Virtually unknown Soviet era music (Soviet electronic, Soviet jazz-funk)

  • Thread starter Deleted member 97083
  • Start date

Deleted member 97083

Check this out, the Soviets made electronic music in the 1980s. Not unexpected, even though the art and culture was state controlled there was still experimentation. But it's just interesting that with the wonders of the Internet you can find stuff like this.




Back in the 1970s, Soviet artists had tried out jazz-funk with pretty interesting results:


 
What's interesting to me about this is the way it doesn't really fit into any of the Western categories. It's danceable, but it's probably not extremely mixable (there isn't a really set pattern of drums that would allow one track to be mixed into the next). I've known about Soviet and Russian electronic music for a while, though I don't know much; one of the pioneers in electronic instruments was Leon Theremin, who invented an early drum machine, the 'theremin' device named after him (it generates tones based on the position of one's hands relative to a metal object), and, as it turns out, several listening devices. He's one of the many inventive Soviets sent to the sharashka or research-gulag.

Like classical music, electronic music could be seen as apolitical by Soviet authorities. I don't know of any hard evidence that they encouraged electronic musicians, however these releases are clearly not printed on old X-ray film like the Beatles or punk rock might have been, so they must have been tolerated or approved of.

These are from the 1980s, and so are probably a little too late to have a big impact on Western electronic music if they had been popularized in the West. I do wonder why the Soviets didn't consider exporting this music, since it's language-independent, and since so little of Soviet culture ever made it to the west.

As a what-if, perhaps Soviet electronic composers developed this music just a bit earlier, say around the same time Kraftwerk began producing (1974-77). With some help from cultural authorities, might this music have been popular in the West? Might it have, at the least, rivaled Kraftwerk for American audiences?
 
It was in the USSR that Lev Termen created the termwox, he is also an etterophone - a tool on which they play, making "magic" passes in the air. In the late 50's and early 60's, the Ensemble of musical instruments by Vyacheslav Valerianovich Meshcherin became famous. His music was what the hour called Space Age Pop. Light, cheerful, slightly mocking melodies were the soundtrack to a beautiful future, the features of which seemed to begin to show through in the stable present. In 1967 the Moscow experimental studio of electronic music was founded. From it came the famous musician Eduard Artemiev. Long before Bryan Ino came up with the label "ambient", music in this genre was in full swing in Soviet films, for which the soundtracks Artemiev wrote. Among these paintings were a lot of fiction - "Stalker" and "Solaris" by Andrei Tarkovsky, and also "Moon Rainbow", "Return from the orbit", "Dream towards", "Invisible Man" and witty propaganda animated series "Baba Yaga against!" .
The Baltic scene was actively developing. Each republic had its own "electronic hero". In Estonia - Sven Grunberg, the author of music for the films "Hotel" The Dead Alpinist "and" The Curse of the Valley of Serpents ". In Lithuania - VIA "Argo" under the leadership of Giedrius Kupryavichus. In Latvia - "Opus" Sigmar Liepinsha, and also stars of the first magnitude - group "Zodiac" under control of Janis Lucens. This ensemble, which focused on such Western samples as the music of Space, Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre, created electronics with a bias in disco, then in light rock. The science-fiction theme of the Latvians at first did not stick out as much as Space, but on the second album "Music in the Universe" they directly declared themselves as a "space" group. Participants of the "Zodiac" even invited to the Star City, where they were able to communicate with astronauts and rocket designers. Yes, the musicians were given a trip to the closed city to classified specialists, just to make them better imbued with the romance of the cosmos. Can you imagine such now? "Zodiac" during the "Soviet occupation" published the records in millions of copies. With Latvia gaining independence, the star group ... immediately disintegrated. In the 80's electronic music became commonplace. Some groups were inspired by the "computer" sound. It seemed that with the advent of perestroika, freedom of creativity and private entrepreneurship, electronics, along with the rest of the music, had to blossom. But it turned out differently. From censorship harmless electronic music has never suffered much, but a big role here was played by money to buy expensive equipment. And "freedom" came just in place of state support, which was difficult to replace naked enthusiasm.

Ensemble of musical instruments by Vyacheslav Valerianovich Mescherin - "The stubborn robot"
A.Rodionov and B.Tihomirov - "Catch up, the computer".
Zodiac - "The Mysterious Galaxy".
 
Last edited:
Because electronic music was often used as a soundtrack for the film, here are a few more melodies
.


Eduard Artemiev (also known simply as a composer in the genre of electronic music) - from the soundtrack to the movie "Stalker".

Alexander Zatsepin - music for the cartoon "The Mystery of the Third Planet."

