Staraya Derevnya

Hello. You’re listening to the audio.com podcast – a place for conversations about music, sound, art and culture. I’m Ilia Rogatchevski and my guest today is Gosha Shtasel, the singer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader of Staraya Derevnya. Staraya Derevnya describe themselves as a krautfolk collective. Their sound is hard to pin down as it mixes various styles, long compositions that evolve from improvisation and makes use of self-built instruments or unusual objects. The band has been shifting and changing since its initial inception, in the early 90s, as a Russian-language rock group. The current line-up is completed by Ran Nahmias on silent cello, Maya Pik on synths and flute, Grundik Kasyansky on feedback synthesizer, and Miguel Pérez on acoustic guitar. The visual artist Danil Gertman creates intricate animations that drive the band’s performances and influence their sonic direction. I first came across the band when they performed at Supernormal in 2022 and it was one of my personal highlights from the festival. To date, the band has released five studio albums along with several live recordings. A new live album that documents Staraya Derevnya’s concert at London’s Cafe Oto from last year is being released by the Blue Tapes label on the 3 November 2023. Staraya Derevnya is spread across different continents, with members based in the UK, Israel and Mexico. This means that playing together can prove logistically challenging. A tour of Israel, France and Belgium was planned, but unfortunately had to be cancelled due to the unfolding Israel-Hamas war. Stasel and I made the decision not to discuss the current situation in Israel and Palestine and our conversation focuses primarily on music. The podcast was recorded at the British Library in London where Stasel works as an audio preservation engineer. – IR: Staraya Derevnya began in the early 90s, in 1994