Stuffography
Original Line-up
"Original Akvarium" refers to a time rather than a group of people; you'd be very hard-pressed to find two Akvarium albums that feature the exact same set of musicians, though any discussion of a classic line-up would have to include Seva Gakkel's cello, Alexander Lyapin's guitar, Dyusha Romanov's multi-instumental wizardry, and the bass of Fan Feinstein, to name just a few. (Do we even need to say that Boris Grebenschikov is the sine qua non of Akvarium? Probably not, if you've made it this far.) Rather, "Original Akvarium" represents a magical interlude running roughly from their epochal performance at Tbilisi '80—arguably the first nail in the coffin of the Soviet Communism—to Boris' decision to record a solo album in the United States in 1989. You'll observe that all of the albums below are considered nothing less esssential, so, like winter-bathing in the Neva, it's best to take a deep breath and jump all the way in.
New York? London? Manchester? Minneapoils? Please. During the early to mid-80s St. Petersburg, the Russian Babylon, was the center of the Rock-n-roll Universe. Buy these albums and see why.
APXUB
Aрхив, that is—not to be confused with Arkhi, Mongolian death-vodka made from distilled marmots, which Dzhrew once drank and promptly un-drank into the filthiest toilet in all Mongolia. These are, for the most part, "anthology" albums of older Akvarium material performed in one era and gathered and/or immortalized in another. Unlike the "greatest hits" and such-like compilations found under the Collections heading, these albums (with the exception of White Album) need to be considered primary source material—an Archive—nay, a treasure trove—of alternate versions of classics and songs that, for one reason or another, never made it onto the cannonical albums of the 80's.
New Akvarium
Purists will argue that Akvarium ceased to exist after Equinox and Boris's disappointing trip west to record his first solo album, Radio Silence. In many respects this is true: the key talents behind such albums as Silver Day, Radio Africa and Aroks i Shtyor were never to record another album of new material together, though several collections of non-album songs were subsequently to be released (see APXUB).
Who could have predicted, though, that Boris could have bounced back so quickly and so brilliantly with the release of Russian Album in 1992? For this album and for its live companion piece The Letters of Captain Voronin the group playing with B.G. was called "The B.G. Band" and featured a much different line-up than the pre-1989 Akvarium. By the time his next album was recorded, however, B.G. had made the controversial decision to call his ever-changing band "Akvarium," maintaining, then and now, that "Akvarium" is a sound and a style of music and not a specific group of people. He has a point, though many of his surviving ex-bandmates pointedly disagree.
In any event, BG's output over the past 10 years has included lots of wonderful music: from the serendipitous splendors of Kostroma, mon amour, to the beautiful melancholy of Navigator, up to the mellower, playful pleasures of 2000's Psi. Along the way there have been less successful outings, but even these have much to offer the devoted Pilgrim, as Boris has continued his unique quest to reflect and refract his русская душа in different musical idioms.
Solo Boris
It's easy to focus on Boris' two monumentally disappointing English-language albums, but a quick review of his solo catalog provides all the evidence we need: the man is a freakish genius of modern music. Russian Album, his first post-Xamerika effort, is a New Akvarium album in all but name and has, accordingly, been re-catergoized there. Even without Russian Album, though, B.G. solo efforts are never less than interesting. With Songs of Aleksandr Vertinskiy Boris shows his mastery of the traditional Russian romance-singer mode while paying homage to one of his great musical inspirations, while B.G. Sings the Songs of Bulat Okujava does the same for the acknowledged grandmaster of the bard movement that swept the Soviet Union in the 1970's. Best of all, though, is B.G.'s interpretation of a number of traditional Russian popular songs in Little Forelock, where the essential continuity between B.G.'s ouevre and the Russian musical tradition becomes crystal-clear. (Not to mention the fact it includes the brilliant, found-nowhere-else B.G. original My New York Troubles.) Also of note—adored by some, reviled by others—is Lilith a "grown up roots rocker" album recorded in Woodstock with members of The Band in 1997. The best album in the category, though, has to be Prayer and Fasting, a stunning, acoustic solo-set recorded in San Francisco in 1998 featuring great versions of classics and a half-dozen terrific new songs that have never made it onto a studio album.
