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DDT (DDT) - All about the rock band: the main stages of creativity...

On the creative stages of the development of the DDT group....

DDT as a musical group, as idols, as a pesticide and as a trace in the universe

"The famous music critic Artemy Troitsky said about DDT, and he is always right. Everyone knows one of the founders of Russian rock, but how to tell about them not through banal rewriting of Wikipedia, leaving only a pretentious epigraph from banalities...?
Here I decided to shift the angle and tell about my favourite band through the prism of my perception. I grew up, got smarter and stupider on the albums of this band, each of them was a milestone in the formation not only of me, but also of my whole "unnecessary generation", stuck (like DDT itself) between shameful sovdepia and incessant dictatorship. Or just in some situational gap between the eternal and unchanging sovk... But let's not get stuck in gloomy verbal reflection ourselves - let's see how DDT and Shevchuk tried to get out of this civilisational pit.

The classic DDT line-up
The classic DDT line-up

I think that the statement of the question is correctly defined. The leitmotif that forever defined DDT's philosophy, pathos and even musical style was anti-Sovietism. The musicians of DDT's first line-up in Ufa in the early 1980s gave themselves to it. Then, as now, it seemed that stagnation was eternal, that the dictatorship of the Kremlin elders was unceasing and permanent. That it was only from afar, from some Bashkiria, that one could shout something dissenting. Communications were different back then - of course they could reach them, but not immediately.

It was then that the "DDT style" was formed, enriched by a long line of musicians, but remaining true to some points:

  • DDT was the accompaniment ensemble for Yuri Shevchuk, although the musicians did not act on instructions; they made their own music, but Batya would at any moment roll over and turn anything he didn't like.
  • Yuri's hoarse and powerful voice, which painfully reminded the Kremlin elders and their newspaper sycophants of the voice of Vladimir Vysotsky, who was terrible and dangerous for them, always remained the main element of the songs.
  • Almost all the lyrics are written by Shevchuk. On the one hand, as a talented self-taught poet, he initially determined a high (compared to VIA or later rockapop) level of the textual component. On the other hand, this gave DDT's songs a philosophical character, which "ordinary people" have always been alienated from. Even in cases of unambiguous hits, the philosophical overtones were felt even when singing under the influence of alcohol: "What is ooo autumn?!...". And those who could not recognise the subtext were ashamed of their limitations and, as a consequence, shunned the ensemble. And when this contingent became unambiguously dominant on our midnight expanses, DDT withdrew from "popular culture" into the space of the ever-decreasing intellectual minority. But about that - in due time.
  • The priority was given to the clear rhythmic structures of classic hard rock and blues, their volume and rumble. Even folk (even in the bardic and shansonised formats) initially sounded sharp, rock-like to DDT.
  • The search for quality sound "European-style" and the desire to make a unique show out of their performances. DDT was conceived not as a project "for the soul" and not as a way for musicians to express themselves, but as a "machine to kill sovdepia". And certainly not as an entertainment that caresses souls, like the Soviet VIAs despised by Shevchuk. That's why the Western format of rock - as a folk action, a spontaneous breakaway, a party, a coven - was an example for Ufa musicians.

DDT experimented with different musical genres - sometimes old-school hard rock, inept reggae, dreamy folk and provocative ditties could be found on the same album. There were no separate genre albums for a long time. It is this colourful, cross-genre characteristic of the so-called "Russian rock", which was more concerned with showing the world that "we can do it too" than with forming a certain mood in the listener.

DDT
DDT

Each song was a unique package for a poetic message. That's why DDT had no empty songs. Unloved, unpleasant - they were, but not useless. DDT combined the high traditions of Russian symbolic poetry with the rock pathos of the creators of the new reality.

DDT changed a lot: first there was the "Ufa line-up", within which Shevchuk received a "baptism of fire" with musical experiments and repressions from the authorities. Then a completely new and not having clear boundaries, incessantly varying "St. Petersburg line-up", thanks to which DDT entered the musical treasury of Russia. And a new "youth" line-up, which is difficult to talk about, but we will have to try.

DDT-1

Shevchuk
Shevchuk

It all started in Ufa, in 1980. Being faithful to album thinking (i.e. a cross-section of mentality, showing the influence of a certain environment on musicians), I will omit the sentimental "meeting and getting to know each other" section. DDT's first albums were the so-called "DDT-1" (never released), "Pig on the Rainbow", "Compromise" and "Periphery".

