ALEXEI BORISOV & ANTON NIKKILÄ

Typical human beings

CD, N&B Research Digest

Waking up after a long, exhausting flight at Tallinn-Airport, or Moscow or Irkutsk, the noise of the engine of an old DC33 ringing in your ears and the echoes of foreign languages still mingling with the pictures you just hallucinated up in your dream – what a way to start a new life. Well conditioned by centuries of propaganda and nightmarish tales about the Russian Bear, the brutality of the Siberian winter and people, even the Russian language sounds more dangerous and eminently dark than other languages. Thereby Russian noise music has that atmosphere of misfortunes and acts of cruelty dawning over the listener in a black exploding nightly sky. As opposed to Japan Noise, which, judging by the extremities fetishism and art will go in Japan, is judged by its harshness and power of auditive impact rather than its darkness and evilness. Norway, on the other hand is always connected with vast emptiness, thundering silence and extremely introverted and psychotic people. That is our educational heritage and it will always creep up as soon as we are confronted with terms like “Russia” or “Japan” or “Norway”. All three of those countries have thriving and lively noise-experimentalist-scenes. Go figure.

Alexei Borisov and Anton Nikkilä, who lead the operation of N&B Research Digest, do nothing to dissolve these pictures, rather wallow in it to bring them to their heights. The music ranges from wailing sawbone guitars that screech and chunk almost melodically, to hacked and sliced walls of noise like listening to a mangled broadcast of heavy machinery toiling, to spacey and echoic ranges of lonely landscape. Since both musicians have links to the Russian industrial scene, even very long-lasting ones on the side of Borisov, the harsh and troubled rhythms, if there are any, are no wonder, yet still come on as heavy as a stone hammer and lingering on your mind like death and falseness.

The lyrics, translated into English in the booklet, are filled with metaphors and symbolisms of political, social and emotional turmoil. There are children pissing on statues of Mao Tse-Tung, Fast Food and Jeans and Mussolini, eagles and boars casting their shadows. And alcohol.

A seedy, dinghy bar somewhere downtown St. Petersburg, Warsaw or Helsinki. You sit down at the bar, ordering a beer, trying to get the chill out of your bones. A man sits down besides you, the jukebox has died down years ago. He looks at you with bloodshot eyes, a wild moustache and an old jacket but with a gleaming in his eye that says there is still blood inside his veins. Then he starts talking to you and you don’t understand a word. And though you have no idea what this is about, you realize the danger you have manoeuvred yourself into. Unable to answer yes or no, and shrugging your shoulder and walking outside is out of question you stare at the beer in front of you, while that man starts to pound your shoulder demanding an answer. It’s gonna be a painful night, again.

Most interesting are also the live-recorded pieces Viva Rock’n’Roll, one from Tallinn and one from Yaroslavl, as well as other live-recorded music, because they show that Borisov and Nikklä are able to pull off their thing in a live setting as well as in studio recordings and also include surprise noises and elements, like Borisov starting to actually sing (if not for very long), audible instruments and big waves of pure white noise washing over the audience from out of nowhere. Especially the part where a string instrument is being abused over the noise of a burning wood and then high frequency noises setting in - a fiendish experience and frying matter for your brainwaves. Sickness not intended, but possible.