Russian Electronic Music — The General Situation.

It depends entirely on how advanced the bulk of the listeners are. Since for a long time good taste, or the cultivation of an individual's distinctive development, was not encouraged in Soviet society, it follows that what never existed has nowhere to come from.
Of course, there is a thin layer of hereditary intellectuals who take an interest in everything out of the ordinary, and a small percentage of upstarts from the newly born younger generation who have unexpectedly discovered in themselves a taste for intellectual self-expression; yet all these people are simple consumers on the "no-effort" level.
They use the product obtained by recording the musical works of electronic artists — that is, simply put, the CD — quite utilitarianly, playing it a few times in the player. Then the disc is put on the shelf or given away to friends.
Despite the fact that we are already in the third millennium, electronic music has a paltry demand in Russia. People aren't interested.
Why?
Walking, for instance, through the clubs of Moscow, you may be surprised to discover that almost the same thing is played everywhere. Visiting what would seem to be the most techno-oriented shops, you will only be able to appreciate the difference in prices for an identical range of goods. Everything you see and hear can be described in a single word — "trendy".
Having taste implies that "trendy" will be an empty sound to you, or even a kind of mockery. You have to be untrendy to be capable of perceiving something non-format.
But since the children of proletarians best absorb, from their school days, whatever has been deliberately repeated a few hundred times, while the children of the intelligentsia — who were the very ones doing this drilling-in, taking the places of teachers in secondary schools — adopt the tastes and habits of their "broad-minded" parents, we get that notorious averaged-out taste. This is roughly the same as compulsory secondary education in Soviet times. For "he who was nothing shall become everything" — well, you understand.
Electronic music is something completely new for society. However, despite all the shouting about how it was born in Russia, we can state that just as it was born, so it passed into oblivion — all according to Taras Bulba. Even if we take into account that we produced the most advanced analog synthesizers, that won't change matters.
We even have brothers in misfortune, the Spanish electronic-music futurists. They too suddenly experienced a decline of interest in electronic music, and their artists, figuratively speaking, until recently "sucked their paws" (went hungry).
In the days of analog synthesizers, equipment was very expensive, so if people played electronic music, that meant there was demand, records were being bought — that is, electronic music brought in an income that made it possible to work with costly equipment.
Now the situation has changed somewhat. Cheap PCs appeared, along with the philistine's sanctimonious phrase, "I can do that myself too."
And since something "collective" still lives within us, we are tossed from side to side, we cannot allow ourselves to penetrate the meaning of the electronic sound of the new millennium. Our listeners drag along the tails of their old attachments, of Sovietness as a way to "stay in the ranks," to survive, and now this ugly outgrowth of fashion has been added on top. I have to say that this is usually how cheap prostitutes and gays behave.
In essence, only someone who is genuinely interested in the future, who intends to live there, fills his environment with electronic music. Our future differs somewhat from the trendy jazzed-up future that has been so actively splashed, and continues to be splashed, over our heads from cinema and video screens.
And that is why I can only speak of a demand "for a state of being" in our country among a small number of people who by no means belong to the young generation of boys and girls who hang out in clubs and change their sex every five minutes.
If you noticed, I never once mentioned the Western electronic industry. It's quite simple: we will never have what they have, even if we turn ourselves inside out; and if that does happen, it will still be the same us, only turned inside out.
For a demand for electronic music to arise, one must bring up a new generation in a mode of constant search for the unknown, for only in this way will it develop even the slightest interest in a new culture that has managed to become post-analog and then digital. And all this only so that we may free ourselves from the digital as well, finally moving on to a full-fledged perception of ideas, for music to this day holds the standard when it comes to purity in the transmission of information and sensations.
When there is a demand for freedom, there will also be a demand for electronics.

