Noize MC: “A tour on a minibus, a concert for a case of beer - I thought it would always be like this. What expectations are associated with the new album “King of the Hill”? Is a million for an EP a lot or a little?
You are now giving 2 concerts in a row in Moscow. Isn't it difficult? And what is it like to give a concert on your birthday?
Vania: Why is it difficult? It's difficult to give 20 concerts in a row (laughs) and here are 2 concerts and in the same city where I live. And about birthdays... We already had experience. 2 years ago, when we presented our record called “The Last Album”, by the way in the same club, only it was called “B1”, our bassist Sasha Kislinsky had a birthday. Therefore, this stage has already been passed. (smiles)
I have often attended your concerts. Where is it more convenient and easier for you to perform: in big clubs, in small apartment buildings, or even on the Arbat?
Vania: People often ask me this and... I still haven’t chosen... (laughs) There are no festival concerts on your list, but that’s a different story altogether!
OK then. You have kids growing up now and the following question: How do you feel about the current school education?
Vania: Well, I'm like the old generation (smiles), of course, I say that in our time everything was much better and education was also better.
It has always been interesting to communicate with you... Tell me your opinion about the civil war in Ukraine and about that situation in general.
Vania: I can’t understand what’s going on there at all. That’s what I don’t want to see there, namely war. Yanukovych is not the best president, and I don’t know who is the best.
It's clear. What's the most unusual gift or surprise you've ever been given or given?
Vania: During the last tour, a girl from Penza gave me a small copy of my guitar. This is very nice.
Cool... But...
Vania: Oh, wait... Gifts... I completely forgot... Today my family, namely my wife, in the morning, gave me a pendant that had the fingerprints of my sons: Vasya and Misha.
Aww, how cute...
Vania: Yes, this is actually very cool!
Well, look, since we have a music site, the following question follows: What groups do you list?
Vania: Good ones! I only quote good groups! Bad ones - I don’t quote them! (laughs)
What interesting things have you heard over the past 3 months?
Vania: Over the last 3 months….
Well, at least for 2014
Vania: I spent the last 3 months on the island of Koh Samui, Thailand. And at some point all our friends ended up there. All the musicians were there and it felt like it was some kind of KUBANA (laughs). Here Yura Kaplan, also known as Valentin Strykalo, played all his songs. You could ask him, and he would play whatever you wanted (laughs) That was the coolest concert!
Cool! Do you go to any concerts yourself?
Vania: Certainly! I've been to Die Antwoord twice. Of the groups that perform to backing tracks, this is the coolest.
Exactly! Whose concerts would you like to go to?
Vania: They told me that Deftones play very cool live...
Well, here they will all beParkLive this summer...
Vania: Yes, Park Live, exactly... We must remember... If we don’t go anywhere, I’ll definitely go.
Look, a question from our reader: “They say that architecture is frozen music. And about your songs we can say..."
Vania: That this architecture is falling apart? (laughs)
No, “Can we say something similar about your songs? Do you feel like when you record a song, it takes on some form or color?”
Vania: Shape or color... Well, yes, shape, but sometimes it doesn’t acquire color (laughs)
What upcoming releases can we expect?
Vania: Our new film will be released in the fall. A disc with the film's soundtrack will also be released along with it. Just in six months.
What about the clips?
Vania: Are the clips also a release? Of course there will be videos and songs... There will be a video for the song “Captain America”... We are really looking forward to it!
Well, look, such a fast blitz. You must answer very quickly.
Vania: Let's
What do you thinkGTA5?
Vania: Didn't play
What's your favorite dish?
Vania: Well.. let there be dumplings
When to get a haircut?
Vania: In future. Getting a haircut in the future.
How long do you sleep at night?
Vania: How much will it be...
Some kind of sad blitz...
Vania : (smiles)
What's your favorite place to relax?
Vania: Well, let it be coastal.
Vania: Good! Very good! He would help everyone! (Laughs)
Thank you, Van, and happy birthday again!
Vania: Thanks, bye. (smiles)
Interviewed by: Alexander Nechaev.
So why Noize MC? What does this mean?
MC is the standard abbreviation for "master of ceremony". Something like an entertainer in the modern sense, but in hip-hop culture this is what they call a person who raps.
So, are you a rapper?
It's hard to figure out what I really am. The rap community often doesn't accept me as one of their own. Our band has a full rock lineup, we use very different genres. As for the pseudonym, it was invented ten years ago, when I was fifteen. Now I would choose something in Cyrillic, at a minimum. At least, I would feel like an idiot less often, explaining the name of the group, not to mention how it is spelled.
Well, at the age of fifteen, if your name is Ivan Alekseev, you could still make up something else. They say that a common first and last name can be the reason for all sorts of feats - creative and not so creative. It seems like a person who received such a low-key nomination then has to spend his whole life proving that he is something special.
I never had any complexes about my name. And I have very few Ivanov acquaintances. This name is now rather rare.
By the way, you graduated from school with a gold medal. Why do you need this? Should a rapper be smart? Pushkin said that “poetry should be stupid.”