Alexey Rybnikov - Call of Robots from the movie "The Children in the Universe".
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 97083

I've known about Soviet and Russian electronic music for a while, though I don't know much; one of the pioneers in electronic instruments was Leon Theremin, who invented an early drum machine, the 'theremin' device named after him (it generates tones based on the position of one's hands relative to a metal object), and, as it turns out, several listening devices. He's one of the many inventive Soviets sent to the sharashka or research-gulag.
In the 1930s there was also the variophone invented by Evgeny Sholpov, an electronic instrument for which music was composed by hand and scanned in a method called "paper sound" developed by Nikolai Volnov. The variophone was used to produce some of the Soviets early popular sound films, but the device was destroyed in Leningrad in 1941. A further version was cancelled in 1951 after the death of Evgeny Sholpo.


 
For anyone curious, a German recod label, Erdenklang, put out a bunch of compilation albums called Looking East: Electronic East, including a bunch of Eastern Bloc electronic musicians (and related styles), including many mentioned in this thread.

As a what-if, perhaps Soviet electronic composers developed this music just a bit earlier, say around the same time Kraftwerk began producing (1974-77). With some help from cultural authorities, might this music have been popular in the West? Might it have, at the least, rivaled Kraftwerk for American audiences?

I don't know if the potential was there for any electronic musician/group to have anything more than a one-hit wonder, or maybe one group being big, unless they beat Kraftwerk to the punch in making electronic music to begin with. It's certainly the case with many Eastern bloc musicians and groups that even though many were very capable, they never found a place outside the Iron Curtain.
 
electronic/jazz/funk/dance/disco type stuff is still big here.

one of the more funny things when as a kid everyone railed about the evil soviet union and in my mind I pictured a nation full of goth metal heads .. instead they are into dance and disco.. oyi.. ( note they like all kinds of music here, ariya, ddt, bravo, slot .. lots of great eastern bands )
 
One of my personal favorites? "Na Zare", a synthpop(?) song from the group Alyans.


But yeah, from what I have heard there is a lot of good, catchy music from behind the Iron Curtain. It's probably a bit different from some of the other awesome examples here, and it's also virtually unknown in the United States, among other first-world nations.
 
electronic/jazz/funk/dance/disco type stuff is still big here.

one of the more funny things when as a kid everyone railed about the evil soviet union and in my mind I pictured a nation full of goth metal heads .. instead they are into dance and disco.. oyi.. ( note they like all kinds of music here, ariya, ddt, bravo, slot .. lots of great eastern bands )
Did you know that in Russia Aria is considered a model of posturing and plagiarism? And that only "gavnori" (juvenile pushers) are listening to the band!?
 
electronic/jazz/funk/dance/disco type stuff is still big here.

one of the more funny things when as a kid everyone railed about the evil soviet union and in my mind I pictured a nation full of goth metal heads .. instead they are into dance and disco.. oyi.. ( note they like all kinds of music here, ariya, ddt, bravo, slot .. lots of great eastern bands )

Although that's kind of my point. 1987's Герой асфальта to 1991's Кровь за кровь is just golden heavy metal, but even if the world were open to non-English language metal or if Aria sang in English I somehow doubt they'd ever achieve a lot of acclaim. It just seems like the West was closed off to that sort of music.

Did you know that in Russia Aria is considered a model of posturing and plagiarism? And that only "gavnori" (juvenile pushers) are listening to the band!?

But it's so good though.
 
Although that's kind of my point. 1987's Герой асфальта to 1991's Кровь за кровь is just golden heavy metal, but even if the world were open to non-English language metal or if Aria sang in English I somehow doubt they'd ever achieve a lot of acclaim. It just seems like the West was closed off to that sort of music.



But it's so good though.
:confused:
 
Did you know that in Russia Aria is considered a model of posturing and plagiarism? And that only "gavnori" (juvenile pushers) are listening to the band!?
ariya has its good and bad through the years.. but last I checked they and Kipelov and the band are still respected at least the older albums... all of my eastern European friends like them.

another of my favorite bands
 
Last edited:
ariya has its good and bad through the years.. but last I checked they and Kipelov and the band are still respected at least the older albums... all of my eastern European friends like them.

another of my favorite bands
:(
Okay I will not argue. I'd rather share the best rock band from the former USSR (in my humble opinion, of course).
 
An early electronic song called "Song of the Second Moon" by Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan from 1957 was used as the theme song for the Hungarian scientific TV program "Delta", which ran from the 60s to the 90s:


 
Russian rappers have a rule: if you did not scold Timati - then you're not a man!

I personally have crazy music tastes that span a large field, that said, Eastern Europe / Russia has lots of great artists and music. It a shame many of them don't get heard outside of those regions :(
 
https://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Markus/618119
This guy was cutting metal back in the GDR!

There was a great East German band called Plattform, female fronted heavy metal (sung in German which makes it rather distinct) who never released anything but eventually this collection of their material was released. It's pretty good stuff, and yet another case of "if they were on the other side of the Iron Curtain they might've been more known". But then again, it isn't like there's female fronted heavy metal bands from the 80s from West Germany who are sadly unheard of...
 
Top