"DDT-1" (1981) was the first test of mastering and mixing. It was possible to shimmy on stage on broken homemade guitars or jump around in striped underpants and holey socks as much as you wanted (until the city executive committee made a remark). Many people can produce one or two memorable hits, too - especially if you consider the theory of chimpanzees at the typewriter. But to collect (select!) songs in a ball, to arrange, to group sounds, to feel perception - it is already a sign of performing maturity. "DDT-1" (otherwise: "Alien" or simply "DDT") was recorded on an imported tape recorder. The name itself was a challenge to the public taste - it meant the substance that the common people used to massively poison cockroaches and bedbugs, and then treated long and unsuccessfully for the consequences of these chemical attacks on our chitinous brothers. And, on the other hand, it turned to terrible myths about how the Americans destroyed the Vietcong with this substance, which - due to its insolubility - can still be present in jars with Vietnamese pickles.

Musically, the first experience was hard rock, explosive, flighty. "Alien", "Lifeless Land", "For 50 Kopecks" - alas, they still sound actual. If these songs are changed (disfigured) in accordance with the requirements of modern musical fashion, they may well decorate the repertoire of Husky or Multiznaal. But the true hits were the songs "Don't Shoot!" and "Rain". Basically, they defined musically and semantically two intertwined ways of the band's further creativity. This is self-sacrificing, truly hippie anti-militarism, proceeding from the dogma that all people are brothers, that everyone is good by nature, that it is natural to be friends. And it is the enjoyment of harmony between oneself, nature and the environment, when the inner trauma caused by the stuffy city and the lack of space in it suddenly surrenders to the great natural invasions, suddenly washing away the opposition between man and the world, the city and nature, the proud fighter and the docile masses, the moment and eternity.

But nobody learnt about this album, except for a loyal circle of admirers. ...And the famous musicians and producers (to put it in the present day) Mike Naumenko and Yuri Morozov, who with their interest, patronage and advice gave the band (i.e. Shevchuk) a head start on becoming a household name.

Pig on the Rainbow (DDT album)
Pig on the Rainbow (DDT album)

The above-mentioned tendencies were continued in the next album "Pig on the Rainbow" (1982) - only on a more "trademark" level: rock - so loud and clear, mockery - so as to reveal the hidden asocial sense of humour, provocation - so as not to turn away... 1982 - Afghanistan, Brezhnev, stagnation. Rock action of the last album - in mixing of professional Bashkir studio. Plus ironic numbers on the verge of a schlager, the main of which - the short "Pig on the Rainbow" (a hint at the ktulhun Brezhnev) - finally moved Shevchuk to the category of "undesirable elements", giving his ensemble fame and his lyrics carnivorous attention.

There was a rainbow in the sky, and a pig was sitting on it.

And looked down on everything with a dazed eye.

She looked down on everyone with a dazed eye.
Hey, pig, how'd you get high enough to fly like that?

How did it manage to sit like that on this prominent spot?

On this wave, DDT's most important mental point - the song "Don't Shoot!" became the unofficial anthem of all those who secretly hated the Soviet Union with its lifelessness and depression. Rattling around in basements on guitars, unbeaten long-haired hippies sang this song, rejecting all the surrounding reality. A reality that exists on lies and secret self-denial (kept on petrodollars from the officially rejected "rotten West") and whose only activity (far away from such activity) is Afghanistan....

In principle, the activity of the purely "Ufa line-up" ended with "Pig". Shevchuk performed a lot on his own, becoming known not only in the underground, but even at the level of all-Russian "talent contests". Together with another old bandmate, Vladimir Sigachyov (who later disappeared), with the help of authoritative musicians of the "Ural school", Shevchuk recorded his breakthrough Compromise (1983), adorning the cover with a photo of his glasses broken in a fight. The whole album is like that - a protest against the proposals to "become normal", to play sound pressed down by synthesisers, to sing about lupffy and simple worldly joys... It is probably DDT's toughest and most rocknroll album (although only one and a half members of the band remain here).

Album "Periphery" (1984)
Album "Periphery" (1984)

"Periphery" (1984) is a watershed in DDT's creativity. It is still a "Ufa" album, but it has already received (or rather, the songs from it) universal fame. It became softer, incorporating synthesised attempts at "new wave" (apparently, as a result of the previously uncompromising "Compromise"). This is a more "soulful" album - even "heartfelt" - which is another feature of the "ddtsh" style, in which Yuri Yulianovich appears as an understanding and caring Father, simply explaining simple truths to ordinary people: let's not be angry and fill the sky with kindness. Even God, which was becoming fashionable in those years, was mentioned in this song, which still impresses with its psychedelic flavour. And the rocknroll "Hippans" (which YU still occasionally reprises) is a timeless auto-sarcasm over its pathos of denouncer and liberator ("We are from Ufa", "Periphery").

We had hippies in our village too,

But all of them, alas. - have long since been taken away,

And I'm alone, putting patches on my pants,

I try to get up, but my legs don't feel right.

