Strange and terrible music

"Shoe shop music", I like that. There's a record of the Wedding Present doing a bunch of traditional Ukrainian songs (incl. the original of "Those Were The Days"!) and it's this demented hyper- speedy bizarro stuff that bears no relationship to what their music usually sounds like. I need to get my hands on that.

They play Pan Sonic in shoe shops? Which shoe shops? My DMs are due for complete body refit...

"it sounds like men digging the road, fast and aggressive bang bang music"

Could this be that Hard House music?

PS They don't play vintage 80s industrial music music: Test Department, Einsturzende Neubaten, Portion Control.. in the places I go into.

Frankly, I think this is one of the best initial thread questions I've yet read on this board. Hurrah for Liliya! :-)

Shocks of the new are part of the fun of discovering music for yourself, especially if you can keep in mind that what will sound off to you will often be something that many other people have lived in completely for years at a time. Keeps the perspectives in mind. What's interesting is when you have a sort of glazed, refracted image of what music 'elsewhere' (define it however you like it) based on the merest snippets or impressions, especially if it's part of other media (something heard in a film, on TV, etc. rather than on its own -- or even better yet, written about, because you have to desparately imagine what it is in fact like ;-)).

Coming from the former Soviet Union, how can you complain about 'shoe shop music' when you inflict the likes of Ruki Vverkh, Demo, Gosti iz budushchego et al. on weary travellers? :D

Nonetheless, I went to Russia expecting to be subjected to horrible balalaika music and male voice choirs non-stop, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the former Soviet Union has a wealth of excellent new music (Mumii Troll, Zdob si Zdub, Splin) , as well as having a sound rock history. So much so that it became the focus of my dissertation :)

(Mumii Troll = named after exactly who you think, incidentally...)

Er...and who would that be, exactly?

Moomin Troll from the Moomins. Classic kids TV of the 80s. Oh, and a character in Scandanavian folklore too.

Well, yes, more or less. I'm too tired to link to ILE competently: Nick Dastoor can do it in the morning.

As luck would have it I was just given a stack of Russian "rock" music. Only listened to one disc of it so far though, by (not coincidentally) Mumii Troll. It was... weird. Not weird like Frank Zappa-weird or Derek Bailey-weird, but weird like "this is almost like English-language rock music except not." I still need to accustom myself to it - the music itself was slightly Romantic, just a tiny touch glammy - i.e. not my thing (Ned might like it). Some others I still have to listen to as well, by Nogu Svelo and Agata Kristi.

(Side note: the cover art puts me off. Same goes for many of the books I got. I don't think I like contemporary commercial-line Russian design ideas.)

you just have to concentrate harder. what do you want everything to be done for you?

Romantic and glammy? GIMME. ;-)

Will attempt to giveyou in near future.

If you're interested in Mumii Troll, you should look at their web site (http://www.mumyitroll.com). You can download most of their stuff on MP3. I'd heartily reccomend them. Actually, they were Russia's Eurovision entry this year, and their song, Lady Alpine Blue was in English. Check 'em out!

Shoe shops should be playing what I think used to be called shoe-gazing music, shouldn't they? Maybe I need to buy more shoes. They used to play Muzak, which I much preferred to the piped-in rock classics they play now. Every time I turn on a Top 40 or just about any other commercial radio station in the country where I live, The US of A, the music sounds "strange and alien" to me. In fact, I've always felt strange and alien here, and I've lived here all my life.

Never before have I realised what isolation truly means ...

Stick around. You hear it a lot more here than any of the things you love. I get the impression that you're a Romantic struggling to come to terms with reality. But post early and post often, Liliya, because I admire your mind.

Tentative first response: Nogy Svelo and Agata Kristi = ugh. One problem with listening to foreign music cuz it's foreign is that all your usual reasons for picking one band over another are ignored. Like, if I were picking music in English, I wouldn't pick music that sounded like these two bands.

the argentines seemed in 96 to have this awful penchant for cumbia groups - subtropical boy bands who could dance to a casio with a smba beat -it's not true what they say, you don't miss something like that, especially when it's gone. when i was there in 93 that was where i first heard latin techno - lots of hard beats up against weird ass lyrics; the tango I love, the chacquarera (regional folk with weird beats) not so much, but Illya Kuriaki and the Valderramas remain my a ll-time favourite Argentine band - hip hop thrash funk 60s soundtracks spanish rop with go-go girls and funky wigs to boot.

ambrose is in russia, he should respond to this. ambrose?

