"Chronop". "Somewhere in Europe"

The Nizhny Novgorod Group Chronop releases its long-suffering album “ Somewhere in Europe”, recorded more than 25 years ago and is, in fact, the only evidence of the group’s attempts to play art Cro Croaches in the spirit of King Crimson in Russian. It is not the most obvious idea for that time, moreover, only 8 tracks out of 12 were preserved due to the conflict with sound engineers, but, as they say, it is better late than never, and although the album remained unfinished, it sounds quite worthy and very curious. Details - in the commentary of the leader of the Chronop Vadim Demidov.

Vadim Demidov:

Why in general the Chronop in the mid-90s recorded such a strange album by the standards of that time ...

After all, a similar type of art clock , multiplied by New Wiw , died back in the 80s . After all, Peter Gabriel, adored by the “chronops”, has already been built into pop music . And Fripp, no less adored, already transferred his King Crimson to the Hevy rails (heavy music really developed interestingly in the early 90s , and almost every month more and more new substilles appeared). There was a grunge on the top. Radiohead and Massive Attack have already appeared, and it was they who had to set new measurements of intellectual music. And the Chronop still dragged with his art, with his Crimson guitar counterpoints, with crooked musical sizes. Why?

In our service, the art clock we were very ideological.

I can give the only explanation: the implementation of a youthful dream. In our vinyl youth, we idolized “Crimson” and therefore spite of musical fashion and in the 90s chose to stay in the Crimson paradigm. And, of course, romantic performances - we do what we want, and the audience should catch up to our level. And there was no such public. In the days of the “musical rings”, people who were drawn to everything unusual were still, and after 10 years they disappeared, dissolved, old, died. And their children listened to the "affectionate May."

Generally speaking, neither in the 80s , nor in the 90s we did not think who would listen to us: after all, we organized the group not for the loot, not for fame, but for fun-then why think about what things the listeners “come” ... and in our service the art clock we were very ideological and the rest of the rock music was a little ridiculed.

“Somewhere in Europe” is the only album of “Chronopa” that was not published on the media. In addition, he remained incomplete.

The album was supposed to consist of 12 tracks, but under the curtain of a studio session we had a conflict with sound engineers - a financial conflict, and we eventually missed four songs, their sounds simply wiped it.

And the fact that the album “ Somewhere in Europe” remained unfinished, probably there is something karmic. The Chronop was moving against the time, and now the answer flew. But these 8 tracks are the only studio audio document of our art rok period of the mid-90s . And today they are represented in restored form.