Only far away from the greedy and faded (at the same time) centre there are sensible and cheerful people of the future - this is the leitmotif of the album. And surprisingly inappropriate ditties in general defined self-ironic rough "nationalism" as an indispensable component of the musical style, which is still manifested today.
The album became an anti-Soviet star - almost on a par with "Gulag Archipelago". Searches, surveillance, scathing reviews - all these familiar charms of dictatorship embellished and glorified Yuri Shevchuk, giving him the opportunity to finally break with the periphery that gave birth to him....

Anti-system celebrity

Vremya (DDT album)
Vremya (DDT album)

Already in Moscow the album "Time" (1985) was recorded. Ufa musicians still accompanied Yulianych, but the main sound was given to the album by the famous Sergey Ryzhenko (who played with almost all the stars of "Russian rock") and Sergey Letov (brother and associate of the notorious Yegor), who gave the album a little new-wave flattened flow, diluted with jazz dabbling.

A conceptual shift began. The coming collapse of the Soviet system was felt by everyone, even the pops - Shevchuk, as a poet, looked beyond these boundaries and asked himself the question that he still offers for everyone to ponder: "WHO will build that 'bright future'?". Listen, reader, to the song "The Majors"! With minor adjustments for the current conjuncture, it sounds shamefully, painfully modern. Oh, and the term "Majors" is back in the popular lexicon these days. When culture and politics are in the pampered hands of the club-raised children of the capital's nouveau riche, what can we expect for those who are not lucky enough to live outside the Ring...?

The kitchy stuff wrapped up in the body--

It's a soul, isn't it? What do you care?

And it's all so easy for snotty-heads and simple -

Daddy's gonna get a promotion,

Pops is gonna have the whole audience give him an encore,

Daddy will fulfil his son's every whim.

This "sociality" also permeates other tracks ("Time", "Dead Dog", even the wickedly humorous "Bathroom Monologue"). And the joyous song "Not a Step Backwards" once again became the anthem of dissenters, reassured by the prospects of crawling out of the basement and building some other society - it doesn't matter what kind, but another! (Many years later, in the biographical film "DDT Time", Shevchuk regretted this hysterical romanticism as one of his most regrettable mistakes...).
At the same time, in 1985, Shevchuk, on the wave of his fame, took part in two landmark underground concerts, revealing himself as a self-sufficient musician, able to convey a poetic message with minimal musical means:

  • with a guitar,
  • in a voice,
  • with a soul.

The concerts "Moscow. Zhara" and "Kochegarka" (1985) became Julianych's intervention into both the underground and bohemia (although in many ways they were connected at that time). "Kochegarka" is notable for the fact that the album was recorded together with the great sorcerer of the rock underground Alexander Bashlachev. Participation in such events in those years was akin to a sacrament, a sacred act that lifted them above the shameful reality into the world of dreams and sincerity - like modern secret raves. This gave Shevchuk a real star status.

On the Peak. Idols

The album "I Got This Part" (1989)
The album "I Got This Part" (1989)

"I Got This Part" (1989) is already a great album by a great band. The mentioned "Majors", the ever-present "Don't Shoot!" were added to the radically new material, celebrating the feat, the dash, the breakthrough somewhere into the fresh unknown. "Poet", "Terrorist" and "Revolution" still sound fresh and strong - surely some prosecutor's office from the backwoods is already preparing a trendy charge of extremist calls for these songs.

 

I am the poet of the setting day,

I don't like too much.

If you, fate, insult me.

I'll just kill you!

The "Church" had - one of the first - a religious bias. Nowadays, the Orthodox Church is perceived through the prism of Rolls-Royces, golden robes and hugs with governors, but back then, the Church was a symbol of eternal truth that had outlasted the Communists and held a charge of hidden Russianness, which we are about to awaken, put on ourselves and become clean and fresh, build a new society (just and free), in which we will be friendly with each other and with our native history.

I am a church without crosses,

Flowing forever into the ground,

I hear the words of the departed,

And the winds.

I am a memory without goodness.

I am knowledge without aspiration.

A cooled star

Missing generations.

Deeply thoughtful and programme song "I Got This Role" is an anthem of all Russian rock, of all fighters against sovdepiya, against stagnation, against violence and boorishness, an anthem of self-sacrifice and duty. And the flat new-wave rendition of this anthem (I've met more rocking, rocking versions, but not on this album) is a hidden hint at the latent poverty of all this rhetoric, of all this mood....

We question the fathers, but the slender speeches don't make it any easier.

Nor is it possible to assemble a partial answer from second-hand phrases.

Their hard youth was spent away from things

The ones that so overwhelmed us.
And when we feel like screaming loud and long,

Our entire extended family begs for silence.

And often, not believing in decrepit gods,

Sons are drinking away their fathers' honours.

