Nogu Svelo

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Nogu Svelo (Ногу свело in Cyrillic) is a popular Russian rock-band, usually associated with humor and parody as well as accessible and sometimes childishly simple melodies. They have, however, experimented with many styles in the past and seem to pay particular attention to interesting instrumentation and arrangements as well as good production values. The extravagant style of their late nineties albums has however given way to a simpler and more commercially accessible sound in their post-1999 relases - perhaps a return to the guitar-centered sound of 1995's "Siberian Love", yet arguably not possessing the youthful, hook-filled songwriting of that early-career round-up LP.

Of particular interest to English listeners is their non-chalantly imbecilic use of the language of Milton and David Hasselhoff in their earlier albums (the last few have been entirely in Russian): "she drew me away and locked the door/my girl doesn't love me anymore/I didn't say anything but in my head/I had a plan to make them dead" from 1995's "Super Creature" is a good example of singer Max Pokrovsky's way with words.

1 Early period (1992-1995)
2 Middle period (1996-1999)
3 Late period (2000-)
4 External links

[edit] Early period (1992-1995)

The bands first two albums are extremely difficult to find, even in Russia - one's best chance would be either to obtain these in the Internet or find an old cassette copy of the debut in some small pirate record shop somewhere in the outskirts of Moscow (the second album was released only on vinyl).

The debut, 1:0 в пользу девочек [Girls win 1:0] (1993), is the release that is perhaps the most revealing of the band's inner creative processes: the music being written by the bassist (Pokrovsky) and drummer (Jakomulski), it sounds exactly like it - built around sometimes loose, sometimes tight bass riffs, and spacious drum cascades, with synths and guitars freely flowing in to play something that seemingly was made up on the spot by the respective players. The improvisational quality and the complete ignorance of any sort of commercial demands characterize this LP, yet plenty of songwriting talent is on view: the childish melody of "Durdom" is altogether Mozartian in its ethereal lightness, and "Tichinka" possesses a brilliantly worked-out, near orchestral repeated synth passage surrounded by extremely loose guitar and bass interplay. The stand-out classic is "Elegiya" [Elegy], with a driving bass riff, soaring guitar passages and an extremely intense chorus relieved by a throw-away humorous acoustic guitar "pripev"; "Tazepam" sounds like a less-successful attempt at the same thing until a locomotive-esque synth interlude recreates the song as a sort of psychodelic cartoon music. Several of the songs were later re-recorded by the band on their later albums, with only "Lisaya devochka" [Bald girl] gaining something in the process. The humorous nature of the band's music is here not-too-subtly underscored by "interludes" between the songs that consist of repeated synth music and recited poetry about people falling off buildings, dogs getting "stuck" on each other in the yard and so forth.

The band's vinyl release Капризы манекенщиц (it is in fact difficult to ascertain which of the first two releases is to be considered the debut; "Kaprizi manekenschic" was apparently released in 1992, yet the material for "1:0" was recorded earlier) presents a much more conventional, tighter sound, dominated by guitar and rhythmic bass; the title song is the outstanding classic, dramatic psychodelic soundscapes gradually piling over pulsating bass, with a brilliantly melodic chorus serving as a worthy precursor to the overflowing melodicism of the next album. Unlike "1:0", the two best songs here were later re-recorded: the title song appears on "Haru-mamburu", and "Hrustalnaya vaza", a driving retro thriller with non-sensical lyrics appears on "Kalli".

The next two releases will necessarily be reviewed together, as 1993's Хару Мамбуру [Haru Mamburu] provides the majority of the material for 1995's Сибирская любовь [Siberian love], a collection of re-recorded songs from the band's first three albums. Most of the songs are decidedly better in their "Sibirskaya ljubov" versions, with the band having access to qualitative production facilities at the time. "Haru mamburu" is therefore first of all interesting for the songs that didn't make it on the 1995 release: first of all, the title song from the previous album; "Samurai v risovom pole", an Oriental escapade; "Petting my pets" and "Magic Pencil", both with catchy pop choruses disguised as rock songs; and "Baranya Opera" (sheep opera), with one of the band's most magically childish guitar-centered refrains hidden among 4 or so minutes of band members pretending to be sheep.

Two further pop-rock masterpieces, "Beach rock'n'roll" and "Baby", appear in improved versions in "Sibirskaya ljubov"; so do the grandiose epics "Super Creature" and "Demoralization of love", the latter with a pace-shifting winds-section interlude added in the re-recording, the former with improved Teutonic guitar antics surrounding the Beatles-esque timpani-dominated refrain. The 1995 release also collects a couple of non-album singles, "Sibirskaya ljubov", the band's attempt at a Eurovision entry that successfully raised awareness of them on a Russian national level despite failing to win the national nomination; and "Christmas lullaby", perhaps the single most melodic piece of music the band have ever recorded, clocking in under 2 minutes. A track somewhat apart is "Haru mamburu", a simple looping refrain with lyrics in a made-up language that remarkably enough made the band's name in Russia and remained their signature tune for several years to come.

