Yaffle

Decided to share the ones I love and hopefully to hear about yours, too.

• Mitski on Audiotree Live (2015) — Starting with the grandest one to me personally. Instantly bought this one and couldn't listen to the studio versions of these songs after.
• Retirement Party on Audiotree Live (2018) — I think this was the first Audiotree Live video I've seen. I remember really liking Skatune Network's cover of "Shoulder It" and I stumbled upon this live session shortly after. Also I still can't believe I was lucky to watch their amazing Audiotree STAGED live stream show during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. x__x
• Pool Kids on Audiotree Live (2019) — Poooool Kiiiiids! Actually discovered this band while browsing the Audiotree youtube channel, shortly after discovering the channel itself, lol. Probably my most rewatchable Audiotree video.
• tricot on Audiotree Live (2018) — another live session from a band that I discovered thanks to Audiotree (shocking) and that became one of my favourite bands ever since.
• Destroy Boys on Audiotree Live (2019) — yet another band I discovered while browsing through the Audiotree vault. Instantly became enchanted by the energy of their performance.
• HARU NEMURI on Audiotree Live (2022) — I didn't expect to see HARU NEMURI on Audiotree Live, so I got super excited when I saw the announcement. Damn, I was blown away by her performance, and still think about it occasionally... I think I've already mentioned this video on cohost before, but still highly recommend watching it!

This post is about the Russian "brit-rock" wave, aka Russian indie rock bands singing in English that were active during the short period of time between 2007 and 2009.

Initially, I just wanted to make a music mix featuring some of these bands that I used to listen to in high school and play on my improvised internet radio show (that only my friends listened to), but then I realised that I would need to introduce this whole thing somehow.

But first, here's a link to the mix:

Randomly stumbled upon an album on my old disk drive of a Russian band that I used to listen to ~15 years ago and play on my improvised internet radio show. Decided to check them out on youtube and got reminded that there was the whole mod revival thing in Russia in late 00s, which was later aggressively swallowed by the hipster gentrification of early 2010s with many more subcultures alongside it.

At some point it felt like traditional music-oriented subcultures stopped existing — communities of young people searching for vibrant identities in opposition to the depressive environment around them had been replaced by individuals competing for the most elitist views on any part of culture and a huge wave of culture consumerism for the sake of it.

Anyway, the band's bio caught my attention, because I think it stands out among all the other Russian bands who were making music with English lyrics at that time:

The Band was formed in 2003 under the name Bank Holiday . It was your standard four-piece and included one more guitarist than the current line-up. At the time, the music played was inspired by Oasis, Blur, the Verve, Supergrass and other bands of the so-called Brit-Pop genre. They played several gigs in Perm City , Russia , and became very popular with a youth that were disillusioned with Russian music. After cutting their first demo, The Band s handiwork was featured on compilation albums released by Matchbox Recordings and the Bliss/Aquamarine Indie Fanzine. In 2004, The Band relocated to London and successfully broke up there for more than a year. After returning to Perm they started gigging regularly again and recording new material. They soon realised that their sound and tastes had moved on from Brit-Pop, and they decided to pare down their line-up to include just one guitar. The remaining band members began to follow the growing influence of bands like the Jam, the Clash, the Kinks, the Libertines, the Who, Small Faces, the Specials, Madness, etc. They also had a great interest in modern Indie-Rock . The Band was renamed the White Trainers Community and changed its course from Brit-Pop to something that could best be described as a mixture of Indie and Mod Revival. The White Trainers Community split their time between London and Perm now, and will be performing a UK Tour in Summer 2007.

Like, I can't imagine any indie rock band from Russia relocating to London, lmao. I feel like even European tours were very rare for them at that time. And then the fact that they returned to Perm later...