A new, "star", "classical" line-up. Skilful and original instrumentalists Kurylev, Muratov, Lyapin, Vasiliev, Zaitsev, chthonic Uncle Misha and great and always great Dotsa (may the gods accept him in rock-Valhalla) made a new "ddtsh" sound: melodic and hard hard hard rock with elements of new wave (gradually they, strangely enough, became less and less), folk (both "classical", Dylan's, and "our", schlager, chanson, chastushka, podzaborny). The main principle was to play everything at the highest level, record at the highest level and present it to the public at the highest level. So that the sound was not a provincial imitation of foreign rock idols, but their own, autochthonous rock music. Few people have succeeded at all - it is their names that we honour in the pantheon of "Russian rock". And DDT has settled in these new sanctuaries of music of the coming New Russia.
The album was even released in a peculiar way - not only on the obligatory "Melodiya" (its circulation was sold out lightning fast), but later - one of the first - also on CD, in several private companies. This is an album of "new DDT": Petersburg-based, well-known, with its own sound and style. Even in the artwork: black and blue smears, hinting either at graffiti or homemade posters - these details are still evident in DDT's style. As well as the symbolic spelling of "DDT" rather than "DDT".

Thaw (cover of DDT music album)
Thaw (cover of DDT music album)

Every great band always has a "secret" album, about which the public for some reason does not know - it is an interesting topic for research of psychologists of the masses. So it was with the next album "Thaw" (1990). I had to argue to my (pre-Google) heart's content in my own (pre-Google) time to prove the fact of this release. Basically, it's a collection of old hits, but in a more rock'n'roll, wind-up treatment. The album is very solid, homogeneous. Even melancholic and thought-provoking pieces ("Blind Boy", "Church") sound dynamic, emphasising the timelessness and binding nature of the issues raised in them. And humour! Unlike the eternally (abstinently?) sad Russian rockers, Shevchuk's lyrics have always been sarcastic. But here the humour has moved to the level of mass anecdote, of amusement. "Stoned Vasya", "Big Woman" - a reflective carnival that doesn't leave the listener indifferent. And "Mama, I Love Luber": replace a couple of words with modern ones and you get a true anthem of the modern pseudo-traditionalist capitalist-soderzhantochie movement, whose representatives/ladies are convinced that no violation of individual rights will prevent them from posing in branded trainers with bags from Okhotny Ryad boutiques for Instagram. A kind of guide to action for streamlined young people trying to build a neat Yedrosov career by skirting the sharp edges of intolerable socio-political contradictions. As a rule, they have no sense of humour and will not understand Shevchuk's banter. Some Fedyuk should take up a highly effective and multilayered spoiling of this song....

He is in favour of iron order, he is modestly dressed,

He's almost tattoo-less, Mum, he's an intellectual!

He saves Moscow from foreign contagion,

He's sticking up for Kobzon, he's feeling sorry for Moo-Moo....

Album "Plastun" (1991)
Album "Plastun" (1991)

But "Plastun" (1991) is quite different from DDT's "St. Petersburg period". It is the most inappropriate, pessimistic, defiantly unkempt album - the musicians didn't even release it until 1995 (until all the urgency had dissipated). "Premonition of Civil War" - we should have presented this song BEFORE the First Chechen War, before October-93... "Pobeda", "Plastun", "Perestroische" - all about the same thing: about the unbearability of a feisty existence, about the too high price of change, about the impossibility of reshaping the established mentality - except by the most painful methods, which took place later... Even the amusing blatnyak "Zmey Petrov" doesn't dilute this mood. Not even the first-time, still punctuated "Actress Vesna".

The sound of the album is very uneven: the usual for the band hard mixed with synthesised new wave - sometimes to the point of disgusting restaurateurishness ("Winds"). There are elements of orchestral baroque-pop. There is no single mood. That's why this album stands out from DDT's slender discography.

Yuri Shevchuk
Yuri Shevchuk

The song "Roads" with its powerful guitar-acoustic sound and real soulfulness of performance (not "over-soulfulness"!) stands out. And the very theme of too high price for socio-political upgrade, for which the musicians were ashamed to release this release in time.

And I buried a stub yesterday -
And he, the bastard, did not want to die....

Investing in eternity

"Actress Vesna" (1992) is the most important DDT album in general. If one were ordered to reduce the whole creative work of the ensemble to only one album, it would be the disc "Actress Spring". It is light and joyful, full of hope and faith in their strength. Swaggering folk is crossed with assertive hard; as a result - truly nationwide hits "In the Last Autumn", "What is Autumn", "Rain". The intellectual gains power over reality - he is no longer a homeless scumbag, but an inspirer of minds, a uniter of hearts! This message can be perfectly read from the lyrics, heard in the rich yet simple arrangements, and seen in the music videos that DDT has gifted to the visual TV reality of the new Russia.

I opened the window and a cheerful breeze scattered everything on the table:

The silly poems I wrote in the stuffy and dreary emptiness....