And Morrison said that “the songs should be a little silly.” I guess this means that poetry, and rap in particular, doesn't have to be abstruse to be understood by many people. But they shouldn’t be stupid and meaningless either.
Tell us about your creative biography.
At the age of ten he began to study music - at a music school, classical guitar class. “Moved the octopus,” as our drummer says.
Is this when you run your fingers along the strings? Great expression.
While studying at music school, he took part in many competitions and festivals. Then he founded his own group. We were interested in everything: grunge and alternative metal of the late 90s. But if we talk about the presentation of words, about the textual component, then hip-hop has always been closer. We live in an information society with enormous speed of circulation of information, and hip-hop is most suitable for creativity in such a situation.
You grew up in Belgorod. According to rumors, there is a very specific political situation there.
Oh yeah! The administration does what it wants. Recently they tried to ban rock concerts altogether as spiritually corrupting young people. There is a curfew for teenagers. Fines for using swear words. Orthodoxy is burning there too. Soon it will be burning in the literal sense of the word: the administration and the church are intertwined together. For example, several years ago it was decided to return all streets to their pre-revolutionary names. Can you imagine what was going on in the passport offices when the whole city went to change their documents from Lenin Avenue to Holy Trinity Avenue? I'm afraid to think how much money was spent there.
That is, we are awarding Belgorod the palm for retrogradeism among Russian cities?
Well I do not know. In Belgorod they didn’t put me in jail for ten days. Bye.
Why did you say nasty things to the Volgograd servants of the law?
There was a tense situation there initially. There is a sign: if there are too many cops at a concert, it means that the organizers failed to reach an agreement with the administration and there will be trouble. We have such a song - “Grandma in a hat.” During its performance, according to the script, free musicians descend into the hall and from the front rows collect money in a baseball cap, while from the back rows they throw coins onto the stage. Once they shined money in my eye until it bled. That is, I always knew that this was a dangerous song, but I had no idea how dangerous it was. And the police, interrupting the song, ordered to “stop begging.” This infuriated me, and I dedicated the next song to these policemen, “Smoke Bamboo,” calling them “animals with red cockades.” Immediately after the concert, they told me that the police were very offended and that they were inviting me to go talk to some of their leaders. I politely refused, then I was detained and sent to a cell. I stayed there until the trial. The heat is above forty, there is no ventilation or air conditioning, iron bunks, eight people in a small room. There was no light during the day, and at night they were transferred to the same cell, where the light, on the contrary, did not turn off at all. And my wife was in the maternity hospital. A few days before this, our son Vasya was born, I was present at the birth. She and I agreed that I would go to Volgograd for one day. They didn't even let me call her! In general, two days later they took me to court, where a local lawyer was already waiting, who immediately began by asking if I would like to apologize to the cops through the media. I replied: “But I wouldn’t want to do that.” Nevertheless, at the trial he said that I was ready to apologize. And then I said nothing - I decided that now was not the place to sort all this out with him. I was sure that they would now issue a fine and let me go. But then I was informed that there was a personal petition from the head of the local police department of Sitsky that I be sentenced to the maximum arrest under this article - 15 days. Judge Shipovskaya went to confer with herself, returned, and - oops! - ten days. Later, however, conditions were better at the receiver. The beds were bunk beds instead of bunks, and the window even opened. It was still very hot though.
Did they take you to sweep the streets?
We were going. I immediately said that I would not refuse work. But when there were reports in the newspapers about my arrest, everyone there became very nervous, they were very afraid of the press. They were not ready to take me to work in front of the correspondents, so I sat with the refuseniks, among whom were my admirers. We then performed prison rap together with eggplants on the bunks. A classic, in general.
And what happened with this repentant song?
They kept hinting to me that my speech could easily be reclassified as a criminal offense of “public insult to a government official while on duty” and that I should apologize. But I initially wrote the text in the format of harsh banter. If they want, I’ll sing. And I was surprised to learn that they took this sarcasm at face value.
Then you added sarcastic verses, and you got a wonderful video “10 days (Stalingrad).” With memorable words like... “the demons of hell have a lot to learn from the operas of Volgograd.” Aren't you afraid to butt heads with the authorities? Your son was born. The police are fine, but a song about the vice-president of Lukoil, Anatoly Barkov, can’t, by any chance, cost you a couple of barrels of oil, carefully poured into your singing throat?
The eyes are afraid, but the hands are doing. I'm just saying what I think. And I am aware that everything can end very sadly. But this is not at all a reason to remain silent.
Did you really personally know the women who died during the accident with a Lukoil car - Vera Sidelnikova and Olga Alexandrina?
Olga is the sister of my very good friend and colleague Nastya Alexandrina, the one who performs under the pseudonym Staisha; we released a video together a few months ago. It was from her that I heard this terrible story. By the way, recently a completely rotten version has begun to spread that they “ordered” the song “Mercedes 666” for me. So, I declare that I wrote the song about an official who crushes people myself, without any requests, payments or instructions, solely at the behest of my own soul.
