01.Здравствуй / Zdravstvuy / Hello
02.КАК?! / KAK?! / HOW?!
03.Курск / Kursk
04.Лето / Leto / Summer
05.На Севере Диком / Na Severe Dikom / Ein Fichtenbaum
06.Сын / Syn / Son
07.Павел / Pavel
08.ANYTHING/ANGEL/BEAUTY/COMING
09.Zona Sveta/ Zone of Light
10.Абхазия 2007 / Abkhaziya 2007
11.Давление (2020) / Davleniye (2020) / Pressure (2020)
12.В сумраке странствий v2.0 (2020) / V sumrake stranstviy v2.0 (2020) / In the Twilight of Wanderings v2.0 (2020)
13.Ты – человек v2.1 (2019) / Ty – chelovek v2.1 (2019) / You are a Man v2.1 (2019)
The 6th album of the Moscow intelligent body music project ZOЙD is a report on the work done from 2013 to 2024. None of the group’s releases since 1996 have been prepared for so long. One of the participants, Pavel Shchepetov, to whom the composition “Pavel” is dedicated, managed to die. Ivan Kirichenko, a long-time collaborator and artist-designer of several previous albums, has actually gone into the shadows. His guitar sounds “Ein Fichtenbaum (На Севере Диком)” to the poems of Heine and Lermontov, “Pavel (Павел)”. In 2019, Alexey Melnikov came, bringing the ideas of DAW sequencing to the previously purely “hardware” midi ZOЙD, adding to Oleg Kotov’s headaches from crashing drivers and the joy of acquiring new arrays of synthesizers and other devices. At the final stage, violinist Anna-Violanna appeared in “Hello (Здравствуй)”, “Kursk (Курск)”, “Ein Fichtenbaum (На Севере Диком)”, “Son (Сын)”. As a result – a very eclectic album. Here is “Hello (Здравствуй)” with “Kursk (Курск)” as an EBM legacy, the gloomy “How?! (Как?!)” – a combination of dark, EBМ, trip-hop and synth, “Summer (Лето)” – a future pop anthem, and finally “Ein Fichtenbaum (На Севере Диком)” with gothic and Heine’s German style. Somewhere at the end, the instrumental “Anything, Angel, Beauty, Coming” – typical IDM, and the ambient “Abkhazia 2007 (Абхазия 2007)” with field recordings of the Abkhazian choir, and the resort dog “singing along” to it. The track that gave the album its name, “ZONA SVETA”, is hard to describe stylistically at all, with its set of acoustic loops, guitars, cheerful vocals and distant ambient layers. What unites all this? Ideas, language, places where all this was written. We are northern people. Snow, ice, sometimes the sun and green grass. Then again darkness and light, reflecting from the cold night earth. A Russian person enjoys everything. Life, death, love. We laugh and cry, and move forward. In spite of everything. Into eternity.
P.S. The album is planned to be released in CD format on Advoxya Records. As a digital release on ScentAir Records. Both the CD and the digital release are individual – at the end of each, remixes and bonus tracks are included that differ depending on the information carrier.
BIOGRAPHY
ZOЙD is one of the oldest Russian EBM bands, the beginning of whose activity dates back to May 9, 1996, a significant date for the Russian people, which became the day when two post-industrialists from the Moscow outskirts met in the Green Theater of the Gorky Park of Culture. Mikhail Korolev and Oleg Kotov, known for their previous activities in the Moscow and St. Petersburg electronic, gothic rock, tribal and psycho scenes, having called each other, not knowing about each other’s existence before, decided to join forces in the field of electro-industrial. The first cassette releases of the band followed several months of session work at completely different venues: from an improvised studio in the Green Theater, where Y.Orlov ex-“Nikolai Kopernik”, “Nochnoy Prospekt”, “Fruits”, Roman “Kostyl” ex-Korroziya Metalla, the art group “Sever” and others often crossed paths with ZOЙD, to the sometimes uncomfortable squats of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The atmosphere of that time, the breath of the cities, directly influenced the result. It is not surprising, but it turned out to be a typical mixture of EBM, dark, electro, multiplied by the poems of the musicians themselves and the modernist decadents of the early 20th century, such as Y. Bryusov, who were in tune with them. In his stage activities, incl. connected with contacts in the art environment, there were elements of ritual and gothic performance, which gradually, with the musicians’ attraction to military aesthetics and “pure” EBM/electro sound, began to be supplanted by the external militaristic and cyber-punk atmosphere of performances and sound. The musicians and their friends became the organizers of one of the first regular post-industrial musical events, “Industrial Assemblies”, in the Moscow club “Moby-Dick”. Oleg and Mikhail were the authors of a number of publications in the press dedicated to industrial culture, were involved as consultants in various media, including film projects. In 1997, ZOЙD’s first EP “Doom” was released self-published. Concerts and small tours followed. In 1998, the group began collaborating with the Russian electro-label “Ocular Records”, which had already released “Descent”, “Groundbeat” and “Thaivox”. However, due to the economic crisis of 1998, the collaboration ended unsuccessfully. The LP “Deep Pressure” recorded on the label was never physically released, being sold online only at the turn of the 2nd decade of the 21st century. This and a number of other factors led to Mikhail Korolev leaving the group, who became interested in surf culture. In 2001-2013, Oleg Kotov, with the participation of Ivan Kirichenko and Pavel Shchepetov, recorded the albums “Cross of Heaven”, “Sweat, Blood, Tears” and “Ethereal World”. Due to the change in the cultural and socio-political paradigm of the group’s consciousness, a change in the language of performance occurred. From 1999 to the present day, it is Russian. Events in the personal and professional life of the group led to an almost complete pause. Some stagnation in concert and creative activity ended only in 2019. A new combat unit joined ZOЙD – Alexey “A.N.T.I” Melnikov, whom I first met in the mid-90s. The group performed at a number of events, including regional festivals. Some of the old tracks were reassembled and remixed. The recording of the new LP “Zona Sveta” began, which included material from 2013-2024. The album itself is the quintessence of the achievements and searches of almost 3 decades of the band: EBM, electro, a little synth and gothic, interspersed with guitar and violin parts with a distorted baritone of the vocalist. With lyrics, among which are the era of romanticism of Heine with Lermontov, and modern poems filled with the expectation of the apocalypse. In 2021-2024, a digital presentation of several singles of the future album took place on some digital platforms. Among the authors of remixes of the singles’ compositions are such bright artists of the modern Russian scene as THE-PULSAR and Strong Product, as well as many young electro and synth talents. An agreement was reached with the independent industrial label “Advoxya Records” on the release of the album. Also, the issue of digital distribution at the facilities of Scent-Air.ru, one of the organizers of SynthDreamFest 2024 and KoenigSynthFest, has been preliminarily resolved. At the moment, work is underway on new material and the band’s first video clips in 25 years. ZOЙD, in addition to Oleg Kotov and Alexey Melnikov, “Zona Sveta” introduces a new session and concert member to the group: Anna-Violanna, responsible for echoes of the group’s gothic past: violin solos in the album and elements of stage percussion support.
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