Bluesmen's World(Music)

"Germany and Russia haven't had a history of amicable relationships through the years. The twentieth century was a particularly bad time, as each took turns in occupying the other for extended periods. However, this hasn't stopped Russian musicians being welcomed when they've gone searching for greener pastures in the West as they look to make a living from their craft. Which explains how the Russian group Ersatzmusika comes to be based out of Berlin Germany and is about to release their second CD, Songs Unrecatable, on the German label Asphalt-Tango.

If you download one of the first things you'll notice is the lyrics are in English, and that's not because they've been translated, it's because almost all the songs on Songs Unrecantable are sung in that language. Although to be honest lead singer Doubrovskaja's accent is so thick that if you're only listening casually chances are you're going to assume she's singing in Russian. To be fair, it's not just her accent, the music the band plays is so different from what most of us are used to hearing when it comes to Eastern European folk, the combination of the two makes for a sound so alien to our ears you can be easily forgiven for not noticing she is singing in English.

Before anyone starts jumping to any conclusions about brooding Russians or anything equally stupid, by mood I'm referring to the fact that Doubrovskaja sounds likes a Russian accented Marlene Dietrich. Yet while both she and Dietrich evoke smoke filled cabarets with dim lights, musically, lyrically the two women are miles apart. For while the former's stock in trade was sultry love songs, the latter's lyrics drip irony onto music that tastes of a little bit of everything from Balkan beat box to traditional folk sounds. There's actually something eerily familiar about Ersatzmusika's overall sound that escaped me for the longest time, until it struck me how much they reminded me of The Doors in their slower and more pensive moments.

While they might share certain characteristics with other performers and have drawn upon various styles, it's doubtful you've ever heard anything quite like Ersatzmuzika before.

Where one has come to expect a lively sound inspired by polka's, the heady influence of gypsy violins, or other rural traditions, you find moody, atmospheric sounds which are a far more accurate reflection of life today. The lyrics in turn are a match for this sound as they offer commentary on humanity's checkered history and uncertain future.
The opening lines of "Gypsy Air", the first track on the CD, give you a good idea of the band's appraisal of our past: "Woe filled times we must abide / woe betide him who knows not this...Let us compile a list/Of the wrongs that man commits / Never shying ignominy / Clipped the wings, ducked the tail/Little boy, Nagasaki."

However it's not only the past they are concerned with as they capture the true price of the greed and materialism that plagues today a little later in the same song with the following lines, "That tenderness' needs must contrast / With tender, its negation."
I don't think I've heard a condemnation of a system that puts selling above caring phrased so succinctly and directly before. Now, lest you think they're only a one note band, they also show themselves capable of being darkly humorous. "Oh Pterodactyl", track seven, is a darkly delightful examination of our genealogy. "There has of late been much debate / Bout what is round and what is straight / And why no politician / Could have a forebear simian / But oh pterodactyl / To you we owe a / Oh pterodactyl / A debt of honour / Oh pterodactyl / Although that Noah / Oh pterodactyl / Wants to disown ya."

t's hard to describe the experience of listening to Songs Unrecantable by Ersatzmusika simply because there's not much else like them around to offer up as a comparison. Their accents mark them as Eastern European, and there are elements of their music that reflect that heritage, but not in the way we've grown accustomed to hearing them as presented by world music labels. This is an edgier, more contemporary, and urban sound which, while it doesn't discount its heritage, uses it as its springboard to something new instead of just recreating what's been done before. It's only fitting though considering their song's lyrics, which are not only predominately in English to allow for more universal comprehension, are also far more relevant to today's world than what we're used to.

Recently we've seen how young musicians from backgrounds as diverse as Balkan and Roma have begun to make their sound more contemporary while maintaining a connection to their traditional music. Ersatzmuzika is on the leading edge of the movement intent on proving anything old can be new again and in the process are creating some great music."

Richard Marcus

01. Songs on a Gypsy Air
02. Wild Grass
03. Train-slow Adagio
04. It's the Russian Beat
05. Berceuse
06. Tver (feat. Unterwasser)
07. Pterodactyl
08. HMS RIP DTs
09. Winter
10. Unredeemed
11. Letter from Baltimore (feat. Unterwasser)
12. Antediluvian
13. Incantation vs. Causation

Leonid Soybelman - guitar
Ruslan Kalugin - guitar
Phil Freeborn - guitar
Konstantin Orlov - bass
Michail Zhukov - drums, percussion
Irina Doubrovskja - vocals, accordion, piano, keyboards
Thomas Cooper - vocals

Link

pass: bluesmen-worldmusic.blogspot.com

"Once known as "the only country band" on Flying Nun (Trail of Tears in 90, their sole album for the label), this ongoing project of Brian and Maryrose Crook has progressively taken a darker and deeper path the past decade.

These 10 songs owe debts to old murder ballads, the Velvet Underground and the Doors, acoustic Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt and Marianne Faithfull.

With eerily plucked banjo (the haunting, southern gothic of A Little to the Left), a dense guitar drone and unsettling organ (A Forest of Forests), stalking bass and disturbing electronics (the soundscape of Sargasso Sea), and vocals from down a dark hall (Harvesting the Sea), this can be as creepy as it is cathartic.
They also carve out driving rock (Fu Man Chu, Deep Deep Sea, Feels Like Fun which sounds like 1976 Dylan fronting the Meat Puppets) but mostly this comes out from the shadows.

Better known in the US, where they recently toured, than they are back home, the Renderers occupy rock-noir territory similar to Nick Cave's. But when Maryrose takes the vocals there is an even more unnerving juxtaposition between her singing and the menacing lyrics and music.
Sort of Nancy 'n' Lee with the spirit of early Lou Reed as a ghostly presence.
Not for everyone, but far too good to be embraced abroad and left to languish in their homeland."

01.Deep Hole
02.A Little to the Left
03.A Forest of Forests
04.Fu Manchu
05.Sargasso Sea
06 Five Good Hours
07.Deep Deep Sea
08.Feels Like Fun
09.Harvesting The Sea
10.Supernova

Bass - John Billows
Drums - Michael Daly
Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals - Brian Crook
Guitar, Vocals - Maryrose Crook

Link

pass: bluesmen-worldmusic.blogspot.com