Has anyone else been to a country where the music seems strange and alien. New unharmonic or umnmelodic sounds. Maybe Ukrainian music sounds foreign to you. Maybe Japan or China..I wish I could travel there to see for myself..Momus could tell us maybe! He seems to know everything!

That's kind of you, Liliya! I'll tell you a couple of strange and terrible musics I've just heard here in Japan. I was in a Cafe, Chanoma, for lunch. You sit on the floor on raised platforms covered with white matresses. It's supposed to be a '21st century Japanese tea house'. They were playing this ambient techno music, but the speaker above me was either defective or resonating at some spooky frequency that set off huge vibrations in the building walls, because all you could hear was a thick scuzzy doomy black ball of sound, drowning every other sound out. It was beyond avant garde.

Then just now I heard two 'public information musics' broadcast from the fascist loudspeaker mounted on a nearby school, one which plays every day at 5pm, which sounds like the Chinese national anthem or something, the other a little melody they play on either side of the 'Danger, high smog levels!' warning that tells you to 'refrain from outdoor exercise'. This music, though ostensibly as cute and tinkly as an ice cream van, is deeply sinister in Japan because you know they've got a little tune lined up for a major earthquake ('ting, ting, plong! Please assemble in emergency area 7!') and another one for when the Korean missiles shoot overhead ('Boing! Tinkle! Ping! Enemy missiles detected, please proceed to shelter at once!')

Moomin Troll from the Moomins. Classic kids TV of the 80s. Oh, and a character in Scandanavian folklore too.

Not a character from Scandinavian folklore, except inasmuch as Tove Jansson's characters from the Moomin books have become part of our modern folklore. She passed away just the other week, BTW. In her memory, I suggest that each one of you who hasn't yet, go out and get a Moomin book - they're wonderful reads even for adults.

Mumyi Troll's "Lady Alpin Blue" was easily the standout of this year's Eurosong contest. Weird in exactly the way Josh managed to describe above.

On a side note: of late, I've been listening more and more to Indian music webcasts. Some truly stunning music there, refreshingly free of many "Western" musical conventions (but with, presumably, its own set, that I have yet to grow tired of).

Johnny says: If you're interested in Mumii Troll, you should look at their web site (http://www.mumyitroll.com).

However, that link doesn't work, making me angry.

That's cuz there's a typo: it's www.mumiytroll.com.

Geoff : Ilia Kuriyaki Yes! I was in Paraguay last year and picked up a pirate compilation with this track called Coolo (I guess "Ass") Wonderful stuff ... right now I stick it on compilations next to Ozomatli which is kind of freaky for those who realize : classy latin hip-hop / trashy latin hip-hop.

As to countries which are musically disappointing ... I was in South America because my girlfriend is Brazilian. Now where I live in the UK, people *worship* Brazilian music (and quite rightly when it comes to classic samba, bossa nova etc.) but the contemporary Brazilian standard pop / clubbing dance music is a kind of simplified folk / samba called Pagode, and boy is it BAD. Every song has the same dum dumdum dum duddum bassline, a fairly pedestrian rhythm and lyrics which would shame Black Lace ...

How fascinating - this is how I felt about Bollywood before I realized what it was and how easy it was to get. I called it "Indian Restaurant Music", until I went to an Indian restaurant with a friend who lived in the Indian neighborhood. She clued me in: "it's Indian film soundtrack music, and you can get the tapes in all the shops in back of the restaurants for like, two bucks." Back then, I thought that all intriguing and fun music had a $15 import price tag, too much for my college budget. Mind you, we didn't get Bollywood films on tv back then, and it wasn't played on college radio or anything.

oh my word, mumii troll are utterly excreble!!!!!!1

as are all other russian stadium rock dinosaurs: ddt, leningrad, dva samolyota, tequilajazz......all to be destroyed. actually, add chaif to that list.

ddt are probably the worse.

