Aquarium

Aquarium (in Russian Аквариум, literally Akvarium) are one of the pillar bands of Russian rock. Founded in 1972 in Leningrad by mathematics student Boris Grebenshikov, singer and guitarist, they exist as an open-ended project revolving around him, while the rest of the lineup has seen dozens of members pass through over the following decades.

In the Seventies the band essentially operated underground: that decade marked the harshest period for the repression of rock music in the Soviet Union, which could only be performed under direct state control, with committees inspecting lyrics and clothing as well as making sure the sound wasn't too aggressive. Anyone unwilling to submit to this process was effectively forced into clandestine activity, facing penalties that could include detention and forms of re-education.

During that period Aquarium played only acoustic concerts in private apartments and alternative clubs. The choice not to use electric instruments was a pragmatic one: it made it easier to avoid being spotted by potential informants. Their first official public concerts came in 1976, still with acoustic instruments: once again, a workaround to secure invitations to the various traditional music festivals organized in the Soviet Union at the time.

Meanwhile Grebenshikov recorded a considerable amount of music on magnetic tape, using improvised recording setups with no budget whatsoever: material that, however, had no way of being distributed at the time and only surfaced in the second half of the Nineties.

The band's story, and more broadly that of Soviet popular music, changed in March 1980, when, in an attempt to win over the goodwill of young people and students following the protests that shook Georgia in 1978-79, the local Communist Party decided to organize a rock music festival: "Vesennie ritmy. Tbilisi-80!" (in Russian "Весенние ритмы. Тбилиси-80", trans. "Spring Rhythms. Tbilisi '80").

Aquarium signed up, only to be disqualified after their first performance, during which Grebenshikov lay down on the ground positioning his guitar between his legs: a gesture deemed scandalous, which earned the band accusations of promoting deviant sexual behavior.

Either way, from that moment on rock music would never turn back: even though the possibility of releasing albums outside state control kept being denied, live performances began to be tolerated by government bodies even when unauthorized, and this led to the spread of various artists' albums, which were distributed at public events or in universities in the form of magnetic tape reels, before spreading like wildfire as they were copied and passed from hand to hand. It was of course not a path free of obstacles: there was no shortage of intimidation, reprisals and, in the most extreme cases, arrests, but the trend was generally towards a normalization of that tier of artists.

In 1981 Aquarium too began releasing magnitizdat (in Russian “магнитиздат”, meaning “magnetic publications”), quickly becoming the most popular band outside the state-approved circuit (a title that a few years later would pass to Kino, who were, incidentally, discovered by Grebenshikov himself).

Released starting in September 1983, “Radio Africa” (in Russian “Радио Африка”, literally “Radio Afrika”) was Aquarium's sixth magnetic album, as well as the one that marked a turning point in their career: it was in fact recorded with the best equipment the band had ever had access to up to that point. Grebenshikov relied on his friend and producer Andrei Tropillo, who had until then hosted them at a studio he had set up with second-hand instruments at one of Leningrad's Pioneer Houses, but who on this occasion managed to get hold of a mobile studio belonging to the state record label Melodiya, which had been sent from Moscow to Leningrad to record some classical music works. Tropillo managed to bribe the caretaker, and so the band was able to use the studio at night.

The cover shot was taken by photographer Andrey “Willy” Usov, who captured violinist Vsevolod Gakkel walking along the shore of the Gulf of Finland, immersed in a landscape vaguely reminiscent of the “Zone” from “Stalker”, the celebrated film by Andrei Tarkovsky. On the right, meanwhile, appears the title in Chinese characters: critic Lev Gankin has compared their arrangement to the runes on the fourth album by Led Zeppelin, though it is more likely a choice stemming from Grebenshikov's passion for Chinese poetry and philosophy.

“Radio Africa” opens in seemingly carefree fashion with “Muzyka serebryanykh spits” (“Музыка серебряных спиц”), a folk-boogie hybrid in the style of Marc Bolan. The track fades into the sound of a radio searching for a frequency: this is a very significant device, which Grebenshikov himself would explain as a way of representing the rock music broadcast by Western radio stations that young people on the other side of the Iron Curtain would try to pick up clandestinely (the device of turning the album into a kind of pirate broadcast was borrowed from the Who's “The Who Sell Out”).

