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.)

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KINO's debut album is a brilliant piece of acoustic wonderment executed, mostly, on a cheap-ass Soviet 12-string. Several Akvarium members helped out with the project.

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songs entered; needs a review

It's Not Love (Это не любовь)

This is an unauthorized review of the album Это не любовь. Actually, let's not consider it a review, but an anecdote. By "anecdote," I don't mean un-funny joke in smoked-out kitchen. I mean anecdote. This submission form doesn't scroll text at the end of the line, so I'm going to write in verse.

Night (Ночь)

OK, so the Akvarium connection is impressively tangential—Sasha Titov, bass-meister extraordinaire, was moonlighting in both groups at the time—but our own Mimoza penned a fine review of the album for our never-to-be-completed KINO site, and "waste not, want not" is the Bodhisattva Way.

Blood Type (Группа Крови)

Essential. As Sechya attests, this album can hit you right in your teen spirit.

Joanna Stingray: Thinking 'Till Monday

Subtitled "But rocking not even 'til Tuesday," this Stingray effort exists on vinyl that should've known better.

Radio Silence (Video)

Question: At what point did the musical careers of Boris Grebenshikov [sic] and Eddie Murphy intersect? Answer: When the "Radio Silence" video was slotted just before "Put Your Mouth On Me" in the Columbia Records Compliation Reel #47 Videocassette.

Joanna Stingray: Walking Through Windows

Dedicated to Tsoi's memory, this no doubt had him rolling in his grave.

Musical Ring: Joanna Stingray & Sergei Kuryokhin (Музыкальный ринг: Джоана Стингрей и Сергей Курехин)

Stingray & Kuryokhin? Kuryokhin and Stingray? The tchoo meets the hairdo in this episode of the St. Pete TV variety show "Musical Ring". Madness. We can only imagine.

Shakespear's Sister: Sacred Heart

If you still haven't had enough Chucho Merchan and Olle Romeo, this is the album for you. Boris plays guitar with a collection of the least talented musicians of the 1980s. Woe woe woe.

B. Grebenshikov & A. Zubarev: Water Rhapsody ( Б. Гребенщиков - А. П. Зубарев: Рапсодия для воды)

Shit rhapsody. A. Zubarev et al. record instrumentals of Boris' songs.

Joanna Stingray: 10 Years in Video

OK, admittedly BG's role here is entirely peripheral—limited to one duet with "the Pat Benetar of Russia"—but when confronted with this masterwork none of the Bodhisattvas could resist chiming in. Why? Because we all secretly want to have a duet with Joanna...

Kate St. John: Second Sight

Kate St. John played on several Akvarium albums in the 1990s and Boris returned the favor on this album. Roger Eno also takes a bow on the record, which I believe is the closest we've gotten to a BoB major wish list item: Bryan (not Roger) Eno produces Boris. Ummm...that's not very close, is it?

Vermicelli Orchestra: Anabasis (Вермишель Orchestra: Анабасис)

Innocuous instrumental ensemble led by Seva Gakkel and Sergei Schurakov. Think of a Penguin Cafe Orchestra with a Celto-Slavic twist.

Olga Pershina. In the Grip of Jeans. Innokenty. (Ольга Першина. В объятинях джинси. Иннокентий. )

The Bublik Album. Just try to gnaw your way through this one. We dare you. Half a "rock-opera" composed around a short play penned by BG in the unimaginable days before the Temptation of St. Akvarium, half an early Grebenschikovian poem cycle about a dude named Innokenty and recorded by Pershina for BG's birthday in 1982.

The Beer Album (Пивной альбом)

This is a collection of songs, all of them about beer. There is only one song by Akvarium, the Aroks i shtyor version of their blues classic, "Cold Beer" (sung by A. Romanov). Here's a big surprise for you: this song is the best on the album. So, if you have Aroks i Shtyor (everyone must own Aroks i Shtyor!) you hardly need this.

Joanna Stingray: Shades Of Yellow

Joanna Stingray, eternal avatar of Slavoyankish cross-pollination, weighs in with an ounce of rock and a pound of synth.

Sundari: A Jivamukti Yoga Class

BG & Roth, Roth & BG. Aum...At least, that's what we thought. But it turns out to only have ONE (count it) track with Boris... and that's taken from Refuge. Buy it at Amazon.com if you're really hot for the super-groovy diagram showing how to do Yoga to Boris' song.

Dyusha Romanov: Shamrock Songs (Дюша Романов: Песня о трилистнике)

Dyusha, Dyusha why hast thou foresaken us? It's bad enough that you're dead, but then you had to go and leave this as your last will and testament. Even cold beer can't save you now.

Legends of Russian Rock: Sergei Kuryokhin (Легенды русского рока: Сергей Курехин)

This addition to the blue-cover "Legends" series covers the work of Boris collaborator and Tchooomaster Kuryokhin. As affectionados of Tchooo, we recommend you purchase Kuryokhin in all his full-album glory, but if you're not ready for that you might start here. The collection wisely includes "Tibetan Tango" from Radio Africa, a song that has no Tchoos but features plenty of hoo hoo hoo hee hees. We approve.

Okkerville River (Река Оккервиль )

Anatoli "George" Gunitskii—childhood friend of BG and composer of the (wacked-out) lyrics for a number of the earliest Akvarium albums—has, 30 years down the road, coughed up a solo album that draws its name from one of those self-same (and least understood) early Akvarium opuses. Dzhubchik has it, or, more accurately, had it; Dzhubchik has lost more Yoni than most of us could hope to gain. She draws upon deep resources to review this album despite its loss...

Marc Almond: Heart on Snow

The former Soft Cell front-man records a Russia-themed album, singing part of the time in Russian himself?? Ни фига себе! Predictably, our Borya is along for the wild troika ride. k.p. tikka-ri enthuses: "I've got this album! It's Samsonov & lotsa folk- & old popsa-oriented melancholic stuff...and "Государыня" featuring Akvarium in English & "Nuit De Noel" in English featuring BG. Marc has done a MITKI-album!!! And not a bad one!"

The Bodhisattvas of Babylon