-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Ambient * Ethereal *
Artist..: 10000 Russos
Album...: 10000 Russos
GENRE....: Psychedelic Rock
STYLE....: Space Rock, Shoegaze
LABEL....: Fuzz Club SCENE.....: 2015-12-13
BITRATE..: 852 kbps avg STORE.....: 2015-00-00
ENCODER..: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V TRACKS....: 5
SIZE.....: 266.0MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://www.facebook.com/10000Russos/
- TRACKLIST
1 Karl Burns 6:38
2 USVSUS 8:33
3 Barreiro 6:38
4 Baden Baden Baden 8:15
5 Stakhanovets/Kalumet 13:34
Total Playtime: 43:38
It was always going to be tough for Fuzz Club Records; how do you follow the
dark, glorious malevolence of Sonic Jesus' 'Neither Virtue Nor Anger'....it
would take something pretty damned special. In 10,000 Russos (pronounced 'dez
mil russos') they have found that something.....and then some!
10,000 Russos are Joπo Pimenta (drums/vocals), Pedro Pestana (guitar) and
AndrΘ Couto (bass) and, according to the press release, they emerged from
what they call ôa dark, decadent city of a peripheral country in a peripheral
continentö: Porto, Portugal. That sense of isolation and pessimism is
conveyed through 5 tracks of dark, atmospheric and sometimes aggressive
music. Laziness on some people's part will try to shoehorn the album into a
generic 'Psychedelic' pigeonhole....but there is a whole lot more going on;
the relentless motorik of Neu!, the iconoclasm of Mark E Smith & The Fall,
the energy of The Jesus And Mary Chain and, at times, the structure of some
of some of the great kosmische bands.
Opener 'Karl Burns' (which, as Fall fans will tell you, is the name of that
band's drummer....why he is immortalised here I don't have a scooby)
immediately sets the tone...a melancholic, yearning song with vocals
incredibly reminiscent of Ian Curtis; in fact Joy Division would be an
obvious comparison...the driving bass propelling the track forwards as per
Peter Hook, the tense atmosphere of despair...add a sprinkling of fuzz and
you're there. 'UsVsUs' starts with what sounds like the forbidding sound of
marching soldiers before a motorik beat and throbbing bass line (that bass
line!) kicks in and some Mark E Smith intoning. The guitars, although
tastefully understated, are immense...there is fuzz, distortion and feedback,
but it's not in your face, not for effect but because it genuinely adds to
the track....probably my favourite track on the album. 'Barreiro' ( a town in
Portugal, not far from Lisbon apparently) has the aforementioned motorik
rhythm of Neu! with an underlying electronic dissonance of early Cabaret
Voltaire. 'Baden Baden Baden' kicks off with an intro straight out of 1976
and this punkish drive and energy continues throughout....this track also
showcases the bands psychedelic side with some wonderful psych guitar
straight out of the Sula Bassana stable and an intensity akin to the Jesus
and Mary Chain. æStakhanovets / Kalumet' (A Stakhanovite, a google search
informed me, was "a worker in the Soviet Union who regularly surpassed
production quotas and was specially honoured and rewarded." ) is the longest
track on the album at just over 13 minutes. It starts as another
barnstormer.....crashing cymbals, intense bass and some more fantastic
wah-wah, over which Pimenta wails again like Mark E Smith. As the title
suggests this is a track of two halves; after the thrust and drive there
comes a drone heavy, krautrock workout with, yet again, another incessant
drumbeat and the drones add an exotic but strangely familiar feel to it.
Although labelled as one track, they are two distinct pieces of music, and
yet they blend together to become the magnum opus of the album.
