with sparkling new instruments as if for the last time. And then something happens that nobody has foreseen, but it’s exactly what everybody came to the gig for.

Where is the center or Solntsetsvety? (Minsk? Moscow? Online?)

Anton: The last 10 years the website has been the center of our activities. I strive for tangibility, and I wish and hope to see Solntsetsvety function trans-spatially.
Tim:  There can be no center for everyone : )

Why has Solntsetsvety existed these past two decades? What are its musical, environmental, political, financial and spiritual influences?

Aleksei: In 1991 we were a bunch of guys living in a decaying Soviet Union, no money, no future, political rat race around. We wanted to have fun and did it in a way we could afford. We listened to garage, psychedelic and [punk]. We wanted to play our music, because everywhere in Belarus it was either pop or metal; very few local bands to listen to. One thing different from the West, there was no punk vs. hippie thing: both were ostracized and hated equally by cops, civilians and working-class youth. There was no dichotomy: while СЦ music was punk, the lyrics were Syd Barret-style. It really hit the spot. This facilitated a smooth transition to a more psychedelic sound (unlike in NYC where I heard snide remarks about how Bad Brains “lost their edge”). But… drugs, career changes and creative blocks took their toll. One contributor to line-up changes has been immigration; it’s natural to find ways of not being so dependent on lineup… incorporating electronic elements, or having a network of musicians. Since СЦ never had a musical dogma (nobody says “Play exactly like our previous guitarist/drummer”), everyone’s free to bring their thing to the music, thus keeping it from fossilization.
Anton: The main influence was undoubtedly the time we grew up in, the collapse of the empire, breakdown of the social order. Our generation is separated from society, it hates the state, and at some point the state gave a valid reason to be hated – Belarus became a dictatorship. But we always tried to live like some other world was real and what we did happened in some other coordinate system. The Beatles also meant a great deal to us; their music was true revelation in the Soviet Union. I’m influenced by Paul Valery, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, poets Aleksandr Vvedenskiy and Olga Sedakova, symphonies, post-punk culture…
Tim: As for me, I like to forget how to do something: forget known patterns and find something interesting in a newly discovered form.
Roma: Solntsetsvety is a way to clear your vision and get closer to reality, [and for me to] play music I want to hear but can’t – nobody else would make it. Environmentally and politically, financially and spiritually [life] feels like armageddon to me… maybe Solntsetsvety is a way to deal with that.

What is the future of Solntsetsvety?

Anton: Something should be changed, no doubt. [We have] no rational design.

Do you have hopes for how Solntsetsvety will be seen historically in Russia / Belarus and beyond?

Anton: The most important thing СЦ proposed is an idea for survival of the creative process and collective, expressed in our structure and technologies. Maybe our tree-like structure, like Bergson’s L’Evolution créatrice, can be a useful model for [others].

Anton, how do you feel about other members of Solntsetsvety naming you ring leader, and a genius?

Anton: I don’t know what the word “genius” means at all.

Do you strive to make your music an incomprehensible mystery to foreigners, or is that just a result of your process?

Anton: It’s not only incomprehensible for foreigners but for Russian journalists, listeners and sometimes for me. We’re based on illogical parallel expansion, and sometimes we’re even changing our past.

.RU Part 2: Peel Session, Damo Suzuki, Chorny Busel & extra material

Downloads & Extras

Continued from Part 1.

Can you tell me about the Magical Unicellular Music Peel Session? Who played on that and how did that happen?

Roma: Peel Session was recorded by Moscow’s VOM-4 in, correspondingly, Moscow, and none of us Belarusian partisans took part in it… I’ll re-direct this matter to [Anton], who was there then.
[a pause]
Roma: Aubrey, VOM-4 Peel Session is actually a joke. It’s a recording of one of their rehearsals. They dedicated it to John Peel, whom we all love; Peel sessions had this particular sound somehow regardless of whom he recorded.

Then the Damo Suzuki & Magical Unicellular Music album – was that actually Damo?

Roma: Damo was really here.

How did that come about?

