“Bi-2” released an album of crisis time

The seventh “Odd Warrior” was released

Participants of “Bi-2” try to compensate for their absence in Russian concert halls with albums. And we have to admit that they are good at it. At the end of last year, the musicians unveiled a new album “Hallelujah”, and the new one begins with a new release of their side project “Odd Warrior”. “MK” listened to familiar voices.

“Odd Warrior” for Shura and Leva has always been something of an elective and an opportunity to release music that does not fit into the albums of “Bi-2”. And also a chance to attract artists hopelessly distant from each other for joint tracks. As a common denominator, there are only songs by Mikhail Karasev, uncle Shura Bi-2 and a permanent co-author of the band.

The first album of the Odd Warrior series was released in 2005, the latest release is already the seventh in a row, not counting the collection of the best tracks. During all this time, dozens of artists from completely different “sandboxes” have been noted in the project: from rockers to pop stars, from mastodons to youth. The seventh album may not look as ambitious as some of its predecessors. There are not so many of those who are commonly called celebrities on it, and he himself, again by the standards of what has already been released, does not claim the title of huge.

It’s probably more correct to call this album “The Odd Warrior” of the crisis time. Putting together something like “Song of the Year”, alternative in sound, but very representative in composition, is really not easy in the current conditions. Previously, it was easy to combine Makarevich and Kortnev with Alexander F. Sklyar and Chicherina, and add Brainstorm and David Brown to this. Now there are no less red flags and borders in the musical world than in the political one, so you can forget about the former international.

But Shura and Leva clearly do not want to give up, Mikhail Karasev (on the day of release, February 8, he turned seventy years old) actively writes songs, and well-known artists respond to Bi-2’s proposals to sing them, as before. The main stars of the album were Evgeny Margulis (a very distinct performance on the territory between Chris Rea and Time Machine), Nastya Poleva (one of the rare singers who has not changed her taste for decades), Andrei Misin (he is always in the role of Andrei Misin, then there is a singer and composer who is called a genius without a shadow of embarrassment), the My Michel group (it seems that not a single bad word has been said about them yet). Also, the soloist of the Band’Eros group Natasha Ibadin, actress Anastasia Ukolova, the Seti group, where the flutist and keyboardist of Bi-2 Yan Nikolenko, the Cruise guitarist and, without any exaggeration, the rock legend Valery, took part in the recording of the songs Gaina, as well as Mikhail Karasev himself and even Shura’s children.

Albums under the Odd Warrior label never had a strict musical concept, so all participants in the venture were exempted from the obligation to play a role not in their show. The tradition is still alive and the tracks of the latest release are united only by a slow, somewhat relaxed sound. Against the background of the recent “Hallelujah”, electrified by rock riot and bold statements, “Odd Warrior” is recorded as if for a meditation course, which of course gives B-2 fans a completely different musical feeling.

However, it was not without strong emotions. In the introduction, a poem set to music is read by ten-year-old Oliver, the son of Shura Bi-2. And when the lines “And people ask God: “Let there be no war, In the world where children are, Let there be no death” are voiced in a childish voice, reality breaks even into what seems to have been invented not for manifestos.

The end of the album is sad, but life-affirming. The Hebrew track, labeled Outro, is performed by Israeli father and daughter Yariv and Shir Rinkov. Yariv tragically died some time ago and the song, which is essentially a declaration of love, sounds completely special in this situation. As all songs probably sound now, where love is salvation.