ShortParis: "This is a dangerous question"

In March, the current stars of the St. Petersburg underground Shortparis released the second album "Easter" , consisting of nine songs with pulsating melodies and theatrical vocals that do not allow attention to weaken for a minute. Shortparis are known for their love for performances. For example, they played a concert in a grocery store, protesting against the transformation of art into goods. Randomedly interviews with group members took place on Easter on April 16. And in this case, Shortparis remained true to themselves: the interview turned into a session of group Easter art therapy with painting eggs and the subsequent eating of Easter cake. In addition to the vocalist of Nikolai Komyagin, Shortparis includes Alexander Galyanov (guitar, synthesizer), Pavel Lesnikov (drums, sampling), Alexander Ionin (guitar, bass, button accordion) and Danila Kholodov (drums, percussion).

- Let's start with the last album "Easter". Who is Lyudmila to whom he is dedicated?

Nikolai Komyagin: This is my mother. This is due to certain personal events.

Pavel Lesnikov: A movie or book usually comes out, it says “Dedicated to ...”, and no one knows why. The mystery of initiation must probably remain a mystery of initiation.

- Why did you sing in Russian on Easter?

Komyagin: There was a certain internal need to speak differently. The appeal to the English and French languages ​​was then rather associated with some personal and musical immaturity.

-Song images-do they have some source? Maybe from literature or from life experience?

Komyagin: If we talk about the musical component, then it is often inspired by some artifacts of culture-musical, picturesque, architectural and so on. And with the text I did not succeed. It is in no way connected with other poetic works. He correlates only with some inner world. I would like to choose an awkward metaphor in order to cross out the word "world".

ShortParis - "Tutu"

Nikolai Komyagin: “The icon that appears in the video for the song“ Tutu ”is Odigitria. And there should have been an Eleus. The difference is that in Hodegetria Christ looks at the viewer - he, as it were, reacts to the public, there is an emphasis on sermons. And in Eleus, he looks at his mother, he is more than a child. This is a family story, to which I constantly return. Turning to the icon, I translate it from personal history into a common, large -scale. ”

- And from music that you inspired when you worked on Easter?

Alexander Galyanov: This is a dangerous question. Recently, a friend who composes music for computer games came to visit me. I asked him the same question. And he called me some words in response. I asked him that this was, and he said that these were computer heroes. And so he opens the picture, and there the hero - cyberkovboy. This is a screenshot from the game, he just looks at him and composes music. So the ways of transferring some perceptions to music, to creativity-they are completely non-incomprehensible. It seems to me to explain them is a hypertension.

Danila Kholodkov: since we are in Shortparis beyond the concept of music as just a sound transmission method, we take a wider set of instruments and techniques. Therefore, I was personally inspired not by specific musical groups or in whole directions, but rather such a concept as an approach to music. There is an experimental approach, there is an academic approach, there is some more. Lowe, for example, for the past ten to fifteen years-a popular approach to music. And for me this album is a kind of projection of just the same experimental approach. Accordingly, almost any experimental music that I heard over the past two or three years-it inspired, but not a specific set of techniques with which it is created, but its existence in general. And here you already feel the connection not with the end point of the release of ideas, but with the source.

- In one interview, you said that the problem of many modern musicians in Russia is that when creating music, they stop at the copy stage, but do not proceed to research. Tell us how the process of research is going on with you.

Komyagin: This is such a chemical process laboratory. It seems to me that we work with musical signs and pick them up to our inner meaning. Creation of semiotic couples.

Speech-Permans SHORTPARIS in the Products 24 supermarket

- Does this approach work everywhere? And in creating music, and in the preparation of concerts and performances?

Komyagin: No, it seems to me that he varies. The creation of musical creativity is a specific process, and it is not tolerated to the creation of a visual.

Kholodkov: It seems to me that this is because you are more inclined to visual. There you can apply a conscious approach. When you do not act on a ritual level from some of your sensations, and when you analyze it, you come up from the point of view of rational thinking.

I really feel like a rather mediocre musician.

Komyagin: Curious. That is, you mean that I am more competent in terms of visual culture ...

Kholodkov: Yes!

Komyagin: And I really feel like a rather mediocre musician. This is not coquetry, so the process of musical creativity is associated with torment associated with the complexity of this path. There is a need not to reduce the bar, which seems to eat. The need to be sincere. But the selection of an external form, so that it corresponds to this inner sincerity, more complex and heavy, an error arises, and it seems to be acquired by its own significance. This suffering from the selection, from the impossibility of correlating the internal talent with an external musical form and gives rise to some kind of tension between them.