Out of that noise rises “Kapitan Africa” (“Капитан Африка”), with which the eccentric journey organized by Grebenshikov and his bandmates effectively begins. An evocative, mysterious melody seasoned with exotic flavours, carrying the listener towards landscapes distant in both space and time, thanks to a jazzy sonic backdrop, with sax played by special guest Igor Butman (according to Grebenshikov, “the album's secret weapon”).

The Aquarium frontman would describe “Kapitan Africa” as a song that “leans towards the incorporeal and the unknown; there's a kind of boundless thirst for the immensity of the seas”. The whole album, moreover, can be read as an attempt to rediscover nature in its most enchanting and captivating form, which is why it is symbolically represented by Africa, the mysterious continent par excellence:

A fantastic day,

my nature won't let me sleep,

the firemen are heading home,

they have nothing to do here.

Soldiers of love,

we move like fairy ghosts

along the tram tracks,

we know electricity for what it is,

isn't that a reason?

Untie my hands,

I'm calling Kapitan Africa.

How many thousands of words have been wasted,

stealing fire from blind gods,

we can burn like alcohol.

With open hands

I'll take what is mine

there where I'll see what is mine.

A white rastafarian,

a transparent gypsy,

a silver beast

in search of warmth

The sense of standing before music from another era is fully confirmed by the following track, “Pesni vycherpyvayushchikh lyudey” (“Песни вычерпывающих людей”), and further along the tracklist by “Mal'chik Evgraf” (“Мальчик Евграф”), both marked by jazz melodies, brass-band marches and treated piano.

The unpredictable experimentation running through the album – which would earn it the nickname of the “White Album” of Russian rock (a comparison put forward by critic Vasily Soloviev-Spassky, partly on account of the wide variety of sonic approaches on display) – culminates in “Zmeya” (“Змея”): bizarre sounds that seem lifted from a 1950s sci-fi B-movie, rudimentary electronics and comically squeaky voices, conjuring a retro-futurist atmosphere as beguiling as it is disorienting.

"Vana Khoya" ("Вана Хойа") is a pastoral folk rock track with a decisive contribution from flautist Dyusha Romanov, who makes the atmosphere even more ethereal thanks to a gentle solo and choral parts mixed at varying volumes throughout the song. It's the preamble leading into the power ballad "Rok-n-roll mertv" ("Рок-н-ролл мертв"), which relies on a rousing, stadium-sized chorus, followed by three solos played by guitarist Alexander Lyapin with ever-increasing bite and passion, right up to the final explosion.

The lyrics draw on the age-old metaphor of dying rock'n'roll to speak in code about the communist regime:

So many nervous faces, trouble on the way,

I remember there was a sky,

but I don't remember where,

we'll meet again, we'll say "hello",

something's not right.

Rock'n'roll is dead, but I'm not,

those who love us take care of us.

From now on time will flow in a straight line,

one step forward, one step sideways, their world is behind us,

I've burned their life like a stack of newspapers,

all that's left is dirty asphalt.

Elbow to elbow, a brick in the wall,

we were too proud, now we're paying triple,

for those who walked with us, for those who waited for us,

for those who will never forgive us.

Despite the impact of “Rok-n-roll mertv”, one of the emblematic songs of that decade's counterculture in Russia, Grebenshikov saw it as a foreign body within the album, an outstretched hand toward their most hardcore fans, who would otherwise have judged the record too strange. And that's indeed what happened: “Radio Africa” initially got a cold reception in the venues where Aquarium usually played, since it strayed too far from traditional rock. That view was shared by “Roxy”, the first rock magazine founded in the Soviet Union, which panned the record without mincing words ("The music is a total absurdity"). "Rok-n-roll mertv", besides keeping the purists happy, also served as a pass to reach a wider audience, allowing Aquarium to appear on the television program “Muzykal'nyy ring” (“Музыкальный ринг”, “The Musical Ring”), where they would perform parodies of their own songs. In Grebenshikov's words: "It wasn't a betrayal of our ideals, but, on the contrary, a bold raid behind enemy lines".

Aquarium's daydream takes on Eastern tones in the following track, “Radio Shao-Lin'” (“Радио Шао-Линь”), where the vessel steered by the elusive Kapitan Africa reaches the gates of the Chinese empire, underscored by a choir of Shaolin Buddhist monks. These Eastern flourishes return with “Tibetskoe tango” (“Тибетское танго”), a bizarre composition written by Sergey Kuryokhin (the keyboardist, who also had his own career as a composer of experimental music and film scores), in which, however, there's no trace of the Tibetan tango promised by the title: it's actually an unsettling march for abstract choirs, funk bass, detuned piano and shrieking sax.

