Dark as night

On February 16, on the first day of the year, Boris Grebenshchikov, “Time N”, was released by the Chinese calendar - the chronicle of “Time of Demons Rag”, a difficult journey from darkness to light in nine songs and, probably, the most gloomy and desperate work in his discography.

The album begins with the lines “Let me interrupt eternal disputes, / Let me shake the cross and supports” - and immediately understand that there will be only worse and angrier. “Time N ” before the exit managed to compare with the “Russian album” and “navigator”, recorded in the heavy 90s for the country, but perhaps there was probably no such despair in the voice of Boris Grebenshchikov.

The endless interviews of the zero are already forgotten, in which Boris Grebenshchikov said that in Russia nothing is changing, and noticed the advantages of a thousand -year dynastic government in China. Now another alignment. “Time is merciless, it is like a wolf, / here we are sitting here, and it rushes,” he says in the title song. And all this after the opuses about the immortal sister of Ho, the brothers are hidden and the careless Russian tramp. What can I say: since even he was brought, it means that something in the Danish kingdom was really rotten.

In general, a gloomy landscape, folding from the lines of new songs, accurately repeats the previous plate “Salt” , only shades and halftones change. In one of the songs, the Russian hopelessness is bloomed by the segun with the Flate Sakuhati, which the monks of ancient Japan used both for spiritual practices and to collect alms. In another, the Eastern percussion specially recorded in Tel Aviv.

For such a direct statement as “Time N ”, these expressive means are rather redundant. More than 30 musicians took part in the record, many of which are clearly not enough space here. So, without a special mention, the listener would hardly have guessed that Brian Ino recorded the keyboards in the song “Crusade of Birds”. And in the "songs of the unloved" the slide gitar of the great master of this tool-the British guitarist BJ Cole . The saxophone solo of the King Crimson participant Mela Callins, the guitar parties Lyo Ebrams (whom Grebenshchikov considers one of the best musicians of the young generation ) and the orientalist motives of the Tunisian violinist Zidy Zuari in the song “Salt” are more cut into memory.

The plate is divided clearly in half. The first part is the songs of the unloved, streaming with the dead in a rusty wind, where rowers are wheezing or growls with an awakened beast. In the second, he gains Buddhist peace, but there is no trace of the previous goodness here. “There is no need to stand in my way, I can be a little stronger than I seem,” warns the rowers in the ballad “Cooks from the Void”. The only salvation from the surrounding darkness is escapism, and mainly a knife. In the song "Bodhisattva's knives" these same knives created to cut off the affection help to make an escape from reality. And in the final song “Crusade of Birds”, Boris Grebenshchikov wants to “take this sky like a knife, and cut us out of the network.”

It is curious that Boris Grebenshchikov became a musician who is more clearly and clearer now about the time in which we live - perceived by a detached guru for many years, thinking exclusively about the eternal. It is also curious that, with rare exceptions, young musicians do not step on this territory at all-although everything that BG sings is just in the air. “Time N ” is listened to as an intermediate stage - therefore, it is finally interesting what the end of the trilogy, begun by the album “Salt”. Outside of “Time N ” there were more than 20 new songs, many of which were lit up at concerts. For example, the life -affirming anthem of Mason Leva , who is waiting for a big change. Or the wonderful thing “God Zimogorov”, whose refrain reports: “Though throw a stone at me, we go under the banner of what is burning with a blue flame in a crisis.” Ultimately, who, if not Boris Grebenshchikov, knows that the experience and mind, convincing you that everything is bad, should not interfere with the heart that will not always be bad.

The presentation of the album of Boris Grebenshchikov “Time N” will be held on March 16 in the A2 club (St. Petersburg), and on March 18-in Crocus City Hall (Moscow)