New album of Megapolis – what it is about and why it is worth listening
The group « Megapolis » released a new album « with the strength of the thread. » Igor Gavrilov He believes that the group should not be ashamed of other people’s influences-she herself can still learn something.
The leader of the Megapolis group Oleg Nesterov has long been doing work for both musical critics and PR managers. When the successful album-revolution of Superango (2010) was followed by the intricate theatrical and multimedia performance “from the life of the planets”, Nesterov can even be said, he could even say a little described in numerous interviews that he was able to exist for quite some time as a separate concert and even touring product.
Promoting Zerolines (2016), Oleg Nesterov abandoned the genre labels and introduced into his interviews such concepts as “intuitive music”, “millennial musicians”, “slowdown”, “asceticism” and “miraculous album”. There were no authors and performers at the album’s weekend – just Zerolines. The game liked the audience and certainly – the press. Nesterov proposed a new vocabular, and this automatically made him listen to his music more attentively.
In the conversations about the album of the Megapolis, November (2020) Nesterov asked him to call it not an album, but by the project, since he was directly related to research in the field of Russian poetry of the 20th century, as well as the theater, in the separation of which the musician “November” did not imagine. The November was followed by the next research and educational project of Nesterov “Three degrees of Freedom” dedicated to music in Soviet cinema. And now the time has come for the album « with the strength of the thread. » And again, commenting on the new album in the media, Oleg Nesterov plays with abstract, fantasy categories: “crossed”, “pure stream”, “let in music”, “hunting for the track”, “coffins of detached poems”. You will never wait from Nesterov so that he uttered something like “the album grows out of improvisations and jam-gray-men” or suddenly used the word “building”. This is not interesting. Well, that the name of The Smile and even more so Radiohead suddenly surfaces in the comments, and there is no question, as if brutal punishment is supplied for this. Strange, John Coltrain calmly wrote on his album the name of Duke to Duke), and Miles Davis transparently hinted at Gershvin (“An American in Paris”), not embarrassed to lose in his own greatness. But for rock musicians, this is a taboo.
Although The Rolling Stones once used the “Anybody Seen My Baby” in the song Kay Di Lang, but they did it at a subconscious level, not yet hearing a song. They recorded it and only then included the singer among the authors, realizing that this melody was « worn in the air. » Maybe this is also “intuitive music”, in the words of Oleg Nesterov.
Using rhythmic constructions that cannot be perceived without associating them with Tom York of different periods, the “megalopolis” actually does nothing reprehensible. Moreover, this is not even about melodies, but about the harmonious, riff and rhythmic environment, which is now convenient to determine with a line from the new song of the “megalopolis” “The kidnappers of dreams” – “Monument to quick sleep”. Music consumers, including musicians, really live in a stream, including in a stream of foreign music. But some in an interview are sprinkled with the names of teachers and idols, while others say that they “let music into themselves” in almost a mystical way.
In the album “With the strength of the thread” there are quite songly designed musical ideas, there are instrumental plays and there are segments of playing music in which there is a human voice, but it does not work to focus on it – this is part of the landscape. This is, for example, the track “Return”, in the record of which Anton Belyaev took part in the record. As in many other songs of the “megalopolis”, the voice is drowning, getting stuck in the accompaniment, it is absorbed by it to a state of indistinguishable suspension. But it’s good that he is there. Anton Belyaev is an important person and, of course, will draw attention to the album.
On the contrary, the most intelligible and important text in the album is the “cornflower of the past”: “in the“ baquitzer ”coffee, under the cheek table. Almost all of her tears fell into coffee that. » “The story is simple: September 2022, the girls were left without guys – and here is the » cornflower of the past. » This is a very perky track, but just as tragic, ”commented Oleg Nesterov in an interview with Snoba. Based on the picture familiar to many in the St. Petersburg institution, the “megalopolis” suddenly comes to an incredible, nimble and at the same time bright sense of loss, which is transmitted easily determined musical means. Nesterov says that this is “the first track in the K-POP style”, the Coldplay pop period is formally heard here, but the devil with them, with definitions. Is it really necessary for the kitchen if the author was able to convey what many people who do not know about intuitive music, nor about Radiohead, nor about the “megalopolis” feel.
