Leningrad - "Hleb"

Description

“Lenin-grad - young people sing this song (you don’t fuck with them!)”

Leningrad is a phenomenon. Wherever they appear, they leave people gasping for air. The cult is growing and has by now also found them fans among people, who have nothing to do with Russia. After some first spectacular, mostly sold-out concerts in Western Europe, Leningrad are finally released here on CD.
Currently there are 15 members in the band, or rather orchestra Leningrad. This makes their live performance an unforgettable experience. The brass section – trombone, saxophone, trumpet and tuba– are supported by xylophone, guitars, drums, percussion and the raw voice of front man Shnur. This all makes up for the irresistible appeal of Leningrad. The music is a mixture of ska, Cuban salsa and Russian prison chanson, sung with their hearts on their sleeves. Nowadays there are also rap influences and hard rock guitars in Leningrad’s music and the songs always tell stories and little dramas.

Leningrad trespasses against all sorts of rules and breaks with traditions; they swear in public, shoot scandalous video clips and cause mayhem at their concerts. Consequently, this is how they became famous without even trying hard and without a master plan. Shnur himself says about his band: ‘Leningrad – is like a porno film: with little means you provoke strong emotions.’
That was too much for Moscow’s mayor Yuri Lushkov, who prohibited Leningrad ever performing in Moscow again. Still in the rest of the country they perform in front of thousands of frenetic fans. Leningrad is the salt in the soup of Russian show business. Despite their huge success, they don’t let themselves be corrupted, and Shnur speaks up on all subjects that move him. Leningrad has always spoken the language of the people, be it with earthly humor or straight criticism. Hleb is Leningrad’s most social album so far. The fancy world of tennis stars or the power of banks – the conflict between poor and rich is one of the most prominent features of post Soviet turbo capitalism. Leningrad manage to describe society problems in a few striking lines.
Post modernism meets folk&roll and urban underground in a tasty cocktail. In their lyrics Leningrad deal with the Russian every man from the streets, who is mostly interested in sex and alcohol, but who has the heart in the right place. In his songs Shnur uses swearwords en masse as well as the language of the chanson of the Soviet dissidents.
Most chart bands in Russia copy their Western counterparts. Leningrad may well be the only Russian top ten band, who is musically and lyrically denying itself to the mainstream.
Russian swearwords make up a language on its own. This linguistical system called ‘Mat’ is an inexhaustible source for new combinations of ‘five-storey’ blocks of profanities. A master of ‘Mat’ like Shnur uses this to precisely grab things ‘by the balls’ and, similar to the underground writers in Soviet times, to codify messages in a way, which sounds rude, but not dumb. This is most likely the reason why Leningrad is loved not only by the common people, but also by the intellectuals, who can not but grin at this clever poetic swearing. Theirs is a language, which everyone understands, but pretends not to speak. Their songs are about things, most people in Russia can identify with these days: booze, sex, death, irony, money, love, love for money, no money, no luck, no future.
Leningrad follows the tradition of the prison songs of the 1930s and the cheeky, but melancholic songs of the Soviet underground songwriters of the 1970s, like Arkady Severnyi. Leningrad continues this heritage on a more aggressive and thus more contemporary musical level. This side of Leningrad comes especially well across on Shnur’s solo bonus album, which is available along with the limited edition of Hleb.
Within a few years Leningrad turned from a club band into a stadium act without loosing any of its credibility.
Leningrad’s honest, fascinating and controversial character makes it a phenomenon and probably Russia’s most exciting band in the last ten years.

Tracklist