The Cold War had begun to reach its end and the In the beginning of the 1980’s, Alexander Yakovlev, at the time vocalist and bassplayer of the group Otvetniy Chai, had already begun experimenting with electronic music in his partly improvised home studio, which amongst other things consisted of a Jupiter 204 tape recorder and a converted recording device build from parts of an old cassette deck and a paper shredder. The synth influences were already there, appearing in the shapes of Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode just to mention some, and when Otvetniy Chai split up in 1985, there wasn’t any doubt that Yakovlev’s next project would be an electronic one.
Also drummer Andrey Kokhayev, old friend and band mate from Otventiy Chai, found the thought of electronic music very appealing and thus joined in Yakovlev’s new project The duo spent almost a year looking for additional band members, and in 1986 the line up was finally completed by keyboardists Valery Vasko and Leonid Velichovskiy. Biokonstructor was a fact.
Their debut happened during an audition at Rok-Laboratorii (The Rock laboratory – 
a public organisation which between the years of 1986 and 1989 worked to coordinate, or rather control, the (popular) musical activity in Moscow by, for example, arranging festivals.) The same year (1986) Biokonstruktor received the prize for “most original act” at a festival arranged by the magazine Moskovskiy Komsomolets and now the group also begun touring actively, first in Moscow and extensively in Russia, holding concerts that often finished with lectures about electronic music.
1987, the first edition of Biokonstruktor’s only album Tantsi Po Video (”Dancing on Video”), or rather five tracks from it, was released as a split album with the group Prochai Molodost (the complete version of 13 tracks was released in 1994 by ZeKo Records). The lyrics, written by Andrey Bondarenko, an old friend of Alexander Yakovlev, were of deep, often philosophic meaning that actively questioned the contemporary concepts of every day-life and mentality of the fellow human, and their lack of a soulful existence. Thus the lyrics in a credible way completed the music, which were mostly melancholic, yet beautiful melodies in what could be described as a rough metallic sound, which in its turn very much justified the name “Biokonstruktor”.
The message that reached out through the lyrics was of course the very message that the group wanted to deliver: harmony, beauty and a reminder that each and every one has the ability to create their own world. Applied to Biokonstruktor, who in the contemporary Russian popular culture still differed from the variety of young, enthusiastic bands, Yakovlev referred to the Strugatskiy brothers (authors of, Roadside Picnic, etc) by quoting:
” ’Writers and fantasies create worlds’. We create our own world. We don’t jump around on stage acting like apes. I don’t condemn any aesthetic forms, but our goal is obviously different. We only want to introduce everyone to our music and invite them to get to know what we are. “
and a bit more elaborate in an interview during the DK Gorbuna festival in June 1987:
”We want people to for a moment forget their small problems and arguments and instead look at their lives and all the existence of this world, a bit from a distance, as inhabitants of the universe and realize that there are so many problems in this world that we lose our sense for the relevant parts in life. The world is incredibly large and isn’t limited by the walls of your apartment. We believe that our music can help people expanding their orbits of thinking.”
Maybe it was the frequent touring and many concerts that limited Biokonstruktor’s time in the studio. During the most active period of the group, they were often doubly booked to hold two concerts in two different cities. This was generally solved by the band members simply splitting up two by two, entering different stages.
For reasons that shall remain unspoken of, Valery Vasko could no longer continue the intense touring, and thus he left the group in 1989.
Nothing happened on the release front and this would eventually lead to 
Biokonstruktor losing many of their original fans, but even though it seemed like the groups activity was limited to concerts and touring, there was still a certain measure of creative work going on: Together, Alexander Yakovlev and Leonid Velichovskiy had started the side project Pop-kombinat (“Pop-factory”) where they experimented with more easy accessible music. Velichovskiy opportunistic tendencies had started to show and Pop-kombinat released an album. The entire thing however turned out as a real flop and was referred to as “an accident and one of the biggest mistakes in music history”. Still it was important to move on after this rebuke, but whilst Yakovlev was pulling his hair over the technoromantic continuance of Biokonstruktor, Velichovskiy would enter further into his long time interest in disco pop. Anonymously, he engaged in cooperating with the group Zvyozdy ("Stars") and somewhere along these lines occurred the controversies between Yakovlev and Velichovskiy, which rapidly led to the end of Biokonstruktor as a group.
Biokonstruktor were disbanded in 1990, but the story has yet not reached its end.
To be continued…
Photos, from upper left to bottom right:
- Biokonstruktor: Andrey Kokhayev, Leonid Velichovskiy, Alexander Yakovlev, Valery Vasko
- Otventniy Chai with Andrey Kokhayev on percussion (back) and Alexander Yakovlev on bass (far right).
- Unidentified single cover
- Biokonstruktor: V. Vasko, L. Velichovskiy, A. Yakovlev, A. Kokhayev
No comments:
Post a Comment