Everything is new: the country, the people, the state. There is a place for everyone. We believe in ourselves, we reach out to each other, to nature, to eternity and rightness. And we are young and full of vigour! This is the message of "Actress of Spring", which is why young people still play songs from this album on Arbat. And they throw coins at them - despite the quality of the performance, these songs are still, as Muscovites say, "catching on".

The autumn storm has jokingly scattered

All the things that were suffocating us

On a dusty night.

All that pressing, playing, flickering,

Torn to shreds by the aspen wind.

Last Autumn...

And then Shevchuk found the format of creativity that I think is his favourite - a concert performance. Not a concert-tour, not a strawberry concert, but a full-scale show with lights, high-class sound, all sorts of screens, drama and concept. This is the concert-album "Black Dog Petersburg" (1994). For a whole week a strange silent man in a black cloak, black cape, black glasses and with a black dog on a leash wandered along Nevsky. And on the cloak was written: "DDT". Such an advert...

The concert (although it was a Moscow concert, not a St. Petersburg concert) became a know-how for the Russian show business. No one in Russia has ever performed in such a conceptual, imaginative, multidimensional way. Each song had its own design, symbolic light arrangement, a lot of electronic noise effects. There were new songs in addition to the heavily modified hits. It's not hard rock and folk anymore, it's real, philosophical and high quality art-rock, in which musicians don't present their songs to the audience, but construct the atmosphere of unity with the people, with the sound, with the meaning. And a strong religious bias. In general, this concert album brought DDT as close as possible to the space of folk culture and, it seemed, even introduced into it - it is enough to recall later films with the band's music (especially "Truckers") about ordinary people filled with high moral principles, empathy and adult reflection. It seems that this is exactly the kind of new Russian that Shevchuk wanted to see (create?). Did he succeed?...

"That's All..." (1994) is the band's second most important album after "Actress". Pirates used to record them on both sides of the same cassette (not only the concept, but the timing was perfect for a standard 90-minute audio cassette). It's the same as "Actress Spring", only even more lilting, even more hard rocking and a little more slinky in sound. Kurylev-Vasiliev's "unfurled" guitars, Zaytsev's punchy violin and, of course, Dotsenko's killer drums - they created a true drive, a gorgeous harmony. A perfect arrangement for the melodious hits "White River", "Russian Tango", "Wind". "That's All..." - the final track - is a bit different with a bias towards instrumentally laden progressive and melancholy. In general, it turned out to be an exemplary youth album! And by "youth" here I presumptuously mean not age at all....

With us, memory sits at the table,

And in her hand is a candle flame.

You've been so good--

Look at me, don't be silent.

The cry of a seagull on a white wall

Ringed by the black moon.

Draw something on the window

And whisper goodbye by the river.

Fracture/peremolus

The band became so ace that they were invited to America to record the next album "Love" (1996). In my opinion, it was the weakest, most ordinary and idle album with the best sound. According to Shevchuk, the oppressive realisation of the Chechen war going on at that moment, dissonant with the zealous development of (semi-)criminal domestic business - this became the basis for creating a fundamentally detached album "about eternal things". The album turned out to be an impeccable example of so-called "alternative rock", which was fashionable in those years. So impeccable that it's not clear why you should listen to it at all, if there are the original sources - U2, R.E.M., Creed... The pretentious video for the song "Love" literally infected TV screens (although in the video the zombie TV was just exploding) - this is basically the end of the cultural significance of the release.

Although the hopelessly sad song "Ravens" and the piercing and complex "Far Far Away" deserve a special mention. All other lyrics are eerily symbolic, somehow otherworldly (especially "Railwayman"); "Fairy Tale" is a feast of Imagism in the spirit of Velimir Khlebnikov. The metaphysicality of the album is diluted only by the feisty "Onanist" (a song not at all for teenagers and not about them!) and the prophetic "Phonogrammistik" (either about politics or about pops). People say that it was because of this song that Shevchuk got into a fight with Kirkorov in a restaurant afterwards. Who knows... But there is always a grain of sense in any myth (and especially in the programme actions of a rock ideologist). Shevchukov's protest against the dominance of pops is not snobbery at all. It is a protest against the Society of the spectacle, which allows spiritually underdeveloped philistines to cover their inferiority with ostentatious consumption (clothes, cars, Euro-renovation) and to be quite content with this imitation of imitation....

"Born in the USSR" (1997) is a reference album for an ensemble in a creative crisis. Hard rock doesn't work any more - the disappointed crowd craves for newborn rockapops. The "folk culture" cluster has been impudently usurped by Krug and Kuchin. No muzlo and words about nothing - this is not the space that will allow Shevchuk and his band to involve themselves. (Later they still tried to include themselves, but without the band...) The unrealised fervour of the new society was extinguished by the new political class, preparing to declare their eternity and divinely chosenness... Not that there was nothing to sing about - there was nowhere to sing... Yuri Shevchuk went to Chechnya, performed in front of both sides of that tragic spectacle - the result was the terrible "Dead City" and "Patsany". Plus the hopeless, pseudo-brave number "Born in the USSR".

