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EU /elochnye igrushki/ is a duo formed by Sasha Zaicev and Ilya
Baramia in the late of 1997. They both got interested in contemporary
electronic music early in the nineties through listening to releases
by WARP, NINJA
TUNE, REPHLEX.
The first track by EU was recorded on October 7th, 1997. Named MICE
ON MOON, it appeared on the now legendary PERFORATION compilation
album on Perforated records, small independent label located in
Saint-Petersburg, which maintains the underground spirit of contemporary
electronica here, in Russia. (For mp3 format excerpt of the track
choose the MUSIC section.) Following year and half were devoted
to the active experimentation in the home studio with all kind of
accessible equipment (PC, Boss DR-660, old analogue keys) and occasional
live shows in different local clubs (such as Port, Griboedov, MAMA,
Ten). During March '98 - February '99 sessions the new material
was recorded. Some part of it was released as MC and limited edition
CD via Perforated records (distributed by Manchester Files at Saint-Petersburg,
Russia) and may be regarded as an introduction in EU sound. (For
mp3 format excerpts of the tracks choose the MUSIC section.) During
summer of ’99 was recorded and compiled the material for “Rhythm
Manipulation” MC that is split release between EU and young talented
artist Tensor. The MC was released by Perforated Records was much
in the vein of “ninja tune” sound what is not usual for EU. All
other recorded tracks (some of them you can hear in MP3 format here)
form the first full-length by the group. Album is entitled "EU_SOFT".
It is to be released soon by Art-tek Records, Russia.
interview
with
Alexander Zaitsev
and Ilya Baramiya
of EU
D: How do you write music
together? How can you work without quarreling all of the time?
Sasha: We had divided the charges. Ilya creates samples,
the rhytmical and harmonical base. As a rule, it sounds somewhat
chaotic, and I have to delete all the waste, to invent the missing
parts, to enhance the melodic lines, etc. After that is done, we
are adding some nuances like the occasional ruffles, special effects...
We are trying to fix a listener's attention to the music completely,
creating maximum of the audible hallucinations in the unit of time.
Sometimes one of us writes the whole track all by himself, and it
goes without any additional work, if we both like it to. We writing
in layers... For example, "The Analogue Tigers" track was written
and recorded by myself, like "Cale" was created by Ilya. If we came
sometime to any contrariety between our points while working, we
just put such track aside for a while. The idea of a group is to
release only that tracks which we both like. It goes without saying
that every one can create his own music and to release it independently.
In any case, all the contrarieties are creative. When two guys,
each with his own experience and the unique approach, are making
some composition together, it would be surely interesting for third
to listen. Sometimes I keep my negative feelings off because it
may be so that things I don't like are going to make the track sound
more unusual.
D: Could you name any
key figures, some other musicians who has an impression on your
work?
Sasha: There are no such artists whose work we would want
to copy. But there are some people whose approach to creative work
is resembling that of ours. At the fist place, they stand for the
complete freedom of self-expression: the Ninja Tune and Warp artists,
AUTECHRE,
APHEX TWIN,
SQUAREPUSHER,
Andy Weatherall, COLDCUT,
FUNKI
PORCINI. I think there are some figures of importance for Ilya,
too: Bernd Friedmann (DROME,
NUF, SOME MORE CRIME), Luke Vibert (WAGON
CHRIST, PLUG), Mike Paradinas (MU-Ziq)
or Rupert Parkes (PHOTEK).
D: Are they all the electronic
musicians, like you?
Ilya: No. I'm impressed by the black guys who don't sing
soul, even by those of them who play basketball. PUBLIC
ENEMY and many more alike.
Sasha: I love jazz music, and I listen to it much recently.
Thelonius
Monk, Sam
Rivers, Archie
Shepp... And COIL
- "the project without a style", I respect their skills as the producers,
anyway.
D: What do you feel about
the DJ-mania, currently running in St.Petersburg?
Sasha: I'm not involved in it, so I feel nothing. In this
situation the musicians are guilty, not the DJs. Speaking of Petersburg,
I feel upset by the lacking of culture in this city: as a rule,
DJs even do not know the music they are playing, they got confused
by the styles, never can remember any name... But how many groups
are playing live in St.Petersburg?
D: Do you think EU can
do whatever needed to solve this puzzle?
Sasha: We don't want to save "the local scene", or anything.
