This is how the musicians of "Kray" classify their own work: for some reason, not 5, but 7 "albums" circulated in Moscow. Most likely, this is due to the fact that the first two recordings were significantly longer than a "statistical average record", and in the minds of capital's music lovers, they spontaneously multiplied by division into four…
This is how the musicians of "Kray" classify their own work: for some reason, not 5, but 7 "albums" circulated in Moscow. Most likely, this is due to the fact that the first two recordings were significantly longer than a "statistical average record", and in the minds of capital's music lovers, they spontaneously multiplied by division into four.
It was precisely through studio work—in free creative communication with the listener, unmediated by countless artistic councils and "tariffication commissions"—that a unique model of rock music was formed. This is what draws the sympathy of young listeners to "Oblachny Kray". Unfortunately, many of our journalists have still not kicked the habit of using the buzzword "underground" in relation to the products of the "tape recorder industry" (as well as concerts in student clubs, etc.). This looks foolish at the very least, since "underground" activity, logically speaking, is something of a completely different nature. After all, the bands were typically just pushing back against departmental instructions that hindered the development of a normal creative process.
IN MOSCOW, it is spring. And the "Melodiya" company, swept up in the movement to renew musical life, is now holding its auditions not in stifling seclusion, but (finally!) in the presence of the main artistic council—which, as a Bulgakov character might say, is the first and the last. In other words, in the presence of an audience. To be precise, on April 25th in the auditorium of the Moscow experimental "Gramzapisi" [Gramophone Recording] plant, musicians, critics, young factory workers, and devoted fans of the most rapidly developing musical genre gathered together. Many people could not find a seat, but no one minded the discomfort in anticipation of meeting a band whose very existence is shrouded in a sort of mystical aura. Everyone had heard them, but no one had seen them.
Meanwhile, the first pages of their history are far from anything mystical: in the ancient northern city of Arkhangelsk, three friends lived in the same building and even in the same entranceway—perfectly ordinary guys. Like many others, they listened to hard rock. Like others, they tried to make their own feasible contribution to its further creative development, and to do this, they organized their own ensemble at the Palace of Culture of the ship repair plant. The "founders" of "Kray" (as the band is also sometimes called) were: Oleg Rautkin — vocalist (now a student at the Kharkov Institute of Physical Culture); Nikolai Lyskovsky — keyboardist; Sergei Bogaev — troupe leader, lead guitarist, and author of the music and lyrics. In 1982, the novice musicians were invited to the plant's Komsomol committee—they had to go to the Salambalsky District for a festival. The only thing missing for these tours was the name of the group: "It had to be something native and northern, and it had to be something we could announce from the stage." Someone suggested: "Oblachny Kray" [Cloudy Edge]. Well, the name satisfied both official criteria of acceptability (both "northern" and "announceable")—and so the band was christened. After that, things didn't go quite so well.
— More precisely, things went completely poorly, — Sergei corrects. — Our first performance turned out to be our last, because, to put it mildly, they didn't like us at the festival.
…No, they hadn't sung "Restaurant 'Sadko'" back then; it was just that all the participants of the festival were enthusiastically performing "Malinovka" (seven times in a row), and our "candidates for laureates" for some reason considered themselves unworthy of this honor and offered the jury their own song set to poems by... Konstantin Simonov. This was deemed an outrageous stunt. And so, the doors of concert halls slammed shut in front of them, firmly and for a long time. The studio path remained—a thorny path to all-union fame…
Once, Northern Rus' preserved for us the treasures of the national epic. Proud people lived here, living by their own wits: simple peasants wrote manuscripts and kept them as shrines. It is no coincidence that here, far from the temptations of the capital's "prestigious halls," Sergei Bogaev and his friends preserved the folklore purity and sincerity of rock music during the most dismal times for the domestic rock scene.
