When it comes to the export possibilities of Latvian music, there has been a lot of talk about what kind of music our music would be able to interest listeners abroad. What is as authentic as possible and when you hear it, it becomes immediately clear where it comes from, or – on the contrary – in terms of sound, does it correspond to international standards? Obviously, fearing to stand out with the provincialism of the Eastern country, which is considered a fear here, and focusing on the second option, great hopes had been placed in previous years Youth Carnival and Chris Noah, in the State Cultural Capital Fund’s Nonacademic Music Support Target Program Competition, were also awarded more than a third of the state’s 2019 co-funding for international touring. Of course, travel restrictions have changed a lot in the last couple of years, limiting all types of plans or institutions, and maybe that’s the only reason we haven’t heard about the great international success of both projects.
Towards a better life
In any case, it is worth looking into the future, looking for future candidates, if the previous ones have started to slip, and they are, moreover, brighter than the previous ones. At this point I would like to highlight two that have several things in common. Both the group fiancée, Both of them Perestroika released his debut album this fall – respectively Sextasy And Memorial server. Both have English-language songs that any child in the world can understand today, while the names of the bands have Russian words, which can serve as both an accelerator pedal and a brake pedal for their future career – depending on political views and prejudices, origin and age of listeners and potential supporters.
As for associating the group members themselves with names – Podrugas for leader Alisa Stefanoviča, it’s really a word from her mother tongue, but Perestroikai the Russian language and even the time of change initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, with which the name is associated, are too alien things to be just an exotic of an inexperienced story. Moreover, it all started when the main members Otomārs Krišjānis and Rūdolfs Ozolas met not even on the territory of Latvia, but in Amsterdam. In any case, even the positive tone of the words used in the names of the two groups can be a plus, indicating a passage towards a better life and friendship. So it’s not as crazy as the band was Komsomol Youth, which quickly changed its name, borrowed from the youth organization born to build communism, to a less controversial one taken from the same times – Riga fashion. It was the name of both a glossy magazine and a progressive inner-city clothing house.
Call, come and make friends!
Musical project Podruga I heard Radio for the first time NO and in the 2018 competition of young groups of the University of Latvia hadrons, in which Alice Stefanovic performed alone, singing with programmed electronic accompaniment. Attention was immediately drawn to her voice, with a pronounced vibrato rarely seen in pop music, and gradually Podruga grew from a one-man project into a four-piece band that also recorded an album Sextasy. It was celebrated with an ambitious and bright show filled with elements of wardrobe and stage design, lighting and even stunts in the Wagon Hall, a venue that has recently opened and has already become a major staging post of Riga’s concert life.
Alice is able to attract not only with her unique voice, catchy melodies and skillfully crafted arrangements with gothic influences, in which they play an outstanding rhythm group (Jana Petkus – bass, Kārlis Lazdovskis – drums) and virtuoso howling guitar parts (Richards Dauksts) an important role, but also with a provocative visual image that lives up to the album title and provides an effective counter to the tendency of recent years to criticize any emphasis on sexism as bad taste doomed to extinction and harmful to public health. However, immediately after the pandemic restrictions, a kind of explosion of emphasis on natural identity and freedom can be observed, which cannot be stopped: at the entrance to the concert presentation, the tickets were checked and the adepts of the new , visually a suggestive punk wave danced in the visitor queues, cassettes and special souvenirs were sold by current youth groups SN extension participant, an erotic stage show took place on and in front of the stage. There is no doubt that Podrugu it would also need to be shown to listeners outside of Latvia, which in the digital age has no personal boundaries, but concerts are also needed: a successful performance in Lithuania has just been held and a joint Baltic tour with another one is currently planned a noteworthy group, Perestroika, which we will discuss later in the following lines.
We are still reorganising
It’s popular among music connoisseurs to look for all kinds of comparisons, which I’ve tried to avoid when writing about Podruguand I would like to escape from it by writing about it too Perestroika. However, the inspiration of David Bowie’s work in the sound of this band – in the instrumentally beautiful hard rock arrangements, intonations, vocal timbre and message – is so palpable that it has already been emphasized by listeners and the musicians themselves cite Bowie and Ziggy’s songs Electric love in the text. Album Memorial server the ten songs are truly fantastic, and each one comes crashing down like an avalanche of exciting musical swirls that have been passed through a filter of carbon, crystal, silver or even gold to sound so incredibly good that even a hardened music reviewer can listen comfortably several times and he doesn’t feel like he wasted his time, but on the contrary – he got rich by discovering something new and even interesting for himself in Latvian music.
in perestroika Aleksandrs Barons, who have already shown their talent in other musical endeavors, play (Elsa, Night of San Bartolomeo – drums and poetry), Alice Golovacka (Scopes, Nova Koma, Podruga, Pizdets I Meyk the Heavy Metal – keyboards, flute, bass) and Rudolfs Ozols (The bad tones – guitar and vocals), while the leader Otomārs Krišjānis is such a brilliant and irresistible showman on stage, that we have been missing for a long time. In order not to attract the attention of the yellow press for this, Otomar’s surname is not advertised, which would immediately reveal the family of a high state official from which he comes. On the other hand, this fact could probably help as an engine internationally to pull the group into wider waters right now when more attention is being paid to the country of Latvia in connection with the film Viesturs Kairis which kicked off the big success story January about the barricades of 1991 and also about our geographically dangerous proximity to the current war in Ukraine.
The album’s first single resonates with the post-Soviet legacy and its influence on today Playboy of the Soviet Union, which also had a nice video two years ago. It all looks like a genie in a bottle, bubbling and steaming, but someone has to step up and pop the cork. You can only do it once, and perhaps the right time is right now. You can wait no longer, because there is always the possibility that a little later all the goodness has already thawed and cooled down or warmed up to a neutral room temperature. Album presentation concert at home Perestroika will play there in the Carriage Hall on December 1st.
