Back to the future

The term "Easy Listening" originally arose in the 50s - this is the name of unobtrusive, mainly instrumental music, the main purpose of which was a mild, optional background. To fly into one ear and immediately fly out of another. Light, like a haze, melodies, often with exotic arrangements (there was a group of Harmonicats, playing exclusively on harmonics), perfectly suited to quietly twist them in supermarkets, waiting rooms and lobby of expensive hotels. It is not surprising that most of the listeners and critics considered Easy Listening a shameful chewing gum - it was contemptuously called "Muzak" (named after the famous American company Muzak Inc., which at one time traded cassettes with the most unpretentious music in the world, intended just for playing in shopping houses and other accumulations people).

Numerous orchestras caused special hatred, playing heavy instrumental versions of the pop hits - we have this genre known by the plates of the James Lasta orchestras and the field of Moriah. However, among this musical Sora, there were also very entertaining notes: critics note the works of Martin Denny, the forest of Baxter, and especially a musician named Juan Garcia Eskivel. In the mid-sixties, a guitar big-bit appeared, the four young people from Liverpool sang about that and about this, and Easy Listening instantly moved to the back of the musical world.

A new wave of interest in the genre suddenly fell on the mid-nineties: the fault of this, according to many, was the general disappointment in rock music. “Rock is the music of egoists, the world is simply tired of this,” says Oleg Nesterov, the leader of the Megapolis group, which opened the first Russian Easy -Leubble Light. “That's why light music is so popular now.” “Rock is completely exhausted,” the millionaire echoes him, the musician of one of the most famous modern Easy commands of Comble Edison. - In addition, the lounge turned out to be much more diverse than electronics or guitar music. More complicated, more saturated, confused, or something. Very energetic music, for real hedonists. "

Comble Edison used to play rather hard guitar music, but then switched to the lounge, finding that in these half -forgotten notes, an unprecedented hitherto charming - it was Quentin Tarantino who ordered a retro -sanrtect for his film "Four Rooms". The situation everywhere was approximately the same: in search of inspiration, the musicians stumbled upon old records - whether it was the work of Henry Manchini, the author of the soundtrack for the "pink panther", or exotic tunes of the sumak - and came in full delight. Kurd Duka, a Viennese musician, says in an interview: for a long time the music that sounded in my childhood was perceived as full - French pop, marches, alpine folklore, table songs. But only disappointment in rock forced to turn to this, previously seemingly stupid music (now the kurd duck cuts out the avant -garde sound canvases from old melodies).

However, there is another version: the fashion for the lounge, without expecting it, gave rise to large recording corporations - after they began to reprint all their archival records to CD: the product, which was dusting in warehouses, threatened to bring quite tangible ladies. So the forgotten masterpieces, sound paths to trash films and crazy suits of long-broken orchestras climbed into the light. Having communed to these unprecedented secrets, young teams began to play what can be conditionally called retro-futurism: music, usually electronic, filled with the spirit of old soundtracks, exotic melodies and delicate pop Pesen.

The material for inspiration turned out to be more than enough: in France - Paul Moriah, Joe Dassen and Serge Ganzbur; In Italy - soundtracks for porn films and spaghetti westers; In America, all this unthinkable galaxy of Easy -composers like the forest of Bakster and Martin Danny, plus stupid melodies for cartoons and Broadway muscles, what is usually called Tunes. The lounge of the new sample gained special popularity in the Land of the Rising Sun: the Japanese, hunting to all Western, turned euro -nationwide into the most crazy, most dance music on Earth. A lightweight mixture of bossan, cocktail jazz and modern electronics, which was represented by Pizzicato 5, Fantastic Plastic Machine and a hundred groups of a smaller rank, is beamed by some completely puppy euphoria. For several years, the lounge from fashionable poet has turned into a serious world movement - the music of easy behavior now play everywhere, even in Russia and Hungary, and then, listen, it will only be better, it will be more fun.