By the way, about rotten versions. Another one has become quite popular: they say that all these arrests and troubles are such a smart PR move. You sat there for ten days and the whole country, and the whole world, was talking and writing about you.
Such versions can only be put forward by emotionally unhealthy people. That is, the producer and I sit and decide: we’ll insult the cops, they’ll put me in jail, we’ll make a fuss. Oh, my wife is just giving birth! How cool, even more publicity! That is, I am such a demon of hell. The only real consequence of this “PR campaign” so far is a ban on my performance in Cheboksary. I was the headliner there, but before the concert they warned the organizers that there would be no Noize MC.
That is, you simply honestly accept the banner of the rebellious rockers of the 80s in order to stand on the barricades - with a microphone and a guitar.
If you only have a guitar and a microphone, then you’re ready. And so I believe that mass unrest and revolutions do not lead to anything good. We still need to look for a third way, in my opinion, and not just go smash windows and overthrow governments.
Or maybe you'll give up this nonsense and start singing like everyone else? About spring, about love, about Pepsi-Cola...
I sing about love anyway. About Pepsi-Cola? I already sang about “jaguar” once. The Pepsi-Cola company sponsored the concert - we filled syringes with this drink on stage and threw empty ones into the crowd. Sarcasm was again not understood, and not only by Jaguar, which is natural and expected. Difficulties began with the State Drug Control Service, which ended with a fine for drug propaganda.
What would you ban from singing from the stage if you were the Minister of Culture? Or the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs? Are there any actions that should not be on stage? What could you punish an artist for? Or is complete freedom a priority?
There probably should be some restrictions, although I can’t really imagine these boundaries. Nazi slogans from the stage, let’s say, are completely uncool. Although, if I had to create such a law, I would think twice about it. For example, often hysterical people are ready to take at face value what was said with absolute irony, for example. In general, I would think for a very long time.
They say that the Nashi movement wanted to cooperate with you, offered to perform at Seliger, and write an anthem for them. Are these rumors?
No, they really invited me two years ago to write an anthem for them. That's what I wrote. Very good. For example, there were these words:
“Our movement is the best.
The coolest, most honest!
Our movement will not be strangled!
This is wonderful! Thanks to investors!
Politics is an extremely exciting activity:
We take a mountain of dough and diligently spend it
For paid rallies, fictitious parties.
Here it is, Russian democracy, motherfucker!”
For some reason they didn’t take the anthem, I’m still waiting for money. While sometimes you have to sing it yourself, at concerts.
Do you have any fans? How's the rock 'n' roll spirit? Still alive?
Alive, still alive! But when sodomy sentiments grow around me, like an exemplary family man, I hide in the dressing room and read mantras.
Your latest disc is called “The Last Album”. Will he really be the last? Do you have a bad feeling?
No, this is banter again. Over the superstitions of artists who are always afraid of the word “last”, and over how they constantly organize “farewell tours”. But in parallel, this is also a story written by our drummer Pasha Teterin. About how all of humanity died in a nuclear war and only 25 musicians and one cop survived. And so the musicians decided to record the last album - either for this cop or for something else - at the end of humanity. The Amphora publishing house has released a book with an enclosed disc. Buy, read.
- Do you feel how the musical world around you is changing?
It has become extremely diverse. Previously, there were the usual sources of information, now so much is thrown at you that you are helplessly floundering. People are no longer ready to listen to the same band for 10 years; they constantly need something new. But this no longer applies to those who have long become popular - and they are not going anywhere, they are on a different train.
Have you changed any guidelines due to this? Relatively speaking, six years ago you had to write a three-minute song with a chorus for the radio, but now it’s not necessary, because instead of radio, everyone has the Internet.
The guidelines are still the same - how much it resonates with my small circle. These are real people for whom I play a song in the kitchen or play a song on a small speaker at the airport while we are waiting for a flight: “Look, dudes, what I did.”
- What expectations are associated with the new album “King of the Hill”?
I think this is a very hit record. It is laconic, there is not a single song on it, which I doubt, it was made in a short time, on the road - it turns out that you can put a midi keyboard on a table on an airplane and compose something. About half of the album is already being performed at concerts. This is a good test drive for the material to understand how to polish it and subsequently record it. In general, I think this is a very good and solid album.
- Which of your albums is it similar to?
On the first two records, only brought to a more compact state. Here we have less kaleidoscope and vinaigrette. Although there is also a wide genre palette here, and an acoustic ballad can coexist with a drum and bass action movie.
When you started, rap listeners were delighted that an artist had emerged in the genre who was breaking clichés and combining everything from grunge to electronica. And years later, this combination itself turned into a cliche.
Although I still try new colors, there is a set of expressions that have become my own style. Many artists perform one song in different variations all their lives. I don’t have one, I have seven of them. Which in itself is not bad. But I try to play the eighth all the time.
The track “St. Petersburg Roofs” is included in the tracklist of “King of the Hill”
- How did you and Monetochka sign up?
Contacted via VKontakte. I listened to her album, I liked it, we started talking. It turned out that this is a relevant, modern, living person who has no boundary between himself and his stage image.
“It’s surprising that other famous artists haven’t approached her yet.”