We just want to stay in our place, to do what we like, to fill the
empty space. We don't want to play some "DJ music". There's a balance
between "the-music-for-feet" and "the-music-for-mind", and the latter
cries out to be supported, I imagine. The local DJs have not the
need to be scared by our activity, like we do not fear of theirs.
We are doing different things.
D: Well, what is your
audience look like, then? Does it really exist?
Sasha: We want people to go clubbing. The people who would
want to hear anything except for 'the straight beat'. You know,
the category of 'electronic music' does not consist entirely of
the 'straight beats', but this kind of mistake is quite popular.
D: I understand, EU does
not play music of 'the straight rhythm'. Have you any special term
for your style, or what?
Sasha: It is 'hectic & experimental'. Anyway, this what we
call it. Basically, it's the our position on the matter of developing
of the concepts which were inventeed by COIL:
'deep listening technique' and 'worship the glitch'. First is the
dance music for the mind, if you like, and second is the idea which
got rather well developed by the modern electronica: the experiments
with the broken rhythms, the sound distortions, the clippings...
Mistakes, errors, glitches, software bugs are being seen not as
the pityful faults of equippment but rather as the full-bodied means
of creative work. Let us name AUTECHRE,
OVAL,
APHEX TWIN,
COLDCUT,
and everybody will know what I mean.
D: Since you have a special
term for your style, what is it in your music that gives you the
right to do that?
Sasha: It just that we don't work in the 'borders' implied
by the concepts named above. We try to begin from that point, to
create something new, not resembling anything created by someone
else... While writing music, we use our own experience which differs
from the experience of Richard James, for that matter. And even
if we express it in similar ways, we have completely different results,
at the end. We are not interested in playing rock'n'roll because
we think its ideas were drained, for today.
Ilya: I think it's not my business to classificate music,
labelling it whatever, and I don't want to "help" some critic or
journalist, because that would tie his own impression, bringing
him to some imaginary borders in which our music is. In that matter,
I had always liked the position of THE
RESIDENTS' members: the individuality of a musician should not
prevail over the music. These things are completely different, and
they should be seen separately. I cannot imagine 'my audience' at
all, but my imagination offers the picture of a dark room with the
soft, handy furniture. There are people in it, but they aren't dancing.
They exist in the space created by my music, here and now. Sometimes
this space is rhythmically organized, and who am I to prohibit the
dancing? Sometimes it is not, so you can experience whatever your
imagination can create for you.
Sasha: Here is the roots of our style's: "hectic" mean our
working with the deconstructed rhythm, and "experimental" - it's
the universal thing, it always gives us the place to change everything,
to develop it all any other way, from the zero point. We are free
to do whateverwe want, without need to fail ourselves. Well, hectic
& experimental is not the name of our style, even: it is the form
which organizes us when we write music: it is the same every time
we do it, but the result is unpredictable.
D: Have you any fans?
And what do you feel toward them?
Sasha: What can you feel toward the reality? It is given
to you. Anyway, we hardly have that type of fans who would be running
on our footsteps, trying to cut a fragment of my T-shirt off or
to present the portion of a weed to us. But there are some people
who try to get all of our works, all of the unreleased or 'rare'
material. You can call them 'fans', I think. They help us to realize
that somebody's got interested in what we are doing, they really
listen to the stuff you record.
D: Aren't you getting
bored of writing, sometimes?
Sasha: When the work is done, and the new track is born,
I have to make a pause. The period of activity gets changed onto
the phase when I simply cannot create anything. Or see the results
adequately.
Ilya: For me, I never get bore writing music is about all
I want to do.
D: Well, I understand
the way you are working. But what kind of equipment, what kind
of instruments do you use?
Ilya: I'd like to say 'thanks' now. It goes to our good friend,
Vova from the PCP project, who was the first to show me: if you
really do like music, you should not restrict yourself to buying
it. You can write your own music, which is much more interesting.
Well then, we use the PC computer with the standard sequencer Qubase
installed. It masters the sounds I had sampled, recorded or generated.
In the majority, I construct them by myself, not using the material
which was created by someone else... Most of the time I generate
the sound which would create this track's special atmosphere later.
The vast majority of my troubles are the samples. Out of them I
create the unique characteristics of the track, and they are the
base for all our music's originality. Then, the analogue synthesizer
(it can issue the unprecedented sounds, sometimes) and the drum
machine (DR-660). That's about all, I think.
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