ShortParis - "Novokuznetsk"

Kholodkov: I'm trying to tell this in every interview, and this is all the time crookedly, and these interviews also do not come out later. When we create some kind of musical work, I am talking about the moment of origin: there is some kind of image in the head, or an idea, or a sensation, and you are just looking for musical means to express it. You pass it through yourself, and on the basis of your life experience with your background with the help of tools, you give out something. And our life experience is different, and we are all different, and the interaction of five different units should occur, so sometimes it happens that everyone develops everything and the track quickly appears, and there are long torment, because your sensation may not be combined with a stranger and this needs to be sifted a hundred times through a sieve.

- What was your maximum work time on the songs of those that have already come out?

Kholodkov: We have a song that has not yet come out. We have been working on it for about three or four years. We have not closed the question with the record.

Kolya does not understand what Siberia is.

- What are the conditions when working on Easter?

Kholodkov: heavy. Shortparis is always like this: if we meet some difficulties, then these are severe difficulties. It seems to me that this is because the guys are from Siberia, and there is a frost, then n **** is harsh. So is the group. We have changed the people with whom we worked, for completely strange reasons, starting with banal things and ending with some magical things. For example, a person said: “I myself do not understand why I can’t sit down for the reduction of your tracks. Sorry, I'm sorry. "

- What do you think, your musical career would have developed if you were not in St. Petersburg, not close to Moscow, but in Siberia? Could ShortParis exist there?

Komyagin: Recently, Alexander Galyanov and I said that such complex structures as Siberia are known remotely. And we even made a reference to Walter Benjamin, who wrote “Moscow Diaries”. He saw through Moscow when he walked along it, Berlin. In contrast, he felt differentness, in every Moscow street some Berlin corner was manifested for him. I stopped unambiguously negatively relate to Siberia after moving to St. Petersburg. In a sense, I even began to cultivate my hometown in myself (Novokuznetsk.- Ed. ). Previously, my attitude was a little more teenage, more unambiguous, now I perceive more dialectically.

Alexander Ionin: Kolya does not understand what Siberia is. In Siberia, the population is very unevenly distributed. That is, it is such a narrow layer in the south. And the rest of Siberia is vast edges with forests, with fields, with animals. He says “Siberia” and implies such a small, small junction.

Komyagin: By the way, this is true.

ShortParis - "Amsterdam"

- Why are you addressing Orthodox symbolism in your clips?

Komyagin: There are also a lot of layers of interest. Firstly, in our music there is a spiritual vector, which already corresponds to any religious theme. Secondly, the very image of the Mother of God, which dominates the album "Easter", has some personal biographical notes. The very image of a woman with a baby. I am very personal and emotionally worried about him. In a sense, this is a conversation with this visual way. The appeal to this denomination, when it has just begun, was associated with the launch of the process of self -identification of himself as a person, as a representative of a certain land, country, community. But now it is already exhausted for me. This image has transformed for me. On the other hand, I like the clash of the profane and sacred. This happens in the album, in music, in the texts of the songs. Sometimes it helps to get rid of pathos, sometimes to get where it is necessary.

-Have you ever thought to combine your clips, documentation of your performances, concerts-subjects in an exhibition project?

Kholodkov: In a larger shape?

- Yes.

Komyagin: cool. This is a good idea.

Kholodkov: Just while we are with great difficulty overcome single -assembled things such as performances. Let it consist of different elements, more than that of an ordinary group, but so far this is even with difficulty in a good way - with working labor.

Nikolai is a mother, and we are a father.

- How do you come up with performances? All together?

Kholodkov: It seems to me that Nikolai is a mother, and we are a father. That is, the whole process takes place in Nicholas, but the support and participation of the second half are very important.

- And what annoys you most in modern Russian music?

Kholodkov: I am annoyed by a huge abyss between the artists, no matter in which area, and underground artists who have not yet reached a certain level, at which success is calculated. Interesting people who have something to say, often simply does not have such an opportunity. There is no Ruper. Previously, we somehow contacted the top with the bottom. There were some people, some kind of community, MTV , A 1 , who, the region and at first became alternative, and then doubly deteriorated and became a rap channel. I am now even more about all sorts of Artemyev Trinity; I don’t discuss whether he is a bad journalist or good, someone likes him or not, but this person has always connected a certain elite with sponsorship and other things and some creative people who do not understand anything in financial history. And people there, upstairs, do not understand anything in art. And he tied them so much that good movements took place from the bottom up. And now this is not.