This afternoon I’d been peeking at the news a little more than usual kinda wondering if our beloved Governor Andrew Cuomo was going to stick his head out of the State House in Albany and announce we’re all being ordered to stay home again due to the recent spike in Covid cases. Everything points to another lockdown and with the weather getting colder and the days getting shorter it just seems more and more inevitable that the worst is yet to come with this virus stuff. The anxiety was driving me NUTS so I thought I’d go ahead and try to will Cuomo out of his mansion to give us some news by spinning some of my favorite Albany-related records. I started with the Born Against singles comp (mainly to hear “Albany Academy” without having to resort to playing an 8″ record). I then moved on to probably my favorite Albany record of all time: The Verge “Habitual” 7″. After that I (obviously) needed to hear the fifth Verge song out there which is on the relatively solid “Hudson Rock” compilation LP. The Crude track on that comp, “Vacation”, seemed like it might have gotten something moving out in the atmosphere as the wind outside was starting to pick up and my cats suddenly looked nervous. I decided to throw on the first ConDemek LP to keep the pressure on and then broke out their split 7″ with Joe Colon on Erl Records. Naturally, I followed that with the mighty Erl s/t LP and by this point the wind was really howling, my cats were hiding under the couch and my wife swore to me she had just seen a large black hawk land on a tree outside our apartment window. I threw on side one of the Burnt Hills “To Your Head” LP, turned the volume up and rushed over to the window to see for myself. Sure enough, there was a massive black hawk perched on a branch staring back at me, seemingly unaware of the massive funnel of leaves and debris the wind was now spinning around it. The wind was now deafening and as the hawk let out a screech, I put the needle down on side 2 of the record and turned the volume up as high as it would go. I could just make out the sound of my cellphone buzzing violently in the next room. I called out for my wife to bring it to me but by this point she had locked herself and the cats in the bathroom. The music was conjuring something dark and destructive and they knew It. I retrieved my phone and rushed back to the window only to see the hawk let out one last screech before flying away into the now darkened sky. The screen of my phone was flashing with emergency alerts. It was happening: I had conjured the wrath of Albany and there was now no way I or anyone could go outside. As the alerts flashed over and over, one on top of the other, I could just make out a few words that said something like “Moderation Needed” and “WordPress Comments” and someone named “tanvibytes” that “liked” my “post”. Suddenly it dawned on me: someone was liking and commenting on my most recent blog posts! It was finally happening! I yelled for my wife again but by this point she had lost interest and retreated to her office and the cats had gone back to napping. I rushed over to my laptop and logged onto my blog page just in time to see yet another fan comment on my most recent post. Finally: proof that people were paying attention and I wasn’t just wasting my time writing about all these dusty records I’d accumulated! Who were my new fans? How’d they find me? Why do they all have Russian email addresses? No matter! Someone named “Blondell Crawford Wayolle” was nice enough to say, “I love looking through a post that can make men and women think. Also, many thanks for allowing me to comment.” Well, Blondell, thank YOU for reading and being a fan! Please subscribe! A young woman named “Edith Bronnie Ainslie” told me “What a information of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable knowledge concerning unpredicted emotions.” and to her I say; Hearing that makes this ALL worth it! Thanks! It suddenly occurred to me: I’d read Russians were using all sorts of technology to communicate with Americans through social media the past few years so it made sense they’d heard my all-Albany DJ set and used their military’s ability to control the weather to reach out to me. It had nothing to “spirits”! Boy did I feel silly…
Wow. What a day. I almost don’t care if Cuomo tells me I can’t leave the house again: my (Russian) fans want me to write.. It reminded me I hadn’t really been keeping up on Russian underground music the past few years so why not take this opportunity to give my new fans a taste of what’s going on in their homeland? I’d really dug the two Asian Women On The Telephone LPs Feeding Tube put out a few years ago and they got me digging around online to see what else was going on over there. I ended up picking up this Уроды Под Водой / Марс 69 split 12″ after a friend suggested I check out their Bandcamp pages and while it wasn’t an easy one to track down it was well worth it. Live performance, Futurist/Dadaist masks and costumes and graphic design are all clearly as important to Уроды Под Водой, Марс 69 and AWOTT as their music itself. All three bands overlap slightly aesthetically (and even share members occasionally) in their approach to rather minimal, lo-fi “experimental” approach to creating music, but ultimately all three have unique sensibilities and sonic reference points that set them apart. AWOTT’s name itself is taken from a Sun City Girls song title and while I can’t place them side by side sonically, AWOTT aren’t too far from SCG, the Residents, early Boredoms/Ruins and some of the loopier post-punk units dipping their toes into 70’s krautrock in the early years of ZickZack. Уроды Под Водой (AKA “Freaks Under the Water” or “URODI POD VODOI”) call themselves “analog noise theatre” and that’s a pretty good summation of all three of these bands to some extent. Freaks and Mars 69 both rely heavily on analog synths as both lead instruments as well as keepers of rhythm while only AWOTT seems to have a full time drummer. Both Freaks and Mars 69 wouldn’t sound out of place in between Marine Girls and Instant Automatons on an 80’s post-punk cassette comp. There’s a pop sensibility to both bands that’s only sort of obscured by experimentation and unfamiliar sounds dragged out of their primitive electronics. Further exploration of these bands and their scene in St. Petersburg (Freaks have since relocated to Sweden) reveals members inclusion in somewhat less experimental and more straightforward chaotic noise punk and powerviolence units such as Freak’s vocalist “Utopia Cosmica” who also “sings and fights” in Lucy Satanika who look to be one hell of a live band in their own regard. The more you dig into these bands and their members’ art the more you’re reminded of Providence’s legendary Fort Thunder and the scene that birthed bands like Lightning Bolt, Arab on Radar and Forcefield, all bands with an appreciation for theatrical performances, analog synths and a sound that used a bastard child of punk and Krautrock to mesmerize and confuse audiences from behind Dadaist masks and costumes. Like those Providence bands, Freaks, AWOTT and Mars 69 often use cryptic missives and artwork to communicate with fans, critics and journalists as evidenced here in this “interview” with Freaks from 2013. They’re all making their own unique sounds in their own ways, but they all somehow ended up speaking the same language and now it’s up to us, the audience, to figure it all out.
Now, as an American who only hears of Russia as this oppressive, culturally frozen land of corrupt politicians who do nothing but crush free thinkers and help get people like “Orange Man Bad” elected, it’s pretty great to see there’s a vibrant art scene happening in what is apparently a very complicated place to live. Before AWOTT, the only time in recent memory when I heard “Russian” and “punk” in the same sentence was when Pussy Riot was in the news and let’s face it: they were more “punk” in spirit and more performative than an actual band. After a little digging online and with the help of Google Translate I found there’s a lot to be discovered over in Russia. So dig in! The Post-Materialization Label is a GREAT place to start.