This problem arose in our country because of a change of cults. After the revolution the cult of faith in the idea reigned; then, following the collapse of the USSR, the dominant position was taken by the cult of money and payback.
Yes, since demand for electronic music is small among a population that is immersed in the monetary whirl, the activity of electronic musicians accordingly brings in little money. I mean, naturally, original electronic music.
Recently I had a rather amusing conversation with one of the figures involved in pushing electronica to the masses. We got to talking about possible sponsorship for a certain festival; my interlocutor turned slightly pale and said the following — namely, what could he offer a sponsor? Five hundred posters and a few thousand flyers with the advertising placed on them? Now, for example, if he were to bring in Scooter, then you could accordingly make five thousand posters, and — again — Scooter! A lot of people would come! "Money would make money"!
To which I objected that the music has nothing to do with it anymore.
When our so-called "promoters" invite this or that foreign star, they don't have to do a single thing, since everything has already been done. Done in the West, professionally, in a different commercial situation, by different laws of the money market, and "with humour, with humour, my dear friend!"
And in Russia, right on time, our ubiquitous pirates showed up, having churned out tons of affordable product used by the ordinary man. And he might go to a musician's concert simply because, while wiping himself in the toilet just now, he saw what "un-ours" (foreign) logos were on the roll of toilet paper. With their servile adoration of everything "from abroad," the entire population of some "me(g)halopolis," including the most inveterate lout, will trudge off to twitch about in a trendy club to trendy little music. For the fun of it.
And it doesn't matter that this musician hasn't composed a single new, remotely interesting track in the past year. Thank God it hasn't yet come to the public shouting: "Give us 'Murka'!"
Speaking of the Scooters, many completely forget about the utterly insignificant, tiny labels, with two or three musicians, that release a record every six months. It is precisely these labels and musicians who create that very cultural wave whose products the few Troitskys and Muzprosvets can savour.
They are unpromoted, they work for a small audience, and nevertheless there is demand for them, their activity pays for itself.
With us, however, everything is different. If a label offers its services, then right away the counting of not-yet-earned money begins. The label needs it at once and in large quantities. Since our recording industry is in a financial flight relatively free of the state, there must be no misfires.
Besides, culture for the masses turns into cow's cud, which has to be refreshed so the cow doesn't spit it out, otherwise the "buziness" is done for.
And then here come some incomprehensible electronic projects! Butting in with their laughable and absolutely un-recoupable (I can feel it in my heart!) noise-junk. Well, what's to be done with them? All right, let's put it out, and then if anything, we'll settle up with the print run.
But the manager doesn't feel any potential money in the releases of electronic musicians, so why invest money in advertising? There's no money here, just some useless electronic noise-junk nobody needs! Noise! Music doesn't make money, only money makes money! The seventies rolled off on an express train into the dark tunnel of the unknown, together with the genius of their long-haired music managers.
And so it turns out that, by and large, there's nothing to promote, because the only thing that promotes well is money itself.

In essence, in this situation everyone is at fault. Both sides want to make money. If in Europe there is, "just in case," a state subsidy for the development of culture, then in Russia there is apparently as much of this culture as there is dirt — spit, and something or other will grow.
We have no such state "aid," and if there is any, it is quite insignificant. And since misunderstanding and mistrust of one another are currently being cultivated among people here, no one has any time for all sorts of vexing subtleties.
If you've managed to make a name for yourself, then consider that you've won, but if not, then don't take offense. And since at the moment electronic music in Russia is one of these vexing subtleties, it is always treated with suspicion.
The first thing you can hear from a label addressed to your brainchild is that what you play is unprofessionally recorded — which is itself already absurd. Why, one asks, should I turn to this or that label if I can record my music well myself?
Number two follows: the phrase "and who is going to listen to this?" This, incidentally, indicates that the label doesn't have good managers and that the product goes exclusively to the provinces. And out there they buy up anything at all, as long as there's something to buy up. That means that those for whom your music was intended won't hear it.
The third question is trivial: "and how much do you want for this?" And here the torments of "creativity" begin, because this "how much" of yours is rather abstract.
It must be said that such an attitude toward musicians has been worked out over years, and — most importantly, you won't believe where! Back in Gosconcert! When they economized on literally everything. A piano concerto with orchestra for the left hand — be so kind, here's half the fee, since you played with only one hand — the left. The worker-peasant leaven always makes itself known.
And now, when it would seem the Western spirit of enterprise has filled the lungs of the Russian businessman — but no! — again a snag: the worker-peasant past is once more twisting ropes out of him.
It's right there. You don't play, the machine plays, and what kind of musician are you after that, if you can't bang out "The Black Raven" on a Roland, even if you say it's drum processing — who knows about you, maybe you're lying just to avoid doing anything.
Our highly intellectual sages (the musicians) have set off for the West. And now we already flaunt releases on "Mille Plateaux," "Warp," "Mute" and other "steel-plateaus." I'll say that, even having earned decent money, no one will come back to Russia to cheer up their compatriots by opening a label that puts out something non-standard. Mostly what happens is a move over there with all one's junk and the unhurried life of a quite comfortable underground musician.
Another worker-peasant "stripling" has sailed off from his native shores to a "bourgeois-land" country. Such little Kibalchish-and-Plokhish types. And the Kibalchishes shoot up, drink, and by the age of thirty curse old age.
By and large, both sides want a stable income from the business. Both sides nod toward the uncle with the fat wallet. And as long as they have something to divide, the misunderstanding grows stronger and blooms in full flower.
For some have forgotten why they play, and the others — why they press records. For both sides music has become a commodity, and a commodity has GOST standards by which it is accepted. If your ear-rivet conforms to GOST, step up to the window and sign; if not, get lost.
And the fact that the genuine article cannot conform to standards — all the more so where nothing hinders flights of fancy, but even encourages them — I'm talking about electronic music here, comrades! — has long ceased to concern anyone.
As long as money is the goal and not the means, Russian labels will not be able to understand domestic electronic musicians. And vice versa.