russian ska pank bands are much more fun than these espeically spitfire. zdob si zdub are pretty good as well. but they dont count cos theyre moldovan. russians go ape for excrucitaing pompous rock: see kino, the countries favourite ever rock band....

for some reason all the singers of these terrible bands affetc these ridiculous gravelly voices that just sound appalling. also, terrible is russian pop/hard house (well, that seems to be the main sound at the moment)....ruki vverx are pretty horrendous, russkii razmer....jeezus the list is endless.

but! russian pop has some stars! the obvious are taty. theres a link on zerointegrity.co.uk to an article about them: lesbian schoolgirl video shocker! also, i like vitas. hes got this funny folk/pop thing going on with great operatic wailing (to be honest, he has got an incredible voice), also including silly tabloid rumours about how hes an alien, or he lives in the sea and has gills or something (always covers his neck up)..

well, like lilya, when i first came here, i too experienced strange and terrible music. but now i am pretty much used to things that people in england (lets say) would have to see to believe the shitness.

russian pop music is the most incredible thing, to be honest.......

i reckon: check out taty and zdob si zdub.

hey just found the taty website: http://www.taty.ru funnily enough

"downloads" has got ra clips. the rest is in russian unfortunatley. taty are one of russias firast maunfactured pop groups actually, or at least one of the first thats actually decent.

and the one with black hair is pretty cute.....

Seriously now, I find U2 both strange and terrible, creating a totally alien sound that whenever I hear it makes me wonder precisely what world I'm living in. How can music sound this alien to me, I wonder, when it clearly has such resonance for so many other people? I don't understand Bono and The Edge's motivations, and I don't understand their machinations.

They seem terribly, inalienably associated with a culture that I only catch occasional glimpses of - US shopping mall trash, people earning over 30K in Westernised cultures, MTV Europe preaching a gospel that really someone should kill them for.

I'm used to sudden noise, I'm used to disquieting harmonies, I can even ope with the sudden boom boom boom of tehcno played unmercifully loud in canteens and coffee shops. I find it no less odd that Russian bands should want to play ska then I do that Sonic Youth should want to borrow from Greek tradition. But U2 terrify me in a way that I cannot cope with.

Dammit, Ambrose. Mumiy Troll were the most decent CD I got. :(

Surely the thing about U2 is that it's hero rock with no immediate references to big dumb sex (as opposed to big dumb sexism, for which read "Mysterious Ways" and the video). Ergo, you can *ahem* 'rock out' anthemically and still feel complacent. Which is good when you're blasting down the highway, thus American success.

hey i love mumii troll and nogy svelo and zdrov zi zdub!!! would love to see tham live! i saw butucev and korrl i shut!!!!

Having slipped on a forest "path" at dusk and broken my foot, I myself am "digging the road"(new-found appreciation) quite a bit these days. Perhaps he means punk perhaps he's nowell and the boy next door. Agree about Bono. Although he's given U2 some good grades, Christgau pegged Bono Himself as the choirboy in bad Hollywood "religious" schlock..None of the fun DeMille trash, which somebody else once pegged as "eroticizing the spiritual and spiritualizing the erotic," but never letting them leave each other alone! Bono should be force-fed all the DeMille Turner Classic Movies fed me. Otherwise, as Ned said, big sexless loudness. (Ned: CREEM said of MACHINE HEAD:"guaranteed to drive you to new heights of frenzied complacency." But I'll take MH over any U2; even complacency must take its degrees of Judgement!Saul Hernandez of Caifanes sounds like Bono (and his multitudes) thinks *he* sounds (also like what I've heard of Saul's current band, Jaguares, although somebody on another thread says "Bon Jovi"!) Gogol Bordello side-project JUF is uneven but half-great, with Eugene Utz singing like Triumph the Insult Comic (dog puppet), with Israeli diva, gypsies, hiphop beta, ska/afropop elements, other (stinkyrecords.com) Tamizdat.org is a great source of Euro rocketc. (no t.a.T.U. though, far as I know). Their founders, Heather and Matthew, used to work at the Knitting Factory and supplied me with most of the music (Plastic People, DG 307, etc.) I wrote about in "Uprostred," my East Euro roundup for villagevoice.com