And they did, I was just luckier than others.
- Does the album have a key theme?
This album is about how when you play someone else's game with rules that someone else made up, you're in the wrong competition. About the value of creating your own world. And that, let’s say, everything extraneous and superficial is very fleeting, so you need to turn your head around less and focus on your own and the present.
The vast majority of your listeners are unlikely to go to super-creative creative work. Will this message offend them?
This is not the only message of the record. But if we talk about this line, that value judgments from the outside are still worth filtering, then this is a message that concerns everyone in the world of social networks.
- Is there a story about how you came to this?
My career is this story. For many years, someone has been thinking and saying something about me. And if you put all this through yourself, you can go crazy. I don't do this anymore. I think back to the proverbial year of 2010, when everyone had an opinion about who I was, what I did and whether it was good or bad. It was a difficult time, I attached too much importance to it. All this crazy hype eventually died down, but the 2010 album remained - and, it seems, remained for a long time.
It must be nice to be the center of attention. And this probably gives rise to some kind of super-acute sensation. Despite all the negativity.
This feeling exists in its pure form, without impurities. At the Stadium, I go on stage in front of which 5 thousand people have gathered. And I understand that I’m here for a reason and now something very cool is going to happen here. And when the 115th journalist from Volgogradskaya Pravda comes to you and asks why you wrote the song “Mercedes S666”, knowing in advance the answers to all your questions, such attention does not help you feel better.
"Make Some Noize" - the first single from "King of the Hill"
I understand, but it’s hard to believe that there was absolutely nothing pleasant about this attention. Especially when it was not the 115th journalist from Volgogradskaya Pravda who came, but the intelligent Andrei Loshak.
It was a different feeling. If we talk specifically about the case of the Mercedes S666, there was a feeling that such actions could turn the tide of this sad story. I thought about this. Was there anything pleasant about it? It was nice to know that the power I had could help people. And the endorphin from the fact that it’s cool that they’re interviewing me - most of these interviews were attempts to bring me to light. Maybe you remember how I went for an interview with Oleg Kashin?
- I apparently already forgot about this.
I don't think about it often either. Just since we touched on all these events.
- Did he try to put pressure on you?
Well, yes, and a few months later I did another interview, just as unpleasant. Without this everything is much easier. The state of unbridled hype, when everyone around you inclines your name, maybe it brings pleasure to someone, maybe someone consciously goes for it. I have always been interested in writing songs and creating some kind of worlds. Look, the group Die Antwoord appeared, I saw them - and I immediately got a feeling of the world they created. They are unique, they are cool, despite the fact that I generally don’t listen to that kind of music. But it really touches me. I have absolutely no interest in poking around in any details about where, what and to whom they said.
Or the idol of my youth, Kurt Cobain. It is clear that there were drugs there. And yet he blew his own brains out, in my deep conviction, because he took what they said about him too seriously. I read a lot of biographies and general literature related to Nirvana. There was one time when he was running around the mansion from Courtney with a selection of magazines that had derogatory articles about him. She tried to throw them away because he constantly re-read them and experienced some kind of masochistic thrill. Can this be called a thrill, though?
In 2010, many people had the feeling that words could influence something, that a song could change something. And in 2011, after Bolotnaya, the mood in society changed. In this sense, the story of your rather innocent phrases about Ukraine is indicative - “I was there, I didn’t see Bandera’s men,” which did not cause anything here except hatred.
It was a very strong experience and disappointment. I felt absolutely helpless trying to reach people, but the fundamental possibility of dialogue was completely absent. No matter what you say, they don’t hear you; everything about you is clear in advance. That’s why I freaked out at “Kubana”: screw you... you don’t want to listen to anything anyway (at the “Kubana” festival, Noize MC turned off the microphone when he started talking about Ukraine, as a sign of protest, he left the stage and returned to it naked; subsequently, several dozens of Russian concerts were canceled under various pretexts. Note ed.).
-Have you ever thought about leaving the country?
I perceive emigration only as a last resort to avoid prison or physical harm. And I don’t want to leave.
This year, Noize MC released this video for the song about the rebel Lenin “Lenin Has Risen” - this is part of the English-language album, which was actually planned for the end of 2016, but turned out to be shifted to “after “King of the Hill”
We need to talk about some more life-affirming topic. Let's remember another story from 2010, how you quarreled and made peace with Sergei Shnurov.
We made up very well, yes. If we hadn't quarreled, we wouldn't have become friends.
- And you continue to maintain contacts?
We communicate, yes. We meet periodically when I am in St. Petersburg, but Sergei has such a schedule that this does not happen often.
-Can you remember the circumstances?
The song “Khimki Forest” was released saying that all these songs on socio-political topics are insincere. A separate line about the devilish Mercedes referred to the Mercedes S666. I’ve always had a good attitude towards Leningrad, which is why it hurt me so much. Well, I also composed such a parody song, taking as a basis the not-so-famous hit of Leningrad. And if you don’t know the original, then such an answer could seem very dirty.