The second (i.e. the first) part of the album is a live recording from Minsk, in which the experimental-industrial "Spirits" and the outrageously unanswerable "Truth to Truth" stand out. And Zaitsev's violin, which always saved us with its sublime sound, was not on the album - Nikita was seriously ill and did not take part in the recording.

The album is dedicated to the collapse of the USSR, to the collapse of hopes for a new and beautiful society, built by people who were products of that very Soviet mentality. It is a collapse album, the end of DDT, which is honoured as one of the "monsters of rock".

Not a second without a fight,

We believe in life and death.

In your dog's eyes.

We're not scared to look.

Today's victory

Understand and forgive!

There's nothing left for us,

But there is something to convey

Towards new [frontiers]....

DDT album
DDT album

Next came a different era for DDT - DDT-3. A different sound, a different target audience, a different mood... I consider the album "World Number Zero" (1999) to be one of the greatest works of Russian rock (although it's not quite rock anymore...). Keyboardist Konstantin Shumailov joined the band, and other members, dissatisfied with the new bias related to Kot's tastes and intentions, began to leave or were expelled little by little. The great violinist Nikita Zaitsev died... (However, he managed to decorate two songs of this album and one of the next one.)

DDT has taken the lead in industrial and modern complex electronica. And not only to Nine Inch Nails, whose work is emulated in the album. Shevchuk and Shumailov decided to link high Russian classics, electronic-noise sound of industrial and trip-hop, folk Russian melos, so-called author's (bardic) song and chanson, and the catchy rhythms of trendy Brit-pop. In general, all the great musical groups at the crossroads of the millennium tried to move along this syncretic path, but DDT wanted not just to show their ability for this kind of creativity, but to create a product corresponding to the spirit of the time. And they succeeded! But not immediately. The musicians moved away from the previous format of studio work and started to work "like in Bristol": dividing the sound into fragments and conjugating them by computer, turning harmonic lines into magnifying glasses and samples. And all this diverse wealth was woven together (there's no other way to call it) into a unique canvas, in which Mussorgsky's melody turns into a thumping hard-rock action film, and guitar-bard numbers are transformed into folk-choral orchestrations, or into urban electronica. A simple verse reading suddenly starts to pulse like a real downtempo, and simple and youthful verses acquire electro-metal power in the spirit of Marilyn Manson or Rob Zombie.

Disposable life in a world number one -

It's a city of tattered veins, slaves to the command "fas".

I'm pouring life into a disposable glass,

Wait for the arrival, lie down on the virtual couch.

The tracks flow one into another, smoothly changing the mood of the listener. Civic responsibility, dreaminess and (un)ability to love, statehood and intimacy, meaninglessness of existence and involvement in the conveyor play of social roles, experience and old age, youth and needlessness - these are the themes of the album. To be more precise, themesA - the album shows us our entire mentality in all its beauty and ruthlessness, immobility and irrelevance.

Play the best you can, play.

Close your eyes and come back.

Don't disappear, but grow

Bow down to the rut.

Warm my window,

Let loose in the field in the spring.

Don't live to see it, but ripen -

You'll be with me forever.

The album is like a cartoon tapestry on which one can contemplate in dynamics what is eternal and unchangeable. Having dabbled in the eras of anti-Sovietism and New Motherland, having gone through dialectical self-denial and nostalgia for their native Soviet reality, DDT decided to depict our national eternity. It must have worked - no other Russian musicians have ever done a more ambitious work.

All subsequent DDT albums are basically a development of the principles of "World Number Zero". Except for "Blizzard of August"! But it has its own history.

"Blizzard of August" (2000) is lyrical and light, cheerful and reassuring. It is reminiscent of "Actress Spring", but it has a completely different sound - modern. Here elements of sparkling Brit-pop, unobtrusive hard rock, sublime folk and some confused industrial are woven together so harmoniously and hit that it seems that the songs were not invented - they were shot. One "Moscow Barinya" alone is worth what it is with its irony! And soulful "Clouds were flying"... This album is unexpectedly youthful, almost "indie". I myself - at that time a full-fledged "young man" - felt as if I was swept up by words expressing my aspirations and fears, my naivety and my first social traumas. They were the words that best described the new reality of the 2000s, the time of last hopes. When the wars were over, some kind of stability and solidity appeared ahead, expressed not in multi-year loans, but in a purely European (universal) respect for me as a human being. To be myself - it will work out! To find friends and companions - it will work! To find my place in this world - it will work! I can keep joy and good surprise in relation to the surrounding reality forever! This is probably DDT's most "moody" album.

Clouds were flying,
Flying far away -
Like a mum's hand,
Like daddy's tights...