This really is an immense piece of work...the imagination, the creativity and
the sheer scope of the album is huge and, if given the due time and attention
it deserves, will cement 10,000 Russos' place in many a 'Best Of...' list of
2015. This is the work of a band who care not a whit for genres and
categories but produce the music that they want to produce; there are no
sidelong glances to what other bands are doing, no 'jumping on the
bandwagon'. I've made no secret of my love for many a record label on the
pages of this blog: Cardinal Fuzz, Sulatron, Captcha, BBiB amongst others
.....and on this, alongside the Sonic Jesus release and the 'Reverb
Conspiracy' LPs, Fuzz Club are well and truly up there with the best.
*
10 000 Russos, pronounced ôdez mil russosö are the latest spell-weavers to
join the illustrious Fuzz Club Records banner.
I recently commented that Casper was perhaps a descendant of the renowned
16th century alchemist John Dee û that he continues to conjure these
latter-day ôNuggetsö seemingly at will, suggests I may not have been that far
off the mark!
The bandÆs press release confirms that, ôJoπo Pimenta (drums/vocals), Pedro
Pestana (guitar) and AndrΘ Couto (bass), emerged from what they call ôa dark,
decadent city of a peripheral country in a peripheral continentö: Porto,
Portugalö.
On listening to their eponymous debut album, I see 10 000 Russos as being
more akin to their ancestral sea-faring voyagers of discovery, or as Timothy
Leary observed, ôYou are venturing out (like the Portuguese sailors, like the
astronauts) on the uncharted margins. But be reassuredù itÆs an old human
custom.ö
The bandÆs press release attests that the LP, Æ10 000 RussosÆ is, ôA six
track / 43 minutes long obscure and stomping mantra, their self-titled LP was
entirely written and recorded inside an abandoned 1980s shopping mall, where
escalators have been out of order for the last fifteen years and the only
source of light are some plastic Swedish designed / Chinese made bulbsö.
10 000 Russos are a band who can take the isolation of their creative
surroundings, and like the formative Joy Division in their abandoned ôdark
satanic millö, sculpt a myriad of sonic earthly delights that belie their
stark gestative landscape.
As mentioned in my interview, listening to Æ10 000 RussosÆ, I am immediately
transported in mind to The Young Gods in their heyday, but they are just one
of many primal influences on a band whose originality and passion is worn on
their collective sleeves.
Æ10 000 RussosÆ kicks off with æKarl BurnsÆ, a slow burning, haunting,
melancholy epic tribute to the drummer with The Fall; æUSVSUSÆ, sounds like a
marching, Stephen Morris inspired, ôsolemn drumming ritual across the
wastelands of the mindö; æBarreiroÆ, is perhaps a sparse dystopian hymn to
the Lisbon municipality of the same name; æBaden Baden BadenÆ, launches in
with all the swagger of a æPretty VacantÆ-esque riff intro, hypnotically
building drone layer upon deliciously kaleidoscopic drone layer;
æStakhanovets / KalumetÆ, was described to me by guitarist, Pedro Pestano as
follows, ôStakhanovets is kind of an angry song, itÆs gnarly and thereÆs a
lot of contradictory shit going on. The lyrics refer to the Stakhanovite
movement, a minerÆs movement in the 1930Æs Soviet Union that encouraged
workers to work harder to increase production in a competition based system.
Basically it meant employing an almost capitalist production stimulation
technique in the soviet regime. We are not directly questioning the
legitimacy of this in any system but itÆs interesting to find very different
systems using the same principles to achieve the same goal and still keep
disagreeing. Kalumet means peace pipe and thatÆs what you get when you get
there. It has this gnawa feel to it that on one hand brings you this sort of
feeling that everything is ongoing and on the other thereÆs a feeling of
relief or letting go when itÆs over. This song was born in the studio when
recording Stakhanovets. After that take of Stakhanovets we stayed on playing
for a while and Kalumet came out. Sometimes you have twins and you wonÆt know
until they are both outö.
As alluded to by Pedro in the interview, the ritual immersion that the band
subject themselves to whilst recording, seemingly opens a portal, granting
shamanic channelling and nourishing the transcendence of the finished work.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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* NuHS we miss you! *
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