English patients: The Damned recall their Youth, Sleaford Mods foresee collapse

The year started with a series of interesting new releases from the British Isles — different generations, different music, different perspectives on life. Our attention was attracted by the reissues of jazz and academic music, which were waiting in the archives. The most interesting music albums of January are in the Izvestia review.

The Damned

Not Like Everybody Else

The founding fathers of punk are celebrating their half-century anniversary on stage this year — alas, without guitarist Brian James, who died last year (here, however, he appears in the final track recorded live at a concert in 2022). The remaining members of the original line—up, David Vanian, Rat Skabis and Captain Sensitive, decided not to take any chances on the occasion of the significant date and not to compose new songs - it is unlikely to repeat the success of Machine Gun Etiquette or The Black Album, so why the extra fuss. Apparently, that's why the anniversary album is made up of covers — and not punk rock classics, but songs from the school days of musicians born in the 1950s.

There was a place for Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and even the somewhat hackneyed (and, frankly, not refreshed in the hands of The Damned) song The Lovin’ Spoonful about summer in the city. Vanian's voice, like it was half a century ago, is deep inside, which is especially helpful on the album's opening classic soul-thriller There's a Ghost in My House. And Iggy's cover of Gimme Danger, somewhat out of the chosen era, with his company at the time, brings an alarming variety to the generally rather relaxed album. In general, the record is for old fans — it will be difficult for young listeners to understand how these cheerful grandfathers managed to make a revolution in music half a century ago.

They did it at Rocky's: Rihanna's husband gathered rap, jazz and movie stars

With the new album, A$AP Rocky reminded that he knows how to do more than just kids and problems.

Sleaford Mods

The Demise of Planet X

Two homeless-looking peasants from Nottingham have been slapping Albion's public taste for a decade and a half and quite openly spitting in the face of the establishment. Their popularity among the masses is understandable — what's more surprising is that the British establishment, which usually chews and spits out countercultural rebels, Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn have clearly choked on. This is already the 13th album of their extensive invectives against society and the world as a whole - this time, however, it is somewhat more musical in the usual sense of the word (Williamson is now not just spitting poison, but really singing — and he, surprisingly, knows how to do this, which was noticeable on the released several a few years ago, a cover of Yazoo's song was not the easiest for male vocals).

If the previous Sleaford Mods album made a disappointing diagnosis of their own country, now an existential proletarian verdict is being passed around the world. In The Good Life, there is a dialogue about freedom and emptiness, in Double Diamond, social networks come under fire, and it's not hard to guess what Megaton is about, even if you don't really know English. The computer-generated schematic beat and monotonous bass, extracted by Fearn from the depths of his invariable laptop, returns the listener to the origins of Sleaford Mods, but the abundance of guest vocalists turns this work almost into soul music, ready for the barricades.

Dry Cleaning

Secret Love

Four natives of South London, who have adopted the emphatically mundane name "Dry Cleaning", simultaneously follow the standards of the indie scene established back in the 1980s (Gang Of Four agitators and Wire hypnotists are perhaps closest to them) and violate them literally in every beat. Vocalist Florence Shaw recites her narratives, which clearly grow out of her acquaintance with both Sylvia Plath and Mayakovsky, balancing between everyday poetry and social satire. Perhaps her style itself is closer to the Russian poet-tribunes than to the aesthetic sprechgesang.

Secret Love, the band's third studio album, has also become a new stage in its musical development. Thanks in large part to Kate Le Bon's production work, art-pop elements are combined here with dissonant bass parts, and the intentionally "anti-hit" structure of the songs sometimes suddenly turns into almost ethereal passages in the spirit of almost Cocteau Twins. The opening track of Hit My Head All Day is a six—minute odyssey of the protagonist through information overload, while Cruise Ship Designer turns sarcasm on the world of elite culture; Blood explores emotional alienation in an era of incessant disturbing news, while Let Me Grow and You'll See the Fruit and Joy add warmth and almost folk tones to the musical landscape.

Home for Christmas: what is remembered by British singer Chris Rea

During his life, the artist recorded 25 studio albums.

The Sato Jazz Ensemble

"Pass the good around"

Melody continues to digitize rarities from its back catalog at a record pace. We did not have time to rejoice at the reissue of the first album of the Fergana jazz phenomena of the 1980s, as here is the second (alas, it is also the last in the discography of "Sato"). Leonid Atabekov managed to create a unique fusion of local tradition and Western improvisation in the not-so-jazz decade and in the not-so-jazz republic of the USSR. Two albums on Melodies and their own club in the city have fixed the status of the ensemble as one of the key Uzbek collectives of the era.

"Pass the Good Around", recorded in 1987, demonstrates the band at the peak of its form. Here, the Azerbaijani "Zuleikha" and the Crimean Tatar "Yayla Boy" are not exotic, but material for thoughtful jazz processing; Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" turns into an exercise in balancing virtuosity and irony; the synthesizer "Elegy" gently pushes the ensemble towards fusion. The title track, dedicated to Valentin Selyutin, sets the ethical tone of the record: this is music not for demonstration, but for transmission — gestures, themes, and trust.

Saulius Sondeckis, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Mark Pekarsky Percussion Ensemble

"Vyacheslav Artyomov: A Symphony of Elegies"

Vyacheslav Artyomov is a paradoxical figure for Russian music: at the same time rooted in tradition and chronically pushed beyond its institutional framework. His journey from studying physics and mathematics to an almost mystical understanding of composition largely explains his rare focus on inner time and the metaphysics of sound in the Soviet context. Participation in the improvisational "Astrea" and getting into the sad memory of the "Khrennikov list" secured Artyomov the status of an author who works not "in spite of", but as if past the historical fuss. His idea of musica perennis is not an aesthetic gesture, but a way for music to exist outside of fashion and political conjuncture.

The "Symphony of Elegies" in the 1983 recording sounds like a slow unfolding of a single state brought to extreme concentration. The three elegies do not contrast so much as gradually remove the outer layers of perception, bringing the listener to the final, most capacious part. The Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and soloists play with ascetic precision, without spectacular moves, but with an almost mathematical sense of silence and sound. Artyomov does not offer drama in the usual sense — he insists on listening, on rejecting expectations. This music does not seek to be relevant, but that is why today it is perceived as an experience of mystical immersion, in which time ceases to be linear, and elegy becomes a genre, becoming a way of thinking.