It might be going another way, if the second capital was the real one. Multfilmy.


If it doesn`t happen in Moscow, it hardly exist in a country at all. If something occurs in other places, nobody cares. It is a common true, with one exeption – Peterburg. For two centuries it was the capital. When most of the people who lived there were killed or ousted. But the place hadn`t disappeared, and the spirit of this town isn`t something that can be easily erased. So comes new people, and their children, and they continue do it in their own way.

Local musical scene is significantly different form country`s one. And it is huge with great number of groups, it has the connections between artist, that makes it not just concoction or hodgepodge but the mixture with an internal structure. Mostly it is hermetically closed, but sometimes the bright protuberances breach out from the boiling core and light up the musical firmament.

I have seen the group leader while I was carousing at the underground artistic cafe. He sit with the members of the crew and was drinking drinks and smocking cigarettes. The underground cafes, I think it must had been Pirogi, were the big part of a new landscape of places where the youth and not so young but artistic people starts to hang out. It was dim, cheap, and overcrowded so cafes had everything that was needed for the cultural folk, there people gathered to talk and smoke, to drink and think, to eat and meet, it was motley warm crowd of an intelligentcia.

The group members were young, attractive, played guitars, and had charismatic leader. Is it a classic rock band for the youngsters, not so fast. First of all they haven`t youth`s angst, they were self-assured. Second, they didn`t suffer a depression, they were bright, joyful, they like yourself and others, just slightly mocking sometimes not so enlightened people. Next, they didn`t have agenda, they were just one or two head higher than ordinary people, so you may grow to their level, or who cares. So they were really outliers.

Just as any peterburg`s group would, that have poped-up on the surface. If you want to see other russia you shouldn`t go any farther, listen groups of a peterburg`s musical ancestry. And we must confess that by our opinion it is a better version of reality.

In this reality people live in beatiful european town, sex is not a big deal even in most advanced forms, people are positive-thinking and kind, and only with accordance to young age are slightly mischievous. They are good people, they outlive adventures not disastrous. They have their future, their country, their present. They can dream awake.

It is not only music that has this peterburg`s hue. Movies that were shoot there is also outstanding. If you`d like to see movie where you`d want to live, don`t go any farther again. You may see it in films like Progulka or even more in Piter FM. So this is a phenomenon that spans throughout all culture. We are not doomed, we just had chose the wrong path. If only the second capital remained a real one.

Returning to the group Multfilmy let`s form an indispensable listening list, it will include four albums, 2000`s Stereosignal and Multfilmy, and 2002`s Vitaminy and Superpriz. These are of a great music material so they may be listened in their entirety.

We may finish here, but I notice that I`ve wrote nothing about the group Multfilmy at all. The leader was the face and the brain of a band. A slender, slim, lanky boy. He was handsome in a way smart young boys are. Independent and good. He doesn`t give a shit about your old crap, he had his own peers. They are living on their own. Not against or in support of you. It just seems that we after all had the smart self-possessed youth at this time.

That generation was born circa 1978 plus or minus two years. At the start of new millenium they were 20 – 24 years old.

And Multfilmy`s songs is the beautiful portray that there is a better, clear as wee hours` morning, early summer world.