Concert Recordings
Borya-blessed live albums. That is, those released on disc.
For others, less sanctioned, see Bootlegs & Bobina.
Soundtracks
70s Akvarium
Ur Akvarium. This level of Babylon still awaits careful excavation, but the digs we have so far executed suggest that if you're seeking out this stuff, you're already so far gone that you don't need our guidance.
Boris Plus
This is where the madness happens.
Bootlegs & Bobina
The rock & roll equivalent of "samizdat," the hand-to-hand distribution of forbidden texts, the bobina were reel-to-reel tapes made by musicians who handed them off to a few friends, who handed them off to a few friends, who handed them off… etc. In this manner, these tapes made their way across the USSR.
Once upon a time, all the canonical Soviet-era Akvarium albums were Bobina. As far as those albums are all now available on disc, however, the albums we currently file under this category are concert recordings of doubtful provenance that are still unavailable in any format other than tape. Many show evidence of a sound-board and were presumably recorded for band-archival purposes, a la the Grateful Dead; others seem to be true bootlegs of the tape-recorder-in-the-hat variety. Until recently, most were to be found on cheap cassettes in Moscow at ZigZag's Rock-n-Roll Shop and a few random kiosks, and no place else on Earth that we know of. This being the new millennium and all, though, most of these (along with many, many more) can now be found on the web at sites like Empty Spaces and Pavel Severov's Collection. So, happy hunting in this forest of magic mushrooms!
Collections
Collections, compilations, best-ofs, greatest hits, etc. Note that some of these (Collections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3) are of doubtful, kiosk-like provenance, where all of the money goes to some muscled nubbin-knob in a track suit and none goes to Boris. (As opposed to the legit albums, where only part of the money goes to some muscled, track-suited nubbin-knob.) Except for Elizaveta, Milady of Infinite of Acquisition, the Bodhisattvas generally disdain collections as the sort of ticky-tacky icons and scapulars intended for the tourist trade: "Go Thou to the Sacred Source!" say we. However, for the financially timid Initiate offering his or her very first tithe, they offer a legitimate starting point, and if you're going to have only one Akvarium album in your possession (A GRAVE ERROR) you could do worse than one of these.
Books
Buy Songs and 14... put Songs on your fancy home bible stand (in front of your lingham shrine and polishing post) and carry 14 with you to thump & wave as you rant & rave in the rynok. Anything else is just between you and your sickness.
Videos, DVDs and Software
Films by, about, starring, featuring, riffing off, exploiting, endorsing, condemning, celebrating or otherwise relating to Akvarium and Akvarium-related matters. And soundtracks fitting the same description.
Oddball Spinoffs
Albums riffing off, exploiting, endorsing, condemning, celebrating or otherwise weirdly or even half-assedly relating to Akvarium and Akvarium-related matters.
Make no mistake. Most of these are dreadful. Or irrelevant. Or dreadfully irrelevant. A few of them have their moments. But most of them are turds...turds that fall with a splat unequalled since Dzhon's bout of Mongolian giardiasis. Water Rhapsody? Olga "7th Day" Perry's Innokenty adaptations? If you bought these, you are so pissed off you are not reading this right now.
In this category you'll find four basic types of albums:
- Albums by ex-members of Akvarium who are not BG (e.g. Kuryokhin, Romanov, Gakkel', Gunitskii)
- Albums where BG is featured in some absurdly tangential way. (e.g. Shakespeare's Sister)
- Albums (generally, by no-talents) that exploit Akvarium's back catalogue. (e.g. Water Rhapsody)
- Joanna Stingray albums. (The fact that J.S. was never in any official capacity connected with Akvarium is a fact of little relevance. See this review for some insight into the "Dzhoanna" phenomenon.)
(N.B.: This list, although already frightening, makes no claim to be exhaustive at the present time. There are literally dozens of these types of albums floating about—Kuryokhin alone must have 30—and we're adding more all the time.)
Singles
This category contains all Akvarium singles... but then you knew that already because you are not very dumb.