Roma: He’s an awesome dude. I smoked weed with him. He sang for four hours, and we changed three VOM [line up]s behind him. [the label] We Have No Zen, from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, made Damo’s [tour of] Belarus and Russia with VOM happen.
I never believed it would work until they brought Damo in a car and we went to [the] studio, got stoned and started [rehearsing]. He said – let me sit and listen and then I’ll join. So we started playing and after five minutes, [Damo] jumped up to the microphone and started singing – great guy.
The next day at the concert we said – Damo, we have three VOM [line-up]s to change behind you… first VOM3 (Hamlet, Anton, Tim and I), then VOM23 (entirely Hamlet’s crew), then VOM5 (Tim, Di, Mitya, Bulik and I). I said, let us play with you and change and make [intermissions in between]. He said, “no, I’d rather sing for five hours, I’m used to that”; he said he was used to singing without breaks.
We said okay, we’ll just switch players behind you… first guitarists change, then the bassist, then the drummer – so it’s uninterrupted. There were three VOM [line-up]s playing non-stop, one by one, and Damo Suzuki singing for three to four hours. …[Damo] gets into singing and sings his mantras. That’s how it went, and actually it was quite a success, because all three VOMs were different. It was interesting.

[Minsk's] VOM5 were the last of the three. It was Gentle Bombardiers’ [Roma's current band] full crew, with Anton at like 0-49 [see above video] coming on stage and taking a guitar. At about 2-25 Mitya tells Anton to make his guitar louder and shows it to him – we had a lot of fun.
So that was the opening gig of the Damo tour – in Minsk. After that concert [Damo] went to Russia to play St. Petersburg, Moscow and Pskov, backed up by VOM4 only. So the Belarusian show was Damo + VOM3, VOM23 and VOM5, and the Russian leg of the tour [including the WHNZ:17:SUM recording] was entirely VOM4.

How did you come to know African (We Have No Zen)?

Roma: He found Anton and Tim, and they started communicating through the web.

What is the origin of the name Solntsetsvety?

Aleksei: When the band got together in 1991, the name was Кирпичное Колесо (Brick Wheel), and was a punk rock band. Then there was a period when names changed often – I remember Swizz, Paper Butterfly and Butterfly MC – as well as a number of changing bass guitarists. Then came the name Цветы (Flowers) in classical lineup – Anton Krivulia (aka Jean aka Stereochuvak) on vocals, Lyosha “Hockey” on guitar, Maxim “Skunk” on bass and Sasha “Suvorovets” on drums. However, there had been a Russian pop-rock band with the same name, so the name was modified several times – Космические Цветы (Cosmic Flowers), Ископаемые Цветы (Fossilized Flowers), Огненные Цветы (Fire Flowers). After a hiatus caused by the drummer’s immigration to the USA, the band reformed as Солнечные Цветы (Sun Flowers), which later was shortened to Солнце Цветы, and then the space between the two words disappeared. However, it’s still Sun Flowers, not Sunflowers (which is an entirely different word in Russian).


In what order did the Solntsetsvety projects appear?

Anton: Up until 2000 Solntsetsvety functioned as one band that performed music. We didn’t make studio recordings then – that was too expensive, and the outcome totally depended upon the recording engineer those days, all of whom inevitably turned out to be total dumbasses. Sasha Gelikh was a good concert sound engineer and he worked with us – made a great series of concert recordings named Mystic Football in 1999.
Then in 2000 Agafon departed for Crimea and I only saw him on photos since then, Pindilyukos hooked up with hippies and started drinking heavily, [Roman] went to goddamn Atlanta. I began trying to incorporate my family into society without having to work at a factory. I became a designer and worked a lot (the work was quite interesting though). It happened that once in 2001 returning home late from work I had a heart attack and fell down, almost losing consciousness. As a result of that I realized I needed to get back to my own life and do something about Solntsetsvety.
In 2001 our website appeared and became the nucleus of our structure, the symbol of our existence and our survival weapon. It marked a new beginning of another life of Solntsetsvety, the one consisting of different projects.
The projects appeared simultaneously resulting from division of a uniform body into fractions. And some projects added up later. First we set apart our spontaneous concert forms and called them “Psychedelic Sausage“, then a more disciplined instrumental form called “Magnit [of Solntsetsvety]“, then a band playing songs written by Stereochuvak [Anton's alias] – the Batmen of Grand Ukraine. Then we invented the concept of Magical Unicellular Music, which allowed formation of bands with similar type of lineups in different cities. The next step became “experimental Mokh series”, that provided enough food for thought, and… the following Mokh project came out of it. But this whole organizational structure already seems to be outdated… The last 10 years were the decade of the virtual Solntsetsvety, and now I personally want them to be of flesh and blood.
Tim: Magical Unicellular Music rehearsed in a big factory, as I remember. It was 2005 or 2004. Then I decided to create Simptom Pogremushki. Made several CDr releases of a pretty bad quality. Suddenly in Moscow Sybarites began to create their studio and make those funny albums. We were rehearsing Mokh as a live band, even played a great gig at 5 a.m. in 2008 or 2009. After that Anton began recording these electronic tracks – shit, I adore some of them.
Aleksei: I don’t really know. I wasn’t happy with what was happening in the band and quit. Besides, when it all was happening, I lived in New York and concentrating on academic achievements. I later rejoined the revival attempt to record a reggae mini-album with Anton on vocals, harmonica and guitar, Lyosha “Hockey” on guitar, Phil on bass, Roman “Tubby” on drums and myself on guitar. I also did Live in Detroit with Magical Unicellular Music – Anton (guitar and screaming), myself (guitar), Sasha Hamlet (bass) and Roma “Tubby” (drums) in 2008. It was my latest, and probably last involvement with Solntsetsvety.
I participated in the core band Solntsetsvety (I mean the “reformed” version as opposed to the “classical one”. In fact, there was no opposition, I remember one awesome gig when Sasha “Suvorovets” was visiting his home country, and Lyosha “Hockey” stepped out of the shadow. We started in our new line-up and then after a short blackout the classical line-up was on stage), in the side project The Psychedelic Sausage of Soltsetsvety, and in one of incarnations of Magical Unicellular Music. In fact, there were lots of people and lots of projects, I didn’t even know all of them. I remember The Batmen of Great Ukraine and The Sybarites. Anton is currently working solo under the name Моkh. Some projects only lasted to make one recording or to soon be discarded and forgotten.

