Review: 10,000 Russos - 10,000 Russos

It was always going to be tough for Fuzz Club Records; how do you follow the dark, glorious malevolence of Sonic Jesus' 'Neither Virtue Nor Anger'....it would take something pretty damned special. In 10,000 Russos (pronounced 'dez mil russos') they have found that something.....and then some!

10,000 Russos are João Pimenta (drums/vocals), Pedro Pestana (guitar) and André Couto (bass) and, according to the press release, they emerged from what they call “a dark, decadent city of a peripheral country in a peripheral continent”: Porto, Portugal. That sense of isolation and pessimism is conveyed through 5 tracks of dark, atmospheric and sometimes aggressive music. Laziness on some people's part will try to shoehorn the album into a generic 'Psychedelic' pigeonhole....but there is a whole lot more going on; the relentless motorik of Neu!, the iconoclasm of Mark E Smith & The Fall, the energy of The Jesus And Mary Chain and, at times, the structure of some of some of the great kosmische bands.

Opener 'Karl Burns' (which, as Fall fans will tell you, is the name of that band's drummer....why he is immortalised here I don't have a scooby) immediately sets the tone...a melancholic, yearning song with vocals incredibly reminiscent of Ian Curtis; in fact Joy Division would be an obvious comparison...the driving bass propelling the track forwards as per Peter Hook, the tense atmosphere of despair...add a sprinkling of fuzz and you're there. 'UsVsUs' starts with what sounds like the forbidding sound of marching soldiers before a motorik beat and throbbing bass line (that bass line!) kicks in and some Mark E Smith intoning. The guitars, although tastefully understated, are immense...there is fuzz, distortion and feedback, but it's not in your face, not for effect but because it genuinely adds to the track....probably my favourite track on the album. 'Barreiro' ( a town in Portugal, not far from Lisbon apparently) has the aforementioned motorik rhythm of Neu! with an underlying electronic dissonance of early Cabaret Voltaire. 'Baden Baden Baden' kicks off with an intro straight out of 1976 and this punkish drive and energy continues throughout....this track also showcases the bands psychedelic side with some wonderful psych guitar straight out of the Sula Bassana stable and an intensity akin to the Jesus and Mary Chain. ‘Stakhanovets / Kalumet' (A Stakhanovite, a google search informed me, was "a worker in the Soviet Union who regularly surpassed production quotas and was specially honoured and rewarded." ) is the longest track on the album at just over 13 minutes. It starts as another barnstormer.....crashing cymbals, intense bass and some more fantastic wah-wah, over which Pimenta wails again like Mark E Smith. As the title suggests this is a track of two halves; after the thrust and drive there comes a drone heavy, krautrock workout with, yet again, another incessant drumbeat and the drones add an exotic but strangely familiar feel to it. Although labelled as one track, they are two distinct pieces of music, and yet they blend together to become the magnum opus of the album.

This really is an immense piece of work...the imagination, the creativity and the sheer scope of the album is huge and, if given the due time and attention it deserves, will cement 10,000 Russos' place in many a 'Best Of...' list of 2015. This is the work of a band who care not a whit for genres and categories but produce the music that they want to produce; there are no sidelong glances to what other bands are doing, no 'jumping on the bandwagon'. I've made no secret of my love for many a record label on the pages of this blog: Cardinal Fuzz, Sulatron, Captcha, BBiB amongst others .....and on this, alongside the Sonic Jesus release and the 'Reverb Conspiracy' LPs, Fuzz Club are well and truly up there with the best.

The album is available via the the band's Bandcamp page.