Many did not perceive this as a parody. Nevertheless, this was my answer for Sergei himself, and not for the screaming people around. Well, this didn’t get any continuation, he just remained silent, and then on his birthday in 2011, already six months after this video, he suddenly called me and began to sort things out. We had a rather ambiguous conversation, and although we found some points of mutual understanding, our conversation, I remember, ended with “Well, I don’t hear any apologies” - “What kind of ... apologies.” After that, we saw him a few months later at the Steppenwolf award, where Vasya Oblomov introduced us. Sergei Vladimirovich was drunk, so the conversation began with some bullshit, and ended with us getting drunk at 6 in the morning on the Fontanka, near his house. The gathering was colorful - some people constantly came up, Shnurov took whiskey from the store with the words “Write it to my account.”
With the video “Shave the Star,” filmed at a concert in 2010, Noize MC rather boldly entered into a confrontation with Sergei Shnurov, responding to his song “Khimki Forest”
At the Afisha Picnic 2015, you met Zemfira and tried to collaborate. I take it nothing worked out?
It's not like nothing at all. We co-wrote several songs. In the form in which we wrote them, they cannot be heard. She was responsible for the musical part, and I was responsible for the lyrics. The lyrics are still there, I just wrote different music for them and they ended up on the album.
- Why is that?
Well, we were doing something, but we weren’t finishing it all the time. And at some point they stopped communicating. Under certain circumstances. But in any case it is an interesting experience. I respect Zemfira, she has composed a lot of cool songs, she is an interesting melodist, a cool composer, a direct and sharp person. And among other things, he’s also a cool beatmaker. Zemfira makes cool beats.
- You say “interesting experience”. What, for example, can such an experience teach?
I was very inspired by this meeting and composed several songs that I really like. Without this very acquaintance, these texts would not have existed.
- Are you to some extent interested in the world of Russian rap today?
Russian rap is ok, I remember that before it was a genre in which it was very difficult to find something truly catchy and not raising any questions. Now this is easier.
- Does this music often give you the feeling of “I’m too old for this shit”?
No, not too much. I have repeatedly said that I like Oksimiron’s album - I expected it to be battle rap and humiliation of an imaginary opponent, but what I heard pleasantly surprised me. Scryptonite's album is very original, and although its value system is not close to me, I admit that it is a landmark record for Russian rap. ATL is great, I like the way his electronics work, and everyone really praises his live performances.
Some things, like cloud rap, interest me not as music, but as a social phenomenon, as something new that we can learn about the world. Our bass player talks about this, that the new generation has realized that in the list of sex, drugs & rock-n-roll, rock and roll is an absolutely superfluous thing. And we got straight to the point, so to speak. They rather broadcast a certain lifestyle, where sexual objectification is maximum, where a woman is equally a whore, and already boring and not very interesting. Neither love nor longing nor pity.
- What happened to you at the Versus battle? You looked like you were...
As if something had happened to me. My life was falling apart. I won't talk about it. Just believe that it was... And this battle itself... was the icing on such a cake! That in comparison its size is simply ridiculous. I've never reviewed it. I only remember that I freestyled there and it was even too open.
The miserably lost Versus battle took place at the end of 2013 - the battle movement in Russia had not yet gained momentum at that moment; Noize MC was almost the only artist who gathered five-thousand-capacity clubs and took the risk of going to Versus
When you were younger, you could indulge in funny and impudent attacks on Andrei Malakhov. And now they are attacking you.
Some things make you think about karma. I'm not as aggressive as I used to be. Even if we take some very early period, up to 20 years inclusive, I, as a rule, still concentrated on the creativity that was unpleasant to me, and not on the individual. As for the examples mentioned... My actions at that time were a response to someone’s rudeness and so on. That is, when I received some kind of poke from the outside, I immediately rushed to answer, that’s the motive I had, but now it’s gone. It's just not interesting. You have to do what you are inspired to do. If you're not inspired, don't do it.
- You have been your own manager for the last few years, right?
I have a manager, I never wanted to deal with administrative matters, and it’s simply impossible with such a volume.
Yes, but now this is your employee, and before your producer was in charge of your management. Could you think about whether an artist needs producers in the future where we all suddenly find ourselves?
By and large, an artist needs a team. A good SMM manager, a good designer, a good booker who manages the concert activities. It’s even better if there is a manager who can negotiate at a more serious level. However, there are artists who manage all their affairs themselves, and it’s more convenient for them. But for me it's uncomfortable.
I like to give examples of the same Shnurov or Oksimiron, who turned their social networks into popular media that provide contact with the audience without intermediaries. Why do you ignore social networks?
I understand how powerful a tool they can be. But for this they need to be dealt with properly. If I have a smart idea about how the world works, I'm more likely to try to turn it into a song. To be honest, I am much more comfortable in my current state than I was 5 years ago. Because I finally spend much more time making music, without being distracted by other crap. And it's great. And there are much fewer extra people around who perceive this music much more superficially. When at your concert half the audience just came to visit the donkey show - “Oh, this is cool now” - I went through it. Of course, this flatters vanity. But it’s much cooler when the people who came to see you know where they came.