And then came the era of "Singularity". The two parts (2002 and 2003) differ a bit in their flavour, but nevertheless it is a single album with a single mood. It is difficult to characterise it genre-wise - it is industrial rock with elements peculiar to the former DDT. It is more lightly woven than its monumental prototype ("World Number Zero"), but has a greater bias towards Russian folk melos (especially the second part) - the band collaborated with a choral folk ensemble. In terms of meaning, all the components of modernity are here - from the permanent to the searingly topical. Here are maidens chorusing and Lennon and Yoko lying in bed. There are unnecessary poets and lunatic intellectuals. There are stifling late-night boozes and unbelievable dreams on the verge of a trip. Through the words one can smell students travelling to a pointless session in electric trains, skinheads marching with complete impunity, disillusioned artists who turned into designers, ordinary people surprised by the old age....

Take the night,

Pray, rest in peace.

My life is at my fingertips,

My death is this rain.

The cross of these places has fallen out,

of the Red Dawns, the executioners.

Dipped in the creek -

And now I'm nobody.

And from underneath it all, a picture that is heartbreaking in its forgetfulness shines through. It's like a native village house that has been forgotten, and now, probably, it has already rotted away. Like a boundless meadow where you lay in the grass many, many, many years ago, and now it's probably already built up with a shopping mall. Like a kind, clean and beautiful girl, whom I promised to come back to or at least write to, but now I can't remember her name....

Shevchuk's lyrics completely disappear figurativeness - he has not even a hint of characters. In accordance with the "loupe-sample" technique of sound recording, the man himself is broken down into individual feelings, habits, desires, intentions - of different orders and different combinations. These components of the modern Russian are like samples in Shevchuk's modern poetry; he conjugates them into images painfully familiar to everyone and scatters them anew, making us imagine some new, unfulfilled configurations that we will still have time to make of ourselves....
Even the rap track "Rat" appeared! Not exactly hip-hop, but in terms of meaning and performance - quite in the same vein that was opened by Kasta and their comrades.

In search of nationality

The following albums - "Missing in Action" (2005) and "Beautiful Love" (2007) - were also performed in this direction. Kurylyov and his "glassy" guitars disappeared from the project (yes, DDT is now a "project"), and there were more young performers who had only barely touched the "rocker's hair". There was more folk and Russian folk. There was more self-citation - in the atrocious song "Into Battle" Shevchuk recitative integrated his own text "Poet", which many, many years ago fulfilled the same ideological function.

"Missing in Action" (2005).
"Missing in Action" (2005).

"Missing in Action" (dedicated to Shevchuk's former associate Vladimir Sigachyov, who disappeared somewhere at the beginning of the New Russia's timelessness) is a requiem for Russian rock with all its tendencies and tendentiousness. "They buried Russian rock, they buried it..." And now all that's left is a provocative eleven-minute "hello from the other side of the world!!!".

"Beautiful Love" is a more "Shevchukian" album than all the previous ones. Even the cover is framed in such a way that you can't understand who the author is: "Yuri Shevchuk" or "Yuri Shevchuk; DDT". In this album there is more figurativeness - concrete images, characters are shown. More author's song (as always, between bard and chansonnier). It even began to seem that this is the format that suits Shevchuk best - to be the Vysotsky of our days, to sound from the car stereos of fantastic truckers, to be a creator of "authentic Russian folk culture", to be a cordial and understanding Batya.

Shevchuk continued in this chanson direction, starting a band and recording a solo album "L'Echoppe" ("Laryok", 2007) in Paris under the direction of Konstantin Kazansky, who once worked on a similar release with Vladimir Vysotsky!

And that seems to be the end of the "common people" of DDT and Shevchuk. Either they were disappointed in the fact that illiterate boorish people could be turned into "superheroes in sweatpants" through songs. Or the genre degenerated - how could the intelligent Shevchuk compete with the truly folk blatnjak?... Either way, DDT started to take a youthful, indie-rock bias.

From hippie to hipster

Live album cover Otherwise
Album cover artwork Otherwise

The starting point in this complex and ambiguous journey is the album "Otherwise" (2011). There are almost no old musicians left, except for the permanent Dotsy with his killer drums. From time to time Uncle Misha blew a little. And now only the duo of Shevchuk and Shumailov with their search for "actual sound" dominated the musical content. A powerful folk singer Alyona Romanova (ex-Zventa Sventana) appeared. Musically, the album continued the syncretic experiments started earlier in the direction of electronics, away from the old hard rock (although there are action sequences on the album: "Hey you, who are you", "They came for you"). The sound came close to that fashionable synthetic cross-genre standard, which is called indie rock or indie pop (depending on the listener's stamina).

A new theme has appeared - from now on, the most important one in DDT-4's work. It is state violence, surveillance, coercion, destruction of humanity in a person. Several songs from the album are in this trend.

