Sadness from Miyagi & Endgame, heavy metal from the guitarist “Kino”: the first surprises of the year

DJ SMASH puts on meow

The previous album by Andrey Shirman (aka DJ Smash) was released five years ago, and during that time a devastating hurricane swept through the local music industry. Artists are now expected to provide some kind of immediate reflection on what is happening, which is both logical and naive, if not infantile. And sometimes infantility even takes on the threatening features of insanity. Of course, there are those in the musical community who, like many ordinary people, feel the fire in their hearts, but business interests in this situation can become a cooling shower. And these interests are inextricably linked with the fact that in hard times the demand for dance or similar music is growing steadily. Consumers want some kind of pleasant veil before their eyes and a cheerful sound, which Andrey has been succeeding in for a long time.

Shirman’s established reputation as a producer has always provided him with the interest of a variety of stars for joint tracks. On the last album there were Lyusya Chebotina, Polina Gagarina, Yegor Creed and others. At the newest Miu Myau, Artik & Asti, Nivesta, Poеt, Konfuz, Kaya and Sveta recorded together with the DJ-ringleader. In five years, a generation of pop stars could well have changed, and this is partly noticeable in the album. DJ Smash skillfully grasps trends, and therefore in some tracks they sing in Russian, as if in English, there is more meowing (the album title is very appropriate here) and much less meaning.

But the public seems to like it. “СО2” with Artik & Asti, “Run” with Poеt and an unsavory version of the big Soviet hit “Call” from the film “Carnival”, recorded with Nivesta, were released as singles quite a long time ago and collected a good box office. New songs like “Ocean” or “Wind” (in this track DJ Smash himself recorded the vocal part, and it turned out not that super bright, but quite in the spirit of the modern understanding of singing), probably also have potential. Overall no better, although no worse, than many other releases in a similar genre. As soon as the songs end, there is no great desire to remember them.

Andrey Shirman does not lose his touch in any way, but in terms of great inspiration in Miu Myau everything is much more modest. The album ends with a remix, not brilliant, of the still trump card for DJ Smash Moscow Never Sleeps, a super hit track from the legends of deep antiquity – the cheerful and free 00s. And even in its faded sound, this antique number recalls the times when the musician could write hits that were chanted on huge dance floors. Now the hands of a master in his craft produce a very high-quality product, but in terms of magic, this is, if not a gap, then a dotted line.

MIYAGI and ENDGAME sad rhythmically

Some of the symbols of hookah rap are moving off the commercial rails, but are not saying goodbye to the charts. Narrative is too dark an album to become a hit, but after its release, Miyagi and Endgame broke their own records and are still the most popular (by listening) rappers in the country.

There are different assumptions about what attracted the duet from Vladikavkaz such attention and adoration. Probably those who speak about the ability of Azamat Kudzaev and Soslan Burnatsev to effectively package their lines are most right. There is nothing supernatural in the lines themselves from Miyagi and Endgame. Both the angry rap from the area, which was at the very beginning of their career, and the boyish sad “wisdom” of the current bottling can get tiresome very quickly. However, the obvious sympathy for reggae, the intention to make the instrumental richer and the flow of the artists themselves, which was very suitable for all this, provided the tracks with a musicality that was not typical for local hip-hop.

In 2016, together with Rem Digga, the duo released the track I Got Love, and it seems that everyone knew about this song, including those who were not interested in local rap. It was something like a club bomb (at the moment the number of video views is confidently approaching nine hundred million – a record among Russian artists), and the term “hookah rap”, which arose around this time, immediately received elegant ambassadors.

Miyagi and Endgame clearly didn’t mind riding in business class, but always hinted that they had other plans for their music. Some of them probably became clearer at Narrative. The line “with melancholy on the crest of a wave…” from the track “Golgotha” quite accurately conveys the mood of the album. Probably, those who were expecting explosive or at least rocking numbers will be slightly disappointed, but to call the release a failure would be completely wrong. Among fans of local rap there are still a lot of those who listen to music to be sad, not to have fun. And here Miyagi and Endgame come to the rescue, combining gloomy thoughts and still pleasant sound.

“Theater of Shadows” does not part with heavy rock

The Theater of Shadows group this year celebrates the twentieth anniversary of its discography, which began in 2004 with an album named after the group itself. This group comes from the eighties, but until 2004 there was a long period of searching for the composition and musical style. As a result, they came to progressive metal, but twenty years later on the “Narcissus” EP it sounds more like hard rock with the prefix “modern” and bridges to popular music.

Of the six songs, the lyrics to two – the opening release “Play Narcissus” and the final “Feast of One” – were written by Alexander Elin, becoming the author who, as it were, looped the entire ideological and content part of the release. He is responsible for the iconic hits “Aria” and “Master”, worked with “Chimera”, “Rondo” and “Charisma”, in general, a femme fatale with a good resume and still in enviable creative shape. Denis Masharov, vocalist and main author of “Theater of Shadows,” also feels creatively cheerful, and as a result, all this old school sounds more than confident.

In 2024, hard rock is more of a niche music than an urgent format, but there is still a place for energetic body movements in this niche. Suffice it to recall the massive stadium celebration in Moscow at the finale of the global “Aryan” tour “Guest from the Kingdom of Shadows.” Now here is “Theater of Shadows” (what can you do – hard music is generally saturated with this dark matter) – the group is not a stadium band, but their songs retain the scope and charm of music, which is very rare in current realities, which is not collected from samples, but performed live. Someone else does this. “Shadows” do not give up, and sometimes even win…

Yuri KASPARYAN plunges into infernalism

A winter forest, an impressively sized elk and a lonely man in black, who turns out to be Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparyan. And if there is very little action in the video, then the music is much more intriguing. Something sounds very evil and dark, and this is not surprising, because as part of the solo project Kasparyan, the musician realizes his curiosity in relation to radical forms of heavy music, namely black, death, doom and gothic-metal.

All this smacks of some kind of sophisticated irony. And this is quite possible, taking into account the fact that the main character of the project is a person who jokes with a serious face. The lack of commentary also adds to the vagueness of what is happening. From circles close to Kasparian, it is reported that the legend of Russian rock has long been interested in this kind of infernalism, but everything moved forward when it was possible to take a photograph that conveys the essence of the single itself called Under Siberian Stars. A little more specifics in the project’s personnel policy: together with Kasparyan, drummer Helig Schulz and bassist Viktor Sled took part in the recording of the track. The surnames are associated with Germany, where black, death, doom, gothic metal are found in abundance.

If you don’t delve into discussions about what all this means, then you can simply rejoice at the enviable creative activity of Yuri Dmitrievich. Concerts of Kino itself in a new format, performances with an orchestra as part of the Symphokino project, the YK group with instrumental music and now black, death, doom, gothic. This is the very case when the thirst for new sensations is not a sin at all.