2023-06-06 18:13:47
“We promised that we would pull out the poles and abolish the borders. We have done”
One of the most intriguing releases of the beginning of this summer was the global work of the Crematorium group, in which rock musicians worked on a completely new, sometimes completely unrecognizable, sound of old tracks. Whether it’s for fun or for art, but they got confused and translated 16 tracks into foreign languages. Unexpected transformations of old hits make us reevaluate and reconsider the entire 40-year legacy of the legendary Moscow rock hooligans.
The songs of the “Crematorium” (or simply – “Crema”, as it was customary from a cheerful antiquity) sounded in English, Chinese, German, Italian, French and Spanish. According to Armen Grigoryan, the leader of the group, the lyrics in foreign languages are his old “gestalt that needed to be completed.” The musician said that he writes music first, the words come later, so he was always interested in how his melodies would manifest themselves in other text suits. It always seemed to him that the phonetic sound of some languages would enrich the songs. After listening to the album, one cannot but agree that when you stop clinging to unusual fantasy verses and intricate meanings of “sovereign” texts, the music comes to the fore, and its volume, hidden behind the meanings.
To avoid a Russian accent, native speakers of each language were found to perform all songs. Most of the tracks, of course, are in English, they were entrusted to sing by actor Steve Bennington. He also offered some creative solutions on how to Americanize specific Russian vocabulary. For example, to replace “kondraty”, the phrase “The Big One” was found, which means the colloquial form of “heart attack”, in fact, like our “kondrashka”. The same well-chosen phraseologism also appeared in the title of the album, and not only replaced “Kondraty” in the hippie hit “Crematorium” of the same name.
Tanya (the one who did everything “on a flat with an old gramophone, an iron bed and a telephone”) changed her name to Stacey for the beauty of the lines, abandoned some musical preferences (Janis Joplin was deleted from the list of her addictions), but in general, practically completely retained its appearance in the new performance, it just came in handy cheerful dance country.
“Ugly Elsa” retained the name and, in principle, did not change the content. But the performer suggested adding a whistle after the chorus “we live in order to die tomorrow.” In America, it is customary to whistle when you walk past a cemetery to protect yourself from restless souls. Now the song is embellished with such a ritual whistle.
The track “Snows of Ararat” turned into a sad velvety blues. And “Don Pedro” was recorded in Mexico, where it was performed by a local operatic bass. The text of the “Chinese tank” was translated into Chinese twice, it did not immediately turn out to be acceptable to native speakers. As a result, the text of the performer, who wrote it in the northern Chinese language, better known as the Mandarin dialect, passed into the final version.
The Garbage Wind has undergone the most changes. Presented as a graceful waltz accompanied by an opera singer in Italian, it makes the brain creak with extravagant eclecticism with a touch of sheer musical perversion: waltz with its spirit of the 19th century, Italian opera and its flair of the Belcanto era and shaggy rock of the 80s squeezed into this luxury . Such a connection can make a hole in the mind of a music lover.
Grigoryan explains his musical hooliganism by the fact that he wanted to move away from the usual genre: “I’m interested in other genres, it’s not very interesting to cook in this Russian rock subculture …” Indeed, rock is pushed as far as possible and blotted out from this record, but it still shines through every note. Grigoryan assures that this disc was written for himself rather than as an attempt to storm the Western market. But there are big doubts that the group will not try to break through for export and conquer other shores.
“We promised that we would pull out the poles and abolish the borders. We did, ”the musicians wrote on their social networks. 30 years after the release of Little Girl, the gestalt is closed, now fans are wondering what’s next.
Newspaper headline:
“Crematorium” is exported
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