“Eight songs for the outskirts.” That’s how it goes
for Dvanov, whose Cyrillic-displayed tape (look at it up there) and songs leave
the rest a mystery for the English-only reader. I, being an English-only reader
(OK, I know a smattering of German), am ass deep in the mysteries, and my
personal embarrassment at “settling” on one language (American) is rightfully
at the forefront of my inability to decipher even a teensy bit of this tape. In
fact, I’m so colloquial in any response to any music I’ve ever written about
that it would probably take a full-time translator to smooth it all into
another language, and even then it would probably be bastardized to within an
inch of its original meaning.
Which is just fine by me, I’m the first to admit I’m
a blabbering idiot half the time.
So this Dvanov, then! Like Eastern bloc Sonic Youth
worship by way of the Make-Up (or other groovy Ian Svenonius project), the
Saint Petersburg quartet aren’t doing it for any scene in particular, nor are
they aping any other vibe. They’re their own thing, a band of scrappy misfits
with a perfectly cast female lead singer, the interplay a regular cacophony of
syrupy dissonance. Guitars collide with synthesizers, and the martial drumming
sort of grounds everything in a krautrock vibe. It’s all decidedly and
excellently Russian, and that’s not even just because the songs are all sung in
Russian! Maybe imagine Deerhoof jamming with a state band from the 1950s, or
Trupa Trupa hanging out in a goth club behind the Iron Curtain. Either way,
Dvanov’s got it going on, making music for people who need it most: the ones on
the outskirts of society, those knocked down or back by oppressive regimes.
This is music to seethe to.
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