I recently saw you leaving the Sokol metro station on the way to the Twenty One Pilots concert - and I was scared by the number of people who literally pounced to take pictures. Did you even go to the concert then?
Yes, everything is fine. Along the way, I found out that it’s not for nothing that I like Twenty One Pilots - the audiences overlap a lot.
Noize MC about the new album, police brutality and irresponsibility of parents.
One of the most discussed and popular domestic alternative musicians, Ivan Alekseev, known as Noize MC, celebrated the New Year with a new album, “King of the Hill.” Lenta.ru talked to the performer about his “fifteen minutes of fame” in the era of likes, the rudeness of the police and how funny it is to be a rapper.
“Lenta.ru”: Already in the starting track of the new album you repeat: “My music is always with me...” This phrase itself is one of the stereotypical statements of many performers. But you probably mean something specific?
Noise MC: How much more specific? There is probably no more straightforward song on the entire album than the track you quoted, Make Some Noize. Well, maybe “Favorite Color” too. So, my music really is always with me: on any trip I take with me a microphone, laptop, sound card, guitar, midi keyboard, portable speakers and a bunch of all kinds of wires. I write lyrics on my smartphone, and sometimes I use it to make the first drafts of instrumentals or record newly composed guitar riffs on a dictaphone. I write songs on the subway, planes, trains and buses. The album “King of the Hill” was recorded - with the exception of one single studio session, we did everything right on the tour, while traveling and breaks between concerts. Make Some Noize is the epigraph of the entire record, a story about how it was actually made.
Have you already checked how the audience reacts to the title theme of the album? How far do the public’s ideas about the “king of the hill” differ from your meanings?
Our regular audience mostly reads everything correctly. This is a song about the transience of mass success and the consumer attitude of the public towards the artist; about “fifteen minutes of fame” and “caliph for an hour.” About how music turned from a means of self-expression into spectacle and competition. But some people perceive this track as a statement about the thirst for power, about the struggle for it - although this is only the surface layer, a literal reading and only a façade of the entire allegory. But as for the hip-hop community, in this environment some guys, on the contrary, even go overboard with decoding: they look for references in the text to specific personalities of Russian rap, they imagine some kind of attacks. I didn’t put anything like that in there - on the contrary, this is a song about the industry that depersonalizes the artist.
What did Basta find to now “charge” his solo album at the Olimpiysky? And what will you never do, even if the producers argue: do this and we’ll go to the stadiums?
I don’t have any producers, but we’re already putting together quite a few venues. Yes, in Moscow it is not “Olympic”, but “Stadium”. But our group’s music is more radical. We are hardly played on the radio. I'm a rare guest on TV. Sberbank will not invite you to a corporate event. And I'm not trying to change that somehow. I constantly experiment, try to combine the incompatible: I, as before, am interested in bizarre genre hybrids and a diverse musical palette - and a huge number of people are still, like ten years ago, trying to figure out whether this is rock or rap? And sometimes with such a claim, as if they were buying a carton of milk, and there was orange juice inside. Yes, from the point of view of showbiz marketing, Noize MC is a complete nightmare. It is difficult to sell such a product through a supermarket chain - it is not clear which shelf to put it on. And problems with distribution and merchandising, let’s say, affect sales volumes. Vasya acted more cunningly: under the pseudonym Basta he releases softer, sometimes downright pop music; there is Noggano - in many ways his true face, it seems to me - although, of course, the dark sides of his personality are exaggerated there to the point of grotesqueness; there is N1NT3ND0 - to be honest, my favorite incarnation, because there I see what I value most: a bold experiment, the absence of any kind of audience orientation. But I don’t have side projects. I mix all my cocktails at the same bar counter. Not everyone likes it and not everything - but if they do, then they are with me seriously and for a long time. I will never be the number one rapper simply because I'm not a rapper. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Forrest? “Won’t I be myself?”
When you touched on Osip Mandelstam’s theme “Save My Speech,” it seemed interesting. But you don’t have any similar experiences yet. Although, I think making a hip-hop series based on dramatic, classic literary material could be a very convincing move.
This is a unique thing. “Save my speech” by Mandelstam wildly resonated with my own worldview. I wrote this song very quickly, almost instantly - this happens when you don’t even compose, but as if you are recording it under someone’s dictation. This cannot be put on stream, turned into an approach, into a method. Maybe I will turn to classical poetry again, and more than once. Or maybe this will never happen again - I don’t know. For example, a hip-hopper (Alekseev’s neologism to denote the concept of “hip-hop opera” - approx. "Tapes.ru") “Orpheus and Eurydice,” which Yuri Kvyatkovsky and I staged last year in Moscow on the Tesla 4000 stage - this, it seems to me, is to some extent close to what you are talking about. In 2017, I plan to publish an audio version of the opera as a conceptual hip-hop album, and we will repeat the production in Moscow and St. Petersburg towards the end of the year.
Rap journalism and rap satire are not at all close techniques for you these days, or do you need some special occasion again?