One need only mention Eduard Artemyev and Sven Grünberg for everything to fall into place. Didier Marouani, Jarre, Schulze and other comrades simply fade into the background under an ordinary comparison of the two sides' work.
However, the era of electronic dance has arrived, which is in itself quite natural. First you feel out the sound, and then you begin to move. This is how all classical musical styles develop. Dance is the next phase of development. There is neither negative nor positive in it; here the law of development works like clockwork — the classical path, so to speak. For electronic music has its roots in neoclassicism.
The theoretical foundation of our electronic music was so powerful that when it came to actually making music, it turned out that we were a bit more advanced than the Western musician. And that our instruments, despite all the garishness of their design, are considerably broader in sonic range and dynamic capabilities.
But here's the problem again: one has to sound strained and format-conforming in the Western way. "I have my own theory about this, and it is entirely mine" (Monty Python). Because over there that sells, and if you squeeze yourself into their formats, then we too can be sold. Why? Because here they will never pay as much as they do there.
You know what this reminds me of again? After the revolution the Russian chervonets was highly valued abroad. They were carted out of the country by the ton, and people got fabulously rich selling them on the black market. In my view, the situation is similar.
People worked, created foundations, the ANS, the Theremin Center, virtual gloves and so on, but in an instant the "chervontsy" rushed off to the "black market" of the West.
And since the worker-peasant crowd is once again looking at the "neighbor," having likened the whole country to a resort where there is nothing but government-issue grubby towels and wind-blown "cottages," any conversation on the subject of our advanced electronic scene drowns in jeering and mocking laughter.
However, the moment someone gets released on a label in another country, citizens immediately hasten to shake your hand and hint at their momentary lack of money. Chekhov would have had a field day now!
One more thing snuffs out the little wick. A catastrophic desire to struggle with problems — first to create them and then to struggle with them. To invent for oneself a drug and alcohol dependency, to marry or wed heaven knows whom, to spend precious time on some nonsense like figuring out who's cooler than whom — in short, to occupy oneself with anything at all except actual work. And all only because one has absolutely no wish to work and create something new.
And yet the situation has changed. Musicians have appeared who work for the sake of the idea, creating dance tracks inimitable in their beauty and richness; but since the "chervontsy" have been sold off, they are now called in the foreign manner. "Techno," "trance," "house" and so on. And since the freshly born youth grew up in an atmosphere of total denial of Russian Soviet culture, our reviving electronic scene evokes on their faces only bewilderment and questions: "Why doesn't this sound like anything else?"
I'll answer you, kids: "Because, my dear degenerates, this is real electronic music! To listen and to get it — that is your very first task! For this — is the future!"

And here it's all laughably simple, as easy as two beers. The principle of domestic business is simple: to receive a lot of money this very second while doing nothing. Rarely does anyone dare to take a different approach in this matter.
Electronic music, on the other hand, demands open-ended investments, engagement and patience.
A businessman's "knack," in my opinion, consists precisely in seeing beyond the end of his own nose. Yes, it really is easier to sell essential goods, I don't dispute it. Only why the hell whip up such a frenzy around toilet paper — is there really still not enough of it?