How has Mokh evolved over time?

Anton: Mokh came out of the “experimental Moh series” and in fact has not evolved in any way. There was a small step towards electronic chillwave – Billion Yellow Birds is somewhat of an homage to the hipster community, which actually appreciated the album. I’m currently making a new album, similar to the first Moh EP – pop songs based on the findings of Magical Unicellular Music in terms of composition and sound. I can’t find an opportunity to arrange serious full-scale rehearsals in Moscow, which is the reason why playing solo with the drum machine has become my strategic survival method.
Tim: It began with trying to reach something, but reached only pop-music heights which are over time limits. Now it is trying to be a live project, and it succeeds.

What is the story behind the album Sergei Pukst, Anton Krivulya – Black Stork [Chorniy Busel in Russian]– does the film* this album soundtracks exist, or were there ever any intentions for it to exist?

Anton: [The film] Chorniy Busel [Black Stork] is post modernist hoax dated to the great historical crash that happened years ago, when Lukashenko (сука) destroyed Belorussian society. This fictional film talking is about a crazy prince-werewolf. It is made in the form of typical “Belorussian soviet republic” scripts, with corresponding dusty aesthetics of official folk music. For example: http://youtu.be/ksPg0bKbLKs.

—————-

*Below is the digital English translation of the Russian text for Black Stork as it appears on archive.org:

Chorny Busel [Black Stork]

The album is the music for now, alas, defunct Belarusian film “Chorny Busel.”

This tragic story of the Belarusian power-loving prince and the tragic love of common people. On a scale historical background of the unfolding drama of love and golden-haired laborer John Maryski, which, being a servant in his rich aunt, in an ill-fated day, caught the eye of the prince, and liked him. Collected the militia to go against the prince, Yang was tortured in prison for his love. Maryska also became the princess, and a medallion, which the prince gave her a wedding, she put her hair Yana, as a token of love. As the dream of freedom.

Hudsovet gave the film the lowest car rental category, virtually closing the access to the picture viewer. In the wine director was charged with pessimism, lack of faith in the ultimate triumph of good. Film historians, however, believe that the relatively soft and rather abstract accusations of pessimism was expressed in an indirect assessment of the film as anti-Stalinist. Recall that for 1954 it was still a very serious statement. Until the fateful XX Congress was still 2 years.

This tape has reached us in their original form. Not even a professional striking musical fragments, stylistically impossible for a distant 54th year (it tracks Part 10 and Part 14) that it struck repeatedly by historians thought about possible fraud. Especially because neither negative nor copies of the picture itself is not preserved.

Downloads & Extras

- interview by DJ Aubrey Beardsley for Stylus, February 2012.

Read it here: Record Label Owner Interview with Kristel Jax of IT³