The album was accompanied by the second part of "P.S.". They were released at the same time, in a two-disc edition. But the discs were so different in sound and meaning that they seemed to be different albums. Even Wikipedia called the album "Otherwise/P.S." back then. Now Otherwise is just "Otherwise." And the second part - "bonus" was distinguished by high texture and figurativeness, colouring of characters in the spirit of DDT's mature period. "Song of a Upset Man", "Monogorod", "Grey Hog" are real action-thrillers, like a musical summary of either Coppola's "Taxi Driver" or Roman Bykov's films. Extreme sociality and politicality - that's what we, the old fans, who were tired of searching for the meaning between all these allegories, more and more confusing and authorial from album to album, lacked. And here is everything we wanted to ask Batya, but were afraid to... "Fable of Power"... - you can play it at libertarian meetings as a mandatory anthem.

Mr President, what do you dream about at night?

In our wild country at this troubling moment?

Mr President, what did they shout to you -

Those 100 dissenters? A compliment, perhaps?

And then DDT went quite far away from themselves. Speaking the pretentious and hollow language of our time, they began to master the indie format. The album "Transparent" (2014) is so transparent that it is almost empty. Apparently, anticipating the lack of attention to the release, Shevchuk himself wrote down on his website the brief content and meaning of each song, and this information in its entirety was transferred to the wikipedia page about the album (such are these "information wars"). So if you want to know what the album is about and what it's like, you'll have to listen to it without prior study of the most authoritative of modern resources. But listening to it won't give you anything, so a modern rewriter will be forced to return to the rubbish the authors set out in their self-promotion. Not a single memorable melody, not a single intelligible text. Musically, it's millennials "reinventing" Nick Cave. The performance was succinctly described by poet Artyomiy Semichaevsky: "For the first time in his life Shevchuk sings in such a way that you can't recognise him by his voice!". It's either a relapse of a midlife crisis or an attempt to appeal to the youth, having rejected all "the burden of previous mistakes". Even the "DDT" logo has changed, moving away from the old stylish hardening. I haven't met any millennials/x/zetas who have listened to this album or at least know about it, but that the former fans, who started to cringe at "Otherwise", have sadly closed DDT for themselves here - unequivocally....

In fact, it is by no means unambiguous. How shocked I was when I listened to the album "Galya Khodi" (2018) with fear, fearing to rekindle hatred towards the former idol!

Amazingly catchy melodicism, hard rock drive, heartfelt lyrics (the loss of which I was most afraid of)! The sound is the most mature of everything DDT did during their forty years. Hard industrial-rock brutality and drive ("Alternative", "Dead Man", "Russian Spring". Subtle folk-rock lyrics ("With Blok's Eyes", "Steppe Hamlet").

There's even a half-rap half-declamation addressed to the youth, boasting about their underdone "freeshmen" as a way of overcoming the dreary reality ("Galya go").

We've learnt how to score

On the zoological horror that surrounds us,

Not to notice that everyone's on the clock.

The time of crooked mirrors is frozen.

Did we know that Rock 'n' Roll.

It's a few moments on the outside,

It's an eternity you haven't played yet.....

In the video for the pathos song "Love is not lost" Shevchuk rides in a bus and through fashionable hipster glasses contemplates with pleasure the warmth of simple human relationships of those who nowadays have the nerve to stay young. - to continue making tea with courage no matter what!

Texts about love and separation, about search and hopelessness, about power and law, about the difficult choice between order and freedom, about the hackneyed "Eurasianism" and "Asianness", about life as an eternal journey to nowhere... The rail track goes into the void, into the azure haze that shades the vastness and unnecessaryness of the Russian expanses, and you cannot get off it (the design of the wheels does not allow you to). Only to endure to the end, but not to be blamed, to keep respect for the similar and even for the dissimilar, different, alien. This is true heroism: to remain a human being here...!

This album is a synthesis of "all" DDT, of all four conventionally distinguished periods. It is bright, lively, cheerful and kind. Surprised, I immediately went to look at the performing line-up, hoping to see Kurylev and Chernov returning, Zaitsev and Dotsenko resurrected, Sigachyov appearing... No, it was the same youngsters - but they played in such a way that it became clear: DDT is not a brand of musical group. DDT is not an accompaniment ensemble under Yuri Yulianovich. DDT is a trace in the universe! It is a trace left by the spirit, passion and musical skills of those who stood under that black and blue banner! (And the logo is back, and its colours!)

New DDT on stage
New DDT on stage

DDT is a way of thinking: to be critical but soulful, to be sincere but delicate, to be content with little but not to allow oneself to be morally diminished, to be true to oneself and not to divide the world into "one's own" and "others". The world is great and beautiful, and to learn to feel oneself its joyful corpuscle means to be truly.

Author - Kirill Kungurtsev

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