[edit] Middle period (1996-1999)

Having made it more or less into big time (they even appeared with Russian mega-star Alla Pugachova in a concert), the band spent the next couple of years maturing their sound: wind and horn sections received additional attention, synth parts became more colorful, bass became significantly more subdued. The vocals of Maxim Pokrovsky received the most significant makeover: initially rather silly, lacking both melodic nuance and subtlety in subveying the humorous/parodic aspects of the lyrics, they now became characterized by a wide emotional range, beautiful almost crooning quality in the slower or more melodical passages and a straight-faced tone even in the most ridiculous songs (in a song describing the romance between a lady and a soldier he anthemically proclaims: "save our women from the anti-war rabble of the world"!); in fact, in many songs the vocals now became one of the main selling points, whereas earlier one tended to dismiss them altogether.

This new approach then was brought to the record studio as the band recorded two albums between 1997 and 1998 that were packaged as Счастлива, потому что беременна (Happy because I'm pregnant) double-album, with each part sold separately: the "Blue" album was released in 1997, and the "Green" album (actually packaged brown) was released in 1999, some time after the actual recordings. The band managed to continue their commercial success straight away with two big hits from the Синий альбом [Blue album], both drawing considerably from Russian/Jewish folk melodies: "Liliputskaya ljubov", with an immediately memorable vocal melody, and "Moskovskiy romans", with explosive drumming from Jakomulsky and an award-winning video presenting Pokrovsky as a Southern-Caucasian begging for money (a familiar sight to many Russians) on the background of a sweeping Moscow panorama.

The album itself showed the band at something of a crossroads: songs such as "Nedugi" [Diseases] still work the loose bass-driven approach of "Haru mamburu", "Rekviem" and "Chetire druga" attempt a serious, more subdued style, while "Kitaiskiye kolokolchiki" predicts the "Green album" with its use of eclectic instrumentation (the title translates as "Chinese bells") and bittersweet melodies. A stand-out is the opening track: a classic, somewhat retro-ish rock'n'roll guitar riff backed up by a sweeping chord sequence. The bonus tracks include a self-made funky dance remix of 1993's "Lisaya devochka", as well as a noisy cover of the Russian film music classic "Na Tikhoretskuyu".

After this somewhat undecided and uneven effort, the band got their act together for the 1999 Зеленый альбом [Green album], arguably one of the most colorfully arranged and instrumentated albums ever released by a Russian band (one should note that "colorfulness" is probably not something one would normally associate with Russian rock-music, large volumes of which are notably monotonous and gloomy). Most of the album is all-out humorous, with only "Volki" and "Reki", recorded together with annoying Russian pop-star Vetlitskaya, aiming successfully for more-or-less sincere pop-songs. The word "melodious" is somewhat superfluous in regards to the specific tracks: only "Zhivaya massa" [Live weight] and "Isskustvo boli" [The art of pain] have anything less than immediately appealing melody lines; eastern-tinged "Vljublonnije olenovodi" and the epic "Lesnaja shkola" are particularly rich in melodies, again drawing from folk music (the latter song even employs an actual folk music vocal ensemble for a powerful effect). In several songs the band completely abandonds the boundaries of good rock'n'roll taste in the name of additional color, employing guitar effects that seem to have come straight out of Dire strait's "Money for nothing"; yet the acoustic-instrumental "Muzh na rabote" shows them at their most tasteful and subtle. The beautifully compact, darkly folk-styled slow dance "Volki" and the bright Nirvana pastiche "Dyen rozhdeniya" (borrowing a bass line from that band's "Very ape") are possibly the most all-round complete accomplishments.

[edit] Late period (2000-)

The band entered the new millennium with the outtakes release Каллы, drawing mostly on their earlier period. The album opens with a new song "Kukli" which already shows the more straight-forward style the band had now decided to pursue. The other tracks however run the full gamut of styles: classical parody "Ave Maria" (Schubert's famous melody interpolated with incongruous guitar noise), covers of two famous Russian film melodies probably originally intended for the "Blue album", "Mjasnoi bruderschaft" making ludicrous fun of German popular music, effortlessly melodious early songs like "I'm blue" and "Sporting", drawn-out driving psychodelic jams "Hrustalnaja vaza" and "Diblopops". Much of this is well on the level of released album tracks, but especially so in the case of "Trusiki", a fully worked-out, excellently produced piece of 80's indie music.

From the 2000 album Boks [Boxing] on, however, Pokrovsky and Nogu Svelo seemed content to more or less abandon much of what had characterized their 90's music: unusual instrumentation, oddly looping song structures, passages that seemed to be meant for one instrument being played on a completely different instrument; the band now seemed to embrace outside influences in a rather wholesay way, maintaining their own identity almost exclusively on the strength of Pokrovsky's voice and image. Commercial success however persisted with follow-up album V temnote [In the darkness] and hits such as "Posledneje tango" [Last tango], "Nashi junnije smeshnije golosa" [Our young funny voices] and recently "Ja ne poslednij geroj" [I'm not the last hero], which became something of a theme song to the Russian equivalent of the "Survivor" TV show (which is called "The last hero") in which Pokrovskiy participated.