Notes of a Reveller: Issue No. 2

Outside the window there's some kind of grey nastiness: rain, cold, wind. The Halloween marathon is behind us. But before I collapse from a heart attack, I have to write a couple thousand characters about a week well spent for 44100.
At the start of the week the author's carcass arrived by train from Kyiv at 8 in the morning. Then followed an 8-hour working day, recording 12 programmes for Serebryany Dozhd (Silver Rain), a philosophy seminar and a lecture on literary editing at the university. Little raver girls call this regime «staying in.» On Tuesday I went to Propaganda, where at the hip-hop night, apart from the friends of Flammable beats – little rappers, snowboarders and other extreme types – for some reason «bright representatives of the Moscow beau monde» had gathered (three ha-ha). The sensation inside the Garden Ring five years ago, director Grisha Konstantinopolsky, twice ex-editor-in-chief of OM magazine Igor Grigoriev, socialite girl Dasha Chichkina on face control – it all looked like a Halloween pre-party, but on closer inspection it turned out to be the after-party of Russian Fashion Week, which is practically the same thing. Propaganda's security, dumbfounded by the influx of people who didn't fit their club's format, were in a state close to a nervous breakdown and endlessly yelled: «Move along! You can't stand here! You're blocking the passage! Clear the passage!» Whose passage exactly? Anyway, quick, to the dancefloor.
Finally I see the human faces of the Flammable family – DJs Pirumov, Vinilkin, at the turntables Chagin drops Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys. The dancefloor is going wild, and in the middle a fifty-something fellow in a grey business suit is dancing breakdance. I shout: «Do you like hip-hop?» – «WHAAAT?» – «Do you like hip-hop, the music that's playing now?» – «I like hop-hop very much! Very much!»
I sit with Mary Pirumova and we discuss the visuals, laughing our heads off. The next day we go with Starkova to Lena Suprun's fashion show – everything is so gorgeous! I want a corset with pink ribbons right now!
We race off to a party at Apelsin for Ellen Allien's set. Nothing special – a girl DJ. Plays good music on vinyl. So what? Something keeps me from relaxing. Lots of drunk friends all around, everyone falling over and spilling stinking whisky on my new coat. In the cloakroom I run into DJ Ukho and his girlfriend Marina, who also happens to be my close friend. We're delighted to see each other. We decide to keep the party going at Sobachka. At Flegmatichnaya I run into Harrison, with whom I sample the new cocktail «Kolyan» – vodka with tonic – a strong thing, take my word for it. As a result, on Friday I woke up with a hellish headache, which I then worked with all day. In the evening, with a horde of hungry friends, we went to a cheese ball at the restaurant «Syrnaya Dyrka» (Cheese Hole). The tables were groaning under piles of tasty goodies – cheeses of every kind, salmon kulebyakas, huge boulders of real chocolate…
At some point Lyokha 44100 and I were scaring respectable citizens by telling them that our stomachs were about to explode and rain down a shower of custard-cream tarts on them. On the dancefloor there was a contest for the best cheese-ball costume. The contenders – Bluebeard, Cinderella Go-Go and Kolobok. Puss in Boots won. And we just ate and ate and ate, until at last a kind fairy in the person of the heavily pregnant Alena Pavlova arrived and whisked us off to «Sobachka» for – alas – the last «Snezhnost» (Snowiness) party. Yes, there will be no more snowinesses. And I'll never again come to Flegmatichka on a Friday evening, never meet all my friends at once, never hear Zorkin. What a monstrous injustice.
After Sobachka I also dropped by Mix for some reason, where they were celebrating the sixteenth birthday of the daughter of one of the regular local inhabitants. In the end Mix was all balloons, teenagers and their parents, and in the middle stood a gloomy Dukhov trying to drive all the unwanted people off the dancefloor. In the end he drove me out. And then it came – Hello moto fucking ween.
I woke up at 5 in the evening, which meant it was already too late to go get a costume. Given that at 9 pm I absolutely had to be standing on face control at the club 16 Tons dressed up in something outlandish – this was a genuine catastrophe. I barely managed to drop by Sveta Lateks's place, who kindly lent me a Wicked Witch dress and a hat with crazy little roses. And so, in a mixed image of Old Lady Shapoklyak and Fata Morgana, I stood on face control and turned away the too-drunk and the too-sober alike. In short, I reveled in power as best I could. And meanwhile, on the second floor of ShT, the «Golden Gargoyle» award was being handed out. As the best club promoters, the «gargoyle» went to Anton Kubikov and Lyosha 44100 for the Techwergi project at the club «Flegmatichnaya Sobachka.» By the way, for Kubikov this will already be the third gargoyle statuette. 44 came out on stage in some crazy black wig, which cheered up the audience, who had already begun to yawn at the boring ramblings of the ceremony's host Sergey Belogolovtsev. Alexandroid was named the best electronic project of the year, and rightly so. To wash down the awards, the whole crowd headed to Kubikov's place. For some reason, I was especially zealous in this, having absolutely nothing to do with the success of the Techwergs. Having changed into a «poor Bedouin girl» costume, I went to the club «Gorod» (City): on one dancefloor the techno-butcher Kubikov was working and tearing people to shreds, on the other little ravers were being intelligently sliced into ribbons by Fish together with Spider. So, despite the strange logic of face control at «Gorod» and the unreal crush in the cloakroom, this was exactly the club I liked most this past weekend – after all, in a nightclub the main thing is the music, and with that everything was in perfect order at «Gorod.» Among the few bright city moments that stuck in my memory: Katya Ryba demonstrated on stage to everyone drawing their little cubes and squares exactly how one should move to techno, Nyura was treating people – to what do you think? – to the cocktail Kolyan, and I forgot my coat in the men's toilet. I left for Mix. At the turntables some very cool German is playing amazing music, but being on the dancefloor is out of the question – there isn't a single free square. Grabar, Starkova and I sit in a corner deciding in what form we should remind half the people present at Mix that it's high time for them to go home. A couple of hours later the crowd finally thins out, and we dance wild steps to Meshkov and Bivois. In the evening we went to the «Okna» birthday party, where we intelligently wrung out the end of Sunday: talking about cinema, watching «Microcosmos,» drinking whisky and watching striptease. And now, with your permission, may I finally go home at last and collapse from a heart attack, hm?