Do I need the police to be rude to me again at my own concert, and then put me in a special detention center for responding to this rudeness? Do I want my friends' relatives to die again in an accident caused by an oil company boss? Do I miss the media bullying and people with machine guns getting on stage mid-song? Not, no so much. Although some people are probably a little bored without caustic rap pamphlets on the topic of the day. “Hey, what's with this sad tape? More viral content!
You admit that if some next advocate of morality gets to your topic of “childfree”, then something from the series may again sound: “Listen, what is Ivan Alekseev singing about? This is what he calls new generations to do!?”
Not “listen”, but “listen to these four lines, spitting on the other forty! Oh no no no!" I’m not just admitting it, I’ll be wildly surprised if this suddenly doesn’t happen. It's stupid to deny that this is a provocative song. Yes, provocative. A huge number of parents actually ignore their children, do not try to find a common language with them, do not delve into their interests and problems, and when then an absolutely natural collapse occurs, musicians with the “wrong repertoire” are to blame. I am ready for a public discussion on this topic, why not? I myself am the father of two children. Yes, I won’t play this particular song for them in the car and I won’t sing it with a guitar at home. I’ll stage and sing others. Just like I can turn on a cartoon about Carlson or a movie about Pinocchio for them, but I’ll watch the new “Alien” myself, without them. Many modern parents hand their children an iPad from the age of two and go about their business, and then are surprised that teenagers subscribe to “death publics.” The song “Childfree” is about what blindly following other people’s advice and the opinions of “authorities” from the media can lead to, about personal responsibility for one’s own life decisions. And the fact that many people are not able to distinguish the lyrical hero from the personality of the author is not news to me.
You gave your first concert this year in Moscow on January 2. Is it because you now lead a relatively healthy lifestyle and still have nothing to do on holidays?
Exactly a year ago we gave a concert in the same place. This seems to be becoming a good tradition. I like unusual concerts - with a “zest”, with a concept. What does it mean “there’s nothing to do on holidays anyway”? Performing at your own New Year's show in a bunny costume is one of the best things in life! Rock and roll is much more interesting than a regular binge.
In March you will be 32. This is not the same 22-23, when your popularity began and many things around were somewhat different. How do you feel growing up? And how does a rapper even need to “age” so as not to become funny?
According to my feelings, I perceive what is happening around me much more consciously. It’s harder to provoke me, piss me off, or force something on me. Fewer illusions about people. More experience. Nothing special - I'm just really not 22 anymore. A rapper doesn't need to age. But it wouldn’t hurt to grow up: to realize that a word has weight and meaning only when you don’t devalue it with empty speculation; that it's cool songs that make you a cool artist, not
vice versa; that we are all people first and foremost, and only then MCs, rock stars, DJs, bank employees, janitors, mechanics and doctors of science. And by the way, sometimes you have to be funny. A rapper cannot grow up without self-irony. It's funny being a rapper. Especially adults. The unbearable pain of an unrequited sense of hypertrophied self-importance is the main problem of the hip-hop world.
You will apparently devote part of 2017 to touring in support of the new album. Recently, 250 thousand people watched your concert broadcast online. The figure is impressive. But it seems to me that your offline audience, at least in Russia, is still limited to a certain extent, concentrated in several large cities and, perhaps, does not listen to anything from domestic hip-hop except Noise. How right am I?
The degree of your rightness, unfortunately or fortunately, tends to zero. Our online audience is quite modest compared to the real one. I don’t run Twitter, I don’t make video blogs, I don’t “periscope”, I don’t take part in Internet skirmishes - all these raging passions are not very interesting to me, I’d rather write a song. Although from a modern artist, the audience, of course, first of all expects not just any songs, but frantic interaction and an immediate reaction to every fart, because Internet farts are an extremely short-lived phenomenon, and there is no time to yawn: it urgently needs to be publicly analyzed on social networks, using their irreplaceable expert assessment to hit a well-deserved jackpot of likes, views and comments. And then maybe someone will go to the concert to take a selfie and shoot a video with the chorus of the main hit. These are the realities of the modern world. And if previously the underground was someone who was never shown on TV, today the underground is when you have few followers on Instagram.
As for our concert audiences, over the past three months we have performed in fifty cities. In small cities we work in halls with a thousand seats; in million-plus cities the situation is different. In the hall, I periodically see people wearing branded T-shirts of other artists - the audience clearly overlaps with both leading rap artists and famous rock bands.
Watching modern music and mixing it in your compositions, did you feel that the moment of birth of some new trend was approaching, like rap, hard rock, punk, grunge, Britpop once became?
I feel the moment is ripe. Modern musical culture has been chewing on itself for too long. Now something completely unexpected may suddenly become popular. Perhaps the novelty will not even lie in the music itself, but in the way it is performed and conveyed to the listener, for example. The future is multimedia. A song without a video is already perceived by many as half the battle, like printed text without sound - that is, okay, I like the words, but that’s not enough.
