In Eastern Europe, men are marching, my friend. Winter is coming and the fall slop is freezing to the ground. Missiles are hitting power plants so that you have to wear heavy coats and hats all day, all night, in your dark apartment. What’s the news from the front, and is it true anyway, huh? Maybe war isn’t hell, then: no, not fire and brimstone, but a giant meat freezer where fascists and psychos finally get what’s coming to them: a heavy cold.
It’s called Slavic gloom, people. What’s your identity, what’s your language, who decides? Not some guy in the Kremlin, you’re hoping. Some clown boy without the laughs.
And the soundtrack to all of this? Sounds to me like it should be Electronic Resistance – Restoration: more than 50 tracks from Ukrainian darkwave/post-punk acts, sponsored by Side-Line Magazine in Brussels, Belgium. Name your price on Bandcamp and you’ll get something like Laibach in a mosh pit at a munitions factory. Makes perfect sense: this is a group that once cut an album called NATO, after all. Way ahead of the curve, if you ask me.
So, let’s hear some, what do you say? Click on the shuffle button here on my computer music rig and see what gives, my friend:
Blocked Siesta by Chaka Getz, first up. I’m not too crazy about this woman’s voice, which is too shrill for my tastes. As for the background music, it ping-pongs with electronic snap, crackle and pops, but then goes into a lilt to lift her voice. Not a bad song: after all, how can it be all bad with a title like Blocked Siesta?
Next: F12O by Gttn. This is more like it. Some strange cricket noise behind a pounding drum and droning echoing wordless vocals. The climax climbs like HIMARS in heat, then back to the truly inspired beat on the march. I give it an 8, because it’s easy to dance to, if you’re trying to keep warm in a frozen-over potato field as you’re trying to dig a trench. Atmospheric, is what they say, or whatever.
Now here is Ukraina by Iwan Lovynsky & KingSMarine. If you happen to be a bobble head, this will get you on the wobble, for sure. Those Laibach monster drums working out while muffled Ukrainian voices call for justice through a bank of post-punk metallic KO. Outstanding.
In Fields We Shall Fall by Thrones Beneath Gallows. See, I told you, Slavic Gloom. You ain’t getting poppies growing on these fields, my friend, and thrones beneath gallows, all about that suit czar in the Kremlin falling from his throne into a lynch mob, I’m guessing. This is white noise with distant, dissonant electro beeps. Okay, now it’s hitting its peak like the sacrifice scene in Rite of Spring, and that’s a good thing.
>Kax (Horror) by Violet Raymoor. A voice groaning in Ukrainian reaches toward the hope of triumph to full metal explosions and a chorus that could be the Mormon Tabernacle Choir if they were singing about tortured angels, am I right or not?
Kurier (Courier) by Naser Karim. Sounds like someone is liking his toy tin drum, what with that synthesizer beat below it and those mad wacka, wacka, wacka quacking voices. Hey, it’s different, am I right?
California Reaper by Black Light District. Sorry, Jimi, but you were wrong: we are hearing surf music again, only it’s a pulsing bass and a neo-Ventures guitar that are riding the dark waves. Don’t fear the California Reaper, my friends.
Well, that’s just a sample. I’ll be listening to all 50 tracks, pretty soon. Hell, I never knew there was this kind of throwdown in the Ukraine: all I’ve been seeing on TikTok is UKR soldiers dancing to warped hip-hop by Ukrainian rappers. Not that I have anything against that, let me tell you … whatever tunes win this war are just fine by me.
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