Square root of BG

Mikhail Edelshtein - about the work of the late Grebenshchikov* in general and about his new album in particular

18+. THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED AND (OR) SENT BY FOREIGN AGENT GREBENSHHIKOV BORIS BORISOVICH OR CONCERNES THE ACTIVITIES OF FOREIGN AGENT GREBENSHHIKOV BORIS BORISOVICH.

A tradition in recent years is that once every few months “BG+” (Boris Grebenshchikov’s group*, which replaced “Aquarium”) records several songs and posts them on the Bandcamp internet platform. If you want, pay (a flexible price is indicated next to the album), if you don’t want, listen like this. The previous album with four tracks was released in April. The last one, with six, just now.

The new album does not have a title as such. Instead, the symbol is the sun under the square root sign. Nirvana clearly doesn't care about reviewers.

The first thought when looking at the track list is that BG recorded something conceptual based on Harry Potter. The names of the songs seem to speak for themselves: “At Nymphodora’s”, “Phoenix”. And even the first lines fit: “Nymphodora is falling from her hands, / And in her gray hair there are shades of blue” (do you remember that Nymphodora Tonks, the wife of the werewolf Remus Lupin, was a metamorph, and her hair changed color every now and then?).

But there’s no way to fit what follows into “Harry Potter.” It seems that BG remembered his friend from his youth, George Gunitsky, and decided to compose something absurd in the Oberiut style in the spirit of “Triangle”:

*And the rest is the same as in all houses:

In the living room they breed in the dark

Gray fire-breathing chickens...*

The most topical piece of the six is ​​“Bad Song”, reminiscent in its despair of the albums “Salt” and “Time N”:

*Tomorrow closed for re-registration,

Water does not flow under the recumbent monument.*

However,

the line between “current” and “eternal” is always quite arbitrary, and even more so in BG.

A long time ago, in December 1989, “Aquarium” gave a concert in Minsk, and during a pause BG addressed the audience: “Guys, I don’t know whether this is appropriate or not, but I would like to say that Academician Sakharov died yesterday. Without him, we would be in a much worse place than we are now. Therefore, I would like to honor his memory and God bless his soul. The song is not about this, but it has something to do with Russia” - and began to sing “I am connected to her by a chain, a chain of unknown length.” The same “Angel” who, 35 years later, opens a new album. Although in “Angel”, it would seem, there is no civil note, and any compiler of anthologies would without hesitation classify it in the “love lyrics” section.

One of the critics (I think Andrei Sinyavsky) said that “pure art” is not when the poet writes about flowers and birds, and does not demonstratively touch politics. No, “pure art” is when you write about whatever you want. Today you were inspired by birds, and tomorrow you wanted to speak about the president - so he rhymed too.

This, of course, is about BG. He can record an album of Hindu mantras with a choir of Sri Chinmoy’s disciples, and in the next album include the song “Spiritual Leader” - a distant echo of Mike Naumenko’s “Guru from Bobruisk”:

As Buddha taught us - *four on the side,

We will move the ATMs to face east.

The fire in the square is cheerful and frantic,

Stop drinking, let's go hang the Decembrists.*

And this is not a spiritual search, especially not tossing or internal contradictions - he long ago found everything he wanted, and that is why he can afford anything. Including laughing at yourself and your shrines.

So in the new album, “spirituality” and grotesqueness, civil sorrow and “we are moving outside of time” - everything is mixed in such a way that the whole cannot be adjusted to any concept even if you try.

BG has generally been equal to himself for a long time. He composes “BG songs”, generously quoting his former self and giving the “joy of recognition” to fans (for example, the line “And if something is wrong, there are always seven from under the stones” should please those who remember that certain “Seven” From Under the Stones" were listed as authors on BG's ten-year-old instrumental album "Suite F"). And even when no direct quotes are found, it still seems that everything sung is one big quote. He scatters charades throughout the text and plays it out himself: “Let my words sound as if it were a charade, and let every note sound as if it were about nothing.” He asks riddles - come on, answer me, who are the “Zimogors”? That's right, it's a dialect word for a tramp, a ragamuffin. Therefore, “the Zimogors have heaven - a warm house, the cup is full and the smoke is thick.”

One of my friends has a saying: “It was in those distant times when BG was a genius.”

In fact, the genius has not gone away - it’s just that his world has already been built, all the cubes are in place. All that remains is to tint the windows, renew the ornament, and add decorative turrets. Yes, for any of these towers another builder would give half his kingdom and a horse into the bargain.

Well, that’s why he’s BG.

But besides all this, let’s be honest, slightly vignette beauty - the marvelous melodic pattern of “God of the Zimogors”, “Phoenix” with African choirs - the new album contains “5 am”. A song that combines absolute harmony (“And what people are silent about / All angels have on their tongues”) and a feeling of anxiety (“We still walk on glass, / Even if there is grass under our feet”). A vision of heaven - and dramatic tension. Where a miracle is born from the same building material that has been used many times over, from the same set of self-quotes.

It has long been known that it is more difficult to describe positive characters than negative ones. That evil is aesthetically more attractive than good. That the most authentic visionary experience becomes boring and cloying when you try to put it into words. BG’s unique gift is to show a different, perfect world not as a given, but as an impulse. These are his best songs, from “Silver of My Lord” to “Crystal Desolation.” “5 am” from the same series.

*They say there is a place

Where parallel paths meet

In which there is nothing to count,

Where no one can enter.

Except for those without a name,

And no longer under the escort of fate.

Five o'clock in the morning.

I was thinking about you.*

* Included by the Russian authorities in the register of “foreign agents”.