Squiggles of wisdom – Newspaper Kommersant No. 65 (7510) of 04/14/2023

Under the title “Airbus of Love”, the last authorized recordings of the leader of the “Sounds of Mu” Pyotr Mamonov, who would have turned 72 today, were published. Album listened to Igor Gavrilov.

Until today, Pyotr Mamonov’s last album was considered “Dunno” (see “Kommersant” dated February 9, 2022) is a two-disc meditation inspired by the well-known plot of a children’s book. Now the Airbus of Love has been released, which in the release announcements is called “the last fully completed studio project by Pyotr Mamonov.” During his lifetime (the musician died in July 2021), he handed over the completed work to his wife Olga, who for many years was not only his life partner, but also his manager. The album was recorded in Petr Mamonov’s home studio on a Fostex tape recorder, and the version now available on digital platforms preserves intact the sound that the author achieved using the remote control that Brian Eno once gave.

We know three Peter Mamonovs. The first is a compositor, massage therapist, loader, elevator operator, fireman, translator from the Norwegian language and head of the letters department of Pioneer magazine. Life explorer. The second is the leader of the Sounds of Mu group, one of the central figures of Russian rock. Music world constructor. The third is a sage-preacher, whose short maxims with references to sacred texts have become an endless resource for those who like to provide photos on social networks with some kind of edifying thought. Wisdom Generator. In the first part of the album “Airbus of Love” – ​​in the tracks “Poems 1 (part 1)” and “Poems 2 (part 2)” – we see another Mamonov.

He appears here as a poet who knows how to put his observations and experience into a very simple and precise poetic form. His beautiful deep voice functions in the most traditional reading mode. This is the old school at its best, not without reason that the best representatives of the acting workshop coexisted perfectly with the rock star on stage and on the set – Petr Zaichenko, Denis Burgazliev, Oleg Yankovsky, Viktor Sukhorukov.

Mamonov’s “Poems” is a classic movement of a rhyming word without any second bottom, without rock and roll audacity, without special marks of time and at the same time almost without teachings and sermons. “A haystack takes on the appearance of an inn at sunset.” “At the construction site, detour signs jangle about something with tin lamps.” “I was bold and blown away like a speck of dust from the pitch darkness of the sun-drenched streets of Tel Aviv.” Finished paintings that you want to take in a frame. Actually, this frame here is just “strumming” – a seemingly optional accompaniment that was so important for Mamonov.

“With You” is one of the best examples of Mamon’s lyrics in his entire huge career. This is a dialogue with the beloved of a very middle-aged man, breaking into a global scream and howl. And the following “Flashlight” seems to be a much calmer, contemplative poem, from which, nevertheless, the first thing to remember is: “Is it really to die?”

The almost half-hour track “Recipes” is our next “discovery of Mamonov”. He reads recipes from The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food, alternating them with long periods of text about the benefits of proper nutrition. At first, guitar noise serves as the background for the recipes, then electronic beats, scratches, samples, oriental strings and the voices of Tibetan monks appear in the arrangement, emotionally neutral Mamon reading gradually acquires colors and masks, he moves somewhere towards the images from his performances of the 1990s , returns to everyday poetry from “Poems”, and then completely strays into an unknown language, vaguely reminiscent of German. Nevertheless, the whole work still remains within the “culinary” paradigm.

On the surface of “Recipes” is the simple idea that, like a director who can put down a phone book, a good musician can sing meat recipes. But it is unlikely that Peter Mamonov needed this uniform just to demonstrate his acting and production skills. Here, of course, there is also a parallel between cooking and the search for a new musical form. And what if we throw this spice into this broth? But what if we add words of unknown origin to the Russian text? Will it be good? Tasty? It’s an exciting experience and the track is the main track on the album. And the final “Squiggles” are voice messages set to music, reminiscent of Mamonov as a collector of Christian wisdom and a subtle observer who saw the new in the familiar and the complex in the simple.