In general, if you look at what has been happening in musical culture over the past few decades, you can see how the pendulum of mass interest constantly runs between guitar and electronic music - with a periodicity of approximately seven to ten years. Perhaps everyone is about to get tired of rave and auto-tune with drum machines, and it will again swing towards the next reincarnation of rock and roll. Or maybe the whole paradigm will finally change. That would be really cool and interesting. But no matter what happens, I personally still plan to strive to write songs that are good both in the kitchen with a guitar and make twenty thousand people jump at a festival.
Interviews with rappers
Noize MC: “Psychos still exist in our lives”
So, food for thought. Noise MC. He is Ivan Alekseev. He is also the winner of the battle on hip-hop.ru and the man who recorded the best album of the year according to the readers of Afisha magazine. Just so you know, readers of Afisha magazine are the kind of people who usually fallomorphize with names you are unfamiliar with, like Babyshambles and Aki Kaurismäki. Not like the laconic Noize MC. Quite an achievement too. Oh yes. He is also the rapper who buried journalist Nikolai Fandeev. He writes joint tracks with “Cockroaches” and “Lyapis Trubetskoy”, receiving respect from Maxim Leonidov and Alexey Kortnev. Yeah, and now the concentration of unfamiliar names per paragraph has reached the critical level, a little less than completely. Ergo: not a person, but just some kind of holiday!!111
This is what the young rake thought when he came to your Rostov. I have to think about myself, not about Ivan. He, unlike me, was paid. If they paid me, I would also come up with normal questions, but I came up with the ones I came up with. Should we be sad? As it became clear very soon, I was the only one who came up with at least some questions out of those *eleven people who swore at Urbania for chocolates and “press” badges. I wish I hadn't come up with them. It was me and eLect who, at two o’clock in the morning in the central square of the city, singing “There is no plan in the area for 3 weeks,” were harassed by the townspeople, the cops and the ever-waking rednecks. And yes, it’s me, a television worker, who responds to calls from my colleagues with “From the window...”. No, I definitely had something to ask this guy. I present selected moments from our conversation, filled with sparkling humor and intelligence, to your attention. My pleasure.
- Noize MC, do you have a song in your repertoire that you could call your program statement?
Well, my policy statement is divided into parts, chapters, which are songs, so I can’t call any specific one of them a global policy statement. These are just parts of the whole. Each listener is free to put them together himself.
Noize MC, by your own statement, you are an artist who is deeply violet about the boundaries of the genre. But what do you sympathize with most?
I like hip-hop as an approach. This is music that was invented very coolly and at the right time. This is a movement that truly remains touching only in its original incarnation. That is, when you have something to say and when you have a baggage of records on which you need to put your recitative. And what kind of records you are going to play is completely irrelevant. I like hip-hop as a genre that initially did not have its own music, but synthesized various styles in order to create something of its own - unusual. Over time, rappers have found themselves stuck in a circle of sampled music, some standards, and are afraid to go beyond the boundaries. This is bad, in my opinion. Because hip-hop is more than just a genre of music - it is an approach to creating music.
Lift the veil of secrecy over the new album, what will it be like? When compiling the track list for the album, will you keep in mind that girls want slow people?
There will be some slow moments, girls. In parentheses: usually Noize MC does not answer questions about the new album at all, so three words in this light are a huge exclusive piece of information.
- What question could you ask Noize MC yourself?
- Noize MC, how do you explain your stupid appearance at the concert? The girls didn’t even recognize you at first.
When we performed at the Cubana festival a week ago, we met a dude there named Herman, who lived there in a tent with his crowd. And he said that he himself was from Rostov and would definitely meet us. And he didn’t lie, he met us and brought us some wigs, crazy clothes, all sorts of interesting shit, and we decided to dress up in it and go on stage. So we have such an image sponsor today.
- Noize MC, comment on the popular story about Jagafest on these internets of ours (you can read about this sensational story with the defiant anthem “Heroin-fest” from Noise, for example, - approx. DEM84).
Many simply were not ready to accept the fact that a person can really say what he thinks, and there were many versions about some kind of viral advertising, initially paid moves. Once again I was convinced of the absolute rottenness of the Internet community, at a minimum. Everyone is interested, first of all, in the question of whether I received money for my performance. Not received. And not only, damn, I didn’t get it, but I also have to give my dough to these fagots. And that’s why don’t beliv ze hype, on the one hand, don’t believe the show-offs. On the other hand, believe in psychos - they still come across sometimes in life.
- Noize MC, remember your most unusual freestyle?
It seems to me that the organizer demanded that this mockery of the artist be stopped, I have already read about three hundred freestyles into the recorder, but among them there was not a single unusual one, which is why I am leaving now, that’s all. And all the best to you, all the best to you, I'm leaving. No, my name is not Vova, my name is not Dima. Although these names are popular now. Today I plucked the guitar strings, today it was fun, today it was crazy, many said wow, he does everything incompetently, I saw these freaks, they showed me fakes, I explained to each of them what they are worth, motherfucker. That's it, the rhymes have become bad, which means I'm leaving. After all, Noise MC is not only a name, Noise MC is not only music. Noise MC is a person. Sometimes he needs to sleep instead of recording a track. Sometimes he needs to sleep, instead of giving interviews, that's it, goodbye, fuck, fuck yu.