AA.VV.
Café Sputnik - Electronic Exotica from Russia

I would like to wrap up a series of reviews (Messer Chups and Tipsy) dedicated to a certain retrofuturistic-vintage trend with a delicious and flavorful disc, like a plate of slimy eggs extracted from the guts of dead sturgeons, sprinkled with a squeeze of potatoes and rye. You should know that getting my hands on this CD was not easy at all; it's a story that stretches back, one that holds nothing of interest, and that's why I'm delighted to tell it to you. After all, if on this site you review Aborted and even give them 4 stars, it means you enjoy suffering.

So, do you know those progressive, disillusioned, and nostalgic booksellers? Those with the anonymous scarf around their neck, the gray sweater, and so on? Those who always have the bookstore on the corner and that you'd want to smash the window with your head just to finally remove "Che's Diary in Bolivia" that's been sitting there for twenty years and has gotten on your nerves too? Yes, you, the world's greatest pacifist communist idealist environmentalist? (A nice paradox, think about it, if you were really like that, you couldn't break anything because you'd be inside a display case at the natural science museum).

Well then, these booksellers - Yes! It's their fault! Let's shout it out! - years ago, they were talking a lot about a mythical and phenomenal new narrative trend of young Russian talents and I, a dreamy and unstable person, because of them bought a book attracted only by the title and by the fact that the author, Pelevin, was indeed Russian. Yes, it happened, I swear I never do these things, I swear. "A problem of werewolves in Central Russia", an amazing title, damn, I can't deny it.

So, I thought that after years of painstaking analysis I had finally overcome this weakness of mine - isn't this the anonymous shopaholics group? - when a friend, a disillusioned veteran etc., recommended this disc to me, assuring excitedly that I could find the whole "new" crazy Russian musical trend concentrated in a single compilation. A déjà vu that obliterated years of work with my psychologist, years spent trying to overcome the trauma caused by a lousy book.

I risked a lot, you'd agree, but fortunately, things turned out differently this time, and this compilation deserves to accompany your days spent wandering from bar to bar in your spider with Olga Kurylenko sitting next to you. "Café Sputnik - Electronic Exotica from Russia" is another irresistible title, admit it. How do you detox from titles like these? I can't.

Fine, so, tedious long-winded reviewer, what the heck can I find inside? Inside there are twenty tracks held together with not much effort by a fairly homogeneous musical glue but, at the same time, manages to embrace very broad musical concepts, from east to west, as their motherland teaches. This in two words but here the matter is really more complex and it's not possible to compress this disc into a simple definition. It is not just music, it's about images; here there is a lot of cinematic fascination. Let's do it this way, listening to it I have noted the following list of suggestions which I simply pass on to you: Surf, lounge, east, tradition, surreal, irony, dream, nostalgia, futurism, 60s soundtracks, vintage, and retrofuture.

If forced, I would still say mostly retrofuture. That is, the future as imagined in the past (and which then never came true). Those who understand call it steampunk. You know what I mean? When there was thought and writing about space travel aboard gigantic steam machines. The cinema goes crazy for it, I mention Wild Wild West (yuck!) and Ember (mh mh). This record is just like that; you only have to replace the canonical Victorian era with rural and visionary Russia of a hundred years ago.

We float suspended in a present that no longer exists where it is possible to travel in space with spaceships constructed from the strong wood of Siberian forests and piloted by comrade Yuri Gagarin. Listening to Café Sputnik is like watching "A Trip to the Moon" from 1902, electronic jugglers a bit annoyed get shot out of cannons and directly hit the eye of our satellite - and if you haven't seen the movie, at least you'll know the video of "Tonight, Tonight" by the Pumpkinks -

For a fun evening at your place. On TV, put on Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky, in the original language and at very low volume. As said at the beginning of the review, prepare plenty of caviar and vodka and invite all the Russian models you know, telling them to dress vintage. What's that? You can't afford caviar nor do you know any Russian models? My dear friends, then stay alone and put on the Aborted.