Interview with Tinavie (FFM)
Originally published at Electronica. You can comment here or there.
Tinavie are a Moscow ensemble responsible for one of the year’s most remarkable albums, «Augenblick.» We contacted the band recently in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the recording’s context and consequences. This led to a joint conversation with the group’s five core members: vocalist Tina, Oleg Mariakhin, Dima Losev, Dima Zil’pert, and Dima Frolov.
With six months now having passed since the release of «Augenblick,» Tina declared that there’s currently enough material to «fill a second album - and then some!» Working, as before, without a bass player - and consciously so - the band hopes to nurture what they call «a light, airy, and even transparent sound. Instead of a bass player we employ various aspects of our piano, synths, and even a saxophone.»
That range of options would suggest a high level of expertise, and indeed many members of Tinavie have also played with other ensembles, such as folk-rock kingpins Mel’nitsa, reggae pioneers Netslov, and ethnic/world music artiste Inna Zhelannaia.
We began by asking about this broad range of influences and job opportunities.
- How does your wide experience find voice in the context of Tinavie?
OM: It was by playing with Inna Zhelannaia that I experimented with effects processors. Over the course of several years I was able to gain an understanding and vision of how my saxophone should sound. That was all transferred to Tinavie, but - from a creative point of view - I must say that those two outfits complement each other wonderfully. My work sounds very different in both contexts; diametrically opposed aspects of my music find expression, and that can only be good! Those polar opposites actually help me to develop creatively, which - in turn - works to the benefit of both bands.
DF: Music’s a universal language, after all. The more varied your background happens to be, the more interesting your technique will become. The kind of experience you get from other bands will often help to make you a more supple performer.
- Considering that Tinavie’s sound clearly reflects careful studio work, it’s a little surprising to read in some interviews that your songs are often written spontaneously or on the eve of live shows.
DZ: The ‘first versions’ of our songs are very often written quickly, quite literally over the course of one or two rehearsals. Sometimes we’ll even start playing a new work from scratch during a live performance! That gives us an immediate sense of how the song works in a real-life setting - and how people react to it, too. In actual fact, a lot of what you hear on the album was born of live improvs; only later would we remember those ad-libbed moments during studio work, and get down to the serious business of ‘fixing’ ourselves on tape.
- What’s more important for you: studio-based expertise or the romance - and possible failure! - of improvisation?
Tina: For a long time, I put the emphasis on live shows - on the romance of spontaneity and my contact with the public. After we made the album, though, I realized that I’d love to live in the studio 24/7 and record, record, record!
DL: Personally I think concerts are more important, since you get a direct sense of how music comes into being - publicly. Life, after all, is what’s happening here and now. Failure’s never that frightening, though: as Miles Davis once said, «Do not fear mistakes. There are none.»
DF: It’s all important, both studio expertise and the spontaneity of improvisation.
- Could you say a few words about all the ambient sounds that appear on «Augenblick»? We hear the rustling sounds of domestic chores, together with noises recorded on a dictaphone - in a Riga cathedral! What do those little intrusions of the outside world add to the album’s core concept?
OM: Oh! That’s clearly a question for Dima!
DL: Those field recordings are only one facet of the album. Together with the sounds of guitars, drums, and all the other instruments, we’ve got little fragments of daily life - the sounds of life ‘breathing.’ They all work towards the idea of a single moment’s spontaneity and elusiveness. In those tiny, fleeting moments everything falls together: a boiling kettle, the sounds of a piano, a ticking watch, the melancholy notes of a sax, noises from an analog synth, a passing car outside on the street. It’s a conglomeration of noises: a celebration of sound with sound!
It’s partially connected to the ideas of Brian Eno and his ambient music; at the end of the album you can hear footsteps, the creaking of floorboards, and a doorbell, as if they’re marking the end of some meditation or other. The doors of our perception, so to speak, are opened to a careful, patient listener.
DZ: That’s exactly right: «patience.» Nowadays that seems such a rare quality among listeners. Some people even ask me: «Why does your song ‘Lose’ [included here] have such a long introduction?» There are so many folks who just want the basic structure of «verse-chorus-verse-chorus.» We, on the other hand, would rather they discover everything that we’ve hidden in the music - and do so slowly!
