In the section about promising newcomers, “Volna” talks about a former member of the avant-rock band “Sunflowers”, who now composes beautiful instrumental music in the spirit of Jan Tiersen and has already become very popular in Turkey.

“I’m not a pianist at all. For me it’s a tool to convey some melodies. I don’t play the piano well enough, one might even say that it’s bad, like a first-grade student at a music school,” says Evgeniy Grinko. It seems to me that he is either being disingenuous or being modest—I couldn’t do that in my first grade—and yet I can’t resist asking him: how does he then compose all these melodies? He answers briefly: “Writing is easier than performing,” and this is rather modesty.

He often answers as briefly as possible, and sometimes you have to deliberately remain silent for him to continue the thought – this simplicity, together with his slight complexity, continues in his music. Light, but very leisurely, even when it seems that she is running somewhere. These compositions – and indeed the entire album – should not have had titles at all, only an indication of the key in which one or another was written. There should have been more of them, but they “didn’t get along well with each other,” and they had to be moved to the “second part.” This album took three years to make – and there were two reasons for this. “The first is procrastination, and the second is perfectionism. The two most terrible inhibitory things. I could spend a month leveling up audio tracks, and then eventually abandon this track. And just like that, about a whole year was spent on compositions that in the end don’t exist.”

In fact, the first thing I ask Grinko is whether he thinks it’s an interesting coincidence that an album called “Ice for Aureliano Buendia” is being released right now, when not even a week has passed since the death of the one who invented Aureliano Buendia. “Yes, when I saw the article in the news feed, I immediately wrote to the label, which turned out to be very symbolic. Despite the fact that initially we wanted to leave the album completely unnamed. But then I thought about what might suit him – he’s all like that… in cold colors. I remembered a quote from Marquez and decided to take just that name.” Literature is generally extremely relevant here – one of the compositions is called “Faulkner Sleeps”, but our conversation about literature does not receive much development.

“For the last month I haven’t turned on the radio or watched the news,” says Evgeniy. – I don’t even go to my parents – my stepfather watches the news, I don’t want to receive this information. It’s no longer possible. Everything has reached some kind of insanity.” He doesn’t think music is suitable for escapism and thinks it shouldn’t be mixed with politics. However, there will be a “Free Gaskarov” sticker on the vinyl cover, but this is done “simply so that more people know about this story.” Is there a contradiction here with the previous words? “Perhaps, but the sticker, the politics, remain on the cover. And the music is inside.”

Grinko is generally an amazing person – he used to be a drummer in the group “Sunflowers” ​​and traveled with them, including on an amazing tour with Damo Suzuki from Can. How did he manage to switch to neoclassicism? “I always wrote something at home. In fact, I always wanted to do something like this, and the bands I played drums in stopped existing – and so it happened.” In all this, then, there is an element of chance – but does knowing the rhythm help him right now, in working on his compositions? “Complex issue. Naturally, mastery of various instruments helps, but to what extent, I cannot say.” Nevertheless, one of the best tracks of the album, “Rumba”, is as rhythmic as possible, and the bursts of children’s voices at the very beginning make you remember for some reason The Go! Team. In fact, his own musical preferences are very different – there is both Sati and DJ Shadow, and he prefers to listen to music on vinyl, which is also why the album is released in this format. This has little effect on the music: “I was once very impressed by Yegor Letov. But I don’t even know if it’s noticeable in my compositions,” he laughs.

What is not yet noticeable, but what definitely helps him, is his work in advertising. His customers are not the most obvious, for example, Russian Helicopters or the Ministry of Health. At first he tried to work in a romantic way, “in the image of some Western advertisements,” but now he switched to marches: “The customer said why isn’t the march playing, because the military is in the frame.” According to him, there is not much creativity there, but it helps him work on compositions faster. Speaking of marches, Grinko, for some unnatural reason, is beloved in Turkey, which is why we discuss with him Mozart’s “Turkish March” and Beirut, which were influenced by Turkish military music. And yet, how did this happen? “The organizer of one of the concerts liked simple answers and told me: “They love beautiful music in Turkey.” Well, it really is exhaustive.

Grinko himself says that, unlike his friends, he does not see an oriental trace in his music – and it is really difficult to notice. I rather remember another musician who moved from rock to composing – Igor Vdovin, and some of the compositions from “Ice for Aureliano Buendia” could not have been lost on his half-forgotten record “Gamma”, also full of beauty, and the other – on a collection of preludes “ 24″. The author himself sees these compositions as a description of some landscapes, which is noteworthy – not tied to any place: “These are just other cities.” If we follow the title of the album, these are transparent (or ghostly) cities that have already been wiped off the face of the earth – and only this music serves as a reminder of them. What they definitely don’t have is loneliness.

Read the original article at: https://daily.afisha.ru/archive/volna/sounds/evgeniy-grinko-izyashchnaya-instrumentalnaya-estrada-iz-podmoskovya/

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