Far From Moscow: Excellent Website Catalogues Far East Musicians -by Alyson Camus



Far from Moscow, a website created by David MacFadyen, professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Los Angeles, is dedicated to new music from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. It is a large collection of about 1200 artists spread all over the large territory, profiling each of them whether they are creating rock, pop, electronic, dance,…

The site offers articles, songs and videos to stream from bands as diverse as the poppy Moscow-based My Michelle (a Beatles reference?) that Iman was mentioning yesterday, Love-Fine, a much darker electropunk band, which is catalogued as ‘Tatar-Disco’, a sort of heavy electro-disco inducing trance when played loud in a Kazan discotheque on a cold Saturday night.

But the bands coming from far East are more numerous than I had imagined, there is Vladimir resident Daniil Vavilov, aka Fill and Bulb, who composes music sounding like a space odyssey movie soundtrack, or an ambient calming landscape that makes you travel into your own imagination, or, in the same vein Eja/Yoj’, whose compositions make you want hibernate or sleep forever. ‘The title of this release speaks for itself; have a pleasant flight!’

And if you are into the electronica-random-ambient type, Fedor Pereversev, aka Moa Pillar produces music with ‘futuristic beats, mixed with heavyweight basslines and ethnic samples’.

There is a lot to explore on this website, like beatmaker  Pixelord whose music sounds like a video game,… Bollywoodish RJB,… pop-punk Narkotiki (NRKTK) whose I could not understand the lyrics of course, but said to be inspired by 90s grunge, 70s punk and all kinds of Japanese things,… synth-pop Tiptoptellix,… jazz chanteuse Sasha Almazova,… jazz-hip-hop OU74,… SunMan24, and many many more.

I could not explore all the artist pages, there are a million of them, from Lithuanian ambient composers, Russian techno makers, Indie rockers from the Black sea, Siberian hip-hopers, hushed music makers from Lithuania, Belarusian drum and bass composers, Moscow-based noisy guitarists, more techno or distortion artists from Moscow, Bossa Nova composers from the Balkans, prog and art rockers, gentle electro-acoustic players, Indie folk rockers …

The diversity is endless, and you could easily spend the whole day exploring all the genres flourishing on a territory covering an impressive total of ten time zones.http://www.farfrommoscow.com/