“Vremya Luny” (“Время Луны”) is the album's catchiest track, a nostalgic synth-pop number carried by Kuryokhin's electric organ, with a chorus that manages to be both desperate and joyful. Written by Grebenshikov while he was working as a caretaker at some bathing establishments, during a period when he only went home to sleep at night, it's a pop song that had all the makings of an international hit on a par with OMD's “Enola Gay” or Dire Straits' “Walk Of Life”. There's something moving in the optimism of the song's signature line ("We have hope"), repeated over and over: maybe better times are coming for the Russian people, with perestroika looming on the horizon.

The Captain (Kuryokhin's nickname: could he be the mysterious Kapitan Africa?) leaves his personal mark on virtually every track, always bringing something unusual to the table: in the more laid-back “Iskusstvo byt' smirnym” (“Искусство быть смирным”), for instance, he throws in a saloon-style honky-tonk piano, set against the funk groove played by Vladimir Grischenko, at the time the bassist for Gulfstream. In the song's lyrics, the line "Take Me To The River" is translated into Russian, from the Al Green song of the same name that Grebenshikov discovered through the cover by Talking Heads.

The journey is drawing to a close, and the setting shifts too: after dwelling at length in the lyrics on water, rivers and sand, the protagonist of “S utra shel sneg” (“С утра шел снег”) becomes the snow:

Turn off the light,

leave [in] a note that we're not home,

tiptoe past the open doors,

toward [the place] where everything is light, where everything is silent.

And you can be

as hard as steel,

and you can say

that things aren't the way they should be,

and you can pretend

to be acting in a film

about people living under great pressures,

but it snowed in the morning,

you can do something else,

if you want, if you want.

Do you remember that I knew myself?

My footprints lie like chains,

I used to live confident I was right,

but then the snow fell and again I don't know who I am.

And someone is broken and doesn't want to be whole,

and someone is busy with their own affairs,

and we can stay close, but no closer than skin,

but there's something better and it's so simple,

it snowed in the morning,

you can be someone else,

if you want, if you want.

The regret that emerges from the lyrics is ambiguous, and can be read as directed either at a loved one or at an ideal (once again hinting at the perceived twilight of an era), while still underlining the alternatives offered by the future, leaving no room for pessimism. The song's structure is once again unusual: a mix of reggae and electronics in which a drum machine coexists with bongos played by percussionist Alexander Kondrashkin.

The tracklist closes with “Esche odin upavshiy vniz” (“Еще один упавший вниз”), a muffled post-punk midtempo that casts a dark shadow over an album that had, up to that point, been largely serene and upbeat:

Artificial lights on paper flowers,

it's so funny,

I'm alone again, like a true neo-romantic,

maybe I'm sentimental,

this is my whim.

A ridiculous end for someone

who's walked an alternative path for so long,

geometry of wreckage in spaces of crystal,

I will sing like a synthesizer,

this is my whim.

Another one who fell halfway,

the knight of Arkhangelsk protects me,

forgive me for singing for so long.

The unsettling horseman mentioned at the end alludes to a controversial electric concert that Aquarium held in the city of Arkhangelsk in 1982. A month and a half after that event, the band's members received a certificate from the local Department of Culture, accusing them of "negative influence on young people". Soon after, the Committee for State Security also began closely monitoring their every move, banning the group from performing live for six months.

These difficulties would gradually ease over the following years, so much so that in 1987 Melodiya released "Aquarium", an anthology of tracks drawn from magnitizdat recordings of the immediately preceding years, while in 1988, thanks to the interest of none other than Mikhail Gorbachev, the band was able to release its first album of original material, "Ravnodenstvie", for the state label (in Russian "Равноденствие", meaning "Equinox"). That same year "Radio Africa" was also officially released for the first time: it would go on to sell 590,000 copies before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

From that point on, Boris Grebenshikov's career, both with Aquarium and under his own name, never slowed down, leaving an indelible mark on Russian music and the broader artistic landscape. The artist currently lives in London and is unlikely to be able to return home anytime soon: in May 2023 he was reported for "discrediting the army", and a month later the Ministry of Justice declared him a "foreign agent", due to his opposition to Russia's aggression against Ukraine, positions that had already been examined in an OndaRock article in 2022, shortly after the outbreak of the war.

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19/05/2024