Sputniks. Alien Electro-Rock and Roll

In the late 1980s, Sigue Sigue Sputnik with their worst songs in the history of pop music managed to circle the globe. They even reached Soviet discos. The emerald mohawks of JT and his companions so impressed the local youth that they took to using the "green stuff" as hair dye everywhere. (DJ Mag, Andrei Iovik).

"A grotesque embodiment of the vices of the capitalist system, a crooked mirror reflecting all the distorted values of modern Western youth" - this is how Soviet propaganda recommended Sigue Sigue Sputnik to Komsomol members in the mid-80s. The PR campaign was effective - the recordings of "Sputniks" instantly spread through the "advanced" ranks of the Soviet state, becoming a favorite, forbidden fruit. The moral-ideological war initiated was lost by the USSR, as it collapsed, while Sigue Sigue Sputnik continue to "light up" dance floors.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik - the progenitors of synth-pop, cosmic bad boys, a genetic mix of clones of Ziggy, Iggy, Elvis, and computers. Disco-electro-punk-rock on a scale of unbridled glam masquerade, where kitsch flirts with madness. SSS were conceived as a multimedia monster, the end product of which is somewhere beyond pop culture and media technologies.

In the music culture of the turn of the century, the work of SSS is "alien electro-rock and roll, featuring a robotic drummer". Appearing in 1984, they turned up "everywhere": on magazine covers, in scandalous gossip, in graffiti slogans on every fence, in charts, on television screens… "They were only absent from soup. You could either love them or hate them, but you couldn’t avoid them!" Their albums sold millions, their concerts were broadcast via satellite from the Albert Hall five years before U2.

Due to a mythic web of versions, "Sputniks" collapsed in the '90s, but reunited two years later, reborn in cyberspace, they released 9 albums. Nowadays they host club concerts worldwide, although for the last 8 years Sigue Sigue Sputnik have promoted themselves exclusively through the internet. The World Wide Web became the stage for a continuing performance with a twenty-year history. On the avant-scene still stands Tony James, the vocalist and founder of SSS, also known for his participation in Sisters Of Mercy, Chelsea and Generation X, the Brit-punk synctet led by Billy Idol. "Old Billy" remains friends with Tony. "He’s the eternally young one of the two of us," - they say about each other today.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik
May 25 at 22:00 in B2 club!