- You recently said that it’s almost impossible for everybody to tour together. But does touring even make much sense today, from a financial point of view?
DZ: Not only from a financial standpoint, but also in terms of bureaucracy, it’s really complicated. But that doesn’t stop us wanting to travel and perform. We try to work with various promoters or art-directors who both like our music and can help us play in their clubs or hometowns. In those instances, it’s usually possible to findsome kind of organizational compromise.
- Considering that you sing in English, what would you like to see online that might help to further an awareness of your music?
DZ: Everybody knows that the web is the most powerful - in fact the only - media resource today. Trouble is, nobody has any idea how to use it for professional progress. It’s no longer enough to put together a Facebook page; in fact, writing good music is also insufficient… unfortunately. You need to come up with impressive, interesting projects; the kind of things that merge video art, theater, design, and music, too.
- A few days ago, the Russian press said the following: «This band is going to find things difficult. They’re working in an age when people have stopped assessing music in terms of sound alone. And there’s the fact that Russian music fans harbor a silent hatred for anything local.» How does that strike you?
Tina: Basically, that’s true. But I’d like to believe things will get better.
DL: I disagree… The reactions I’ve seen to our work show that people - as always - listen to music; they value the text of a song higher than any social context. These are the same people who are all around us on a daily basis; they’re hoping to discover something for themselves, rather than for some abstract ‘age’ or the ‘nation.’ I don’t things are any harder for us than they were for musicians in prior generations. Historians and biographers, no doubt, will figure these things out. If you try and evaluate an entire age through the tiny peep-hole of what happens today, you won’t be able to see very far.
DZ: I think Russian listeners are pretty skeptical about all things «local»; they don’t have much faith that local musicians will be able to do anything as well as their Western colleagues. I’d like to hope, though, that Tinavie are one of the new bands who might change that impression.
- Why do you think there are so few local scenes in Russian music? Do you think that musicians themselves are to blame, or maybe its an issue of indifferent press outlets?
Tina: I’d like to know myself! Everybody shoulders some of the blame. It’s probably an indication that everything - taken together - is kinda grim: a combination of the musicians, the media, and the listeners.
DZ: There simply aren’t the people who could develop a musical or creative culture. I did not grow up in Moscow and know very well that - on a local scale - everything depends upon some kind of human initiative. You need a place to rehearse, a concert hall or club, and some kind of festival every now and then. Nowadays, unfortunately, people channel their organizational efforts into other avenues.
Then there’s the fact that dance-related events and parties are more popular than live gigs. It’s cooler to show yourself off and go clubbing; being interested in music is not cool. That’s probably why it’s easier today to arrange a party of some sort and fill the dancefloor than set up a good live concert - the kind that people will actually attend.
- Following a similar line of argument, what would help music develop in Russia? What, conversely, makes life hard at the moment and inhibits that possible progress?
OM: We have the same problems you’ll see elsewhere, but the difference is that here they adopt a frightening scale! There’s the predominance of mass or «low» culture, for one thing - and the closer you look, the worse things get. It all leads to a general lowering of social norms and the inability of people to accept anything from outside those narrow limits. People lose all desire to discover anything new; they reject anything that can’t be quickly ingested or requires a little thought. Anything that requires some level of insight, empathy, or enthusiasm for the finer details of a work. People, sadly, simply cannot be bothered.
If they did make that effort, we’d have truly unique, valuable, and interesting songwriting. The result could be something cherished by the entire nation. But, at the moment, those sorts of songs cannot get on the radio. Good musicians get no support from the state whatsoever.
Tina: I simply cannot understand why people in Russia listen to useless, hackneyed pop songs. I don’t know why radio and TV stations have stopped playing decent music: we’re swamped by waves of pointless discord. Maybe I’m the problem: maybe I don’t understand something here? Whenever I start pondering these issues, I start to feel anxious, because I know - basically speaking - I’m unable to do anything.
But… that doesn’t stop me working. It doesn’t stop all of us becoming world-famous :-))
Thanks for this interview David MacFadyen (Far From Moscow)