— We only sing the truth, — say the musicians from Arkhangelsk. — Generally speaking, rock music in our country is not just a musical phenomenon, but to a large extent a social one as well, so the lyrics are of tremendous importance to us. Poetry and music must correspond to EACH OTHER…
The secret of "Oblachny Kray"'s impact on the listener is that musical power and undeniable high professionalism (Sergei is one of the best guitarists in the country) are combined in their compositions with the jeweler's precision of the word. It is no coincidence that their "satires" provoked such fury among those who recognized themselves in the grotesque characters—bureaucrats, bribe-takers, and hacks who had entrenched themselves around art in order to extract literally "unearned income" from it by way of monopoly:
"And then through the ether rushes
Generously seasoned with mothballs,
Sweet, akin to marshmallow.
So-called high art…"
"The main trends in the development of this group, currently one of the strongest in the country," comments art historian Sergei Guryev, host of the "Rock Music Lessons" in the 'Yunost' magazine, "is a movement away from the English model of hard rock: with an abundance of instrumentals and virtuoso solos—towards music that is more austere in musical terms and more rigid. 'Stremya i Lyudi' [The Stirrup and the People] is exactly an intermediate phenomenon on the border between classic 'hard' and 'heavy' rock. Perhaps this is the most promising position, providing the musicians with maximum creative freedom, not limited by formal stylistic frameworks?"
As for the ideas, the first recording from 1982 was a search for their own identity, both in music and in poetry; it featured a relatively gentle, early-Gogol-style humor on provincial themes—recall their famous Dudyrin, the first rocker in the village. "Khudozhestvennaya Samodeyatelnost" [Amateur Art] is much harsher—it is precisely this "album" that brings "Kray" real fame.
ALONG WITH "DDT" and "Veselye Kartinki", Sergei Bogaev's group moves into the avant-garde of that original direction in rock music that was pioneered two decades ago by Alexander Gradsky. They respect their "teachers" in music, but they imitate no one: art generally does not tolerate imitation; it is not stamping, but a "unity in diversity."
Accordingly, their social thinking becomes deeper and more accurate: we are talking not only about the "individual shortcomings" of the surrounding provincial reality, but also about the hidden historical, psychological, and ethical reasons for what we have to overcome today. After all, the roots of our troubles lie not in abstract formulas, but within ourselves (recall "Stremya i Lyudi"—the composition after which the latest album is named).
It is hardly worth ruining the reader's mood by describing all the difficulties "Oblachny Kray" had to face; this is the fate of any band that took its work seriously rather than treating it simply as "dance music for the youth." Now their art is receiving, albeit belated, recognition, and the authors of slanderous articles feel a certain awkwardness when they open the authoritative central magazines 'Yunost', 'Znanie — Sila', etc., and find the names of the Arkhangelsk musicians on the list of those whom domestic rock can be proud of. "Kray" is invited to concerts by the Leningrad Rock Club and the "Melodiya" company, their songs have already been played on the radio (the song "Sery Kardinal")—however, a rock club has now been organized at their native ship repair plant as well (from where, incidentally, the band was kicked out in 1984 under the pretext of safety violations: "Too many wires!").
HOWEVER, let us return to the auditorium where Muscovites met their "unknown idols" for the first time. In addition to the three founders of "Kray", drummer Dmitry Leontiev (a locksmith by trade) and bassist Andrei Ilyichev (an electrician) took to the stage. The rhythm section did not let the prestige of Arkhangelsk rock down, and the audience's delight exceeded all expectations.
— Of course, the group will still have to work on their stage image: the level of the music and lyrics is such that the theatrical component in the "triangle" (music + lyrics + show) must be completely extraordinary, — comment seasoned music critics, — and "Oblachny Kray" still has too little experience in concert activities.
Well, the experience will come—there is no doubt about this today, because we are talking about one of the most popular bands in the country. The spring that has come to our land, where, as is known, "there are highly skilled craftsmen of all sorts...", portends a worthy continuation for the northern legend.
