Rostom Alajian - Unquenchable Flame Of Remembrance

Years ago my university studies and an international university exchange program took me down to Thessaloniki, Greece's second biggest city, where the food is ample and the girls are pretty. Apart from the picturesque seafront, the amazing food and the vibrant political movement, which included a lot of demonstrations, strikes, occupations and clashes with the police, as well as an active hardcore punk/noise scene (which will be covered soon), I also discovered a few music gems. One of them is this cd featuring orchestral music composed by Soviet-Armenian-Greek composer Rostom Alajian. Apart from being a veteran of the antifascist war against the Nazis, Alajian was also the director of orchestras in Armenia, Georgia and Vladikavkaz. This cd includes two symphonic pieces with choirs dedicated to the Soviet Great Patriotic War and the battles in Crimea, Stalingrad and Pribaltika, with narrations in Russian, with that unrivaled emotional manner than only Russians can deliver. The music contains influences of Shostakovich, particularly the Leningrad symphony and his film music (King Lear/ Hamlet), albeit intertwined with military music and socialist realist overtones and elements of Central Asian/Oriental music. On top of that the choirs are as awesome as Russian military choirs can be, making you wanting to slap Nazi skinhead fucks. I discovered this cd in an immensely dusty second-hand bookshop run by a strange man who was the husband of the composer's daughter, the latter of whom self-released this cd in 2004.

Download 

Misha Mishajashvili

Misha Mishajashvili is a dub/ambient artist from Lasnamäe, Talinn, Estonia and he kindly sent me some of his stuff to listen to. One of the labels he uses to describe his music is "stalincore," which is a very intriguing concept in itself given this blog's fascination with Georgian mustaches. The "Stalin" aspect lays in Misha's inclusion of speeches of various CCCP officials in his tracks It is also quite interesting to see a guy from Estonia, which is a country that was incorporated into the Soviet Union under - to put it mildly - dubious conditions. So, Misha's music is heavy industrial/dub drum rhythms and distortions - that would sound in place in a dark decadent post-Soviet club - over samples of old Russian orchestrated music pieces and choirs (and possibly other sources). So, if I had to draw comparison, I'd say this is like a rhythmic version of The Caretaker (due to the ballroom pieces) and perhaps of Quantic (due to the cinematic quality created), thereby creating a dystopian but also dreamy feeling that is accentuated by the Soviet speeches.

 

Misha's blog is https://misha-mishajashvili.bandcamp.com and you can go there to listen to his stuff and perhaps contribute something. I'd recommend the most recent 2018 album as a good start, and perhaps 2011 which includes more traditional music samples.

Soviet Avant-Garde 1 & 2 cds

In a somewhat belated tribute to the most important historic event of not only the 20th century, but of all history in terms of social change, here are the two cds featuring music by early Soviet music composers that were suppressed after the turn to socialist realism in the late 1920s-early to mid 1930s and the purges.

Despite Soviet Union's (and Stalin's personally) immense role in destroying Nazism and liberating a great part of Europe from the shackles of Western imperialism, not to mention the spread of socialism in other continents as well, it ought to be said that the turn to socialist realism, as a tool of serving political expediencies of preparing for WWII, thus needing a more popular form of art that would exult socialist construction and the imminent military effort - that had been correctly foreseen by the Soviet leadership - it was both politically and theoretically unfounded, as was the generalization of the Popular Front tactic that was imposed on the entire list of Comintern parties. The purges, the killings, the terror, and the increasing gigantism of the state and its repressive apparatuses were the logical outcome of such wrong theoretical views, which were, however, up to a certain extent forced upon the Stalinist leadership, as it inherited all the problems laid on the socialist building by the civil war, imperialist invasion and the tactical retreats of NEP and negative military treaties.

The first of the two cds features German pianist Steffen Schleiermacher playing piano sonatas and nocturnes by Sergei Protopopov (whose track starts like a black metal arpeggio!), Alexander Mossolov, Arthur Lourié and Nikolai Roslavetz. It is piano music based on modernism and futurism, with atonalities and very dark moods.

1994 cd on hat[now]ART.



The second cd features more music by Alexander Mossolov (very very bleak), Arthur Lourié, Nikolai Roslavetz, and the unbelievably beautiful tracks of Leonid Polovinkin. 1999 cd on hat[now]ART.

Soviet Avant-Garde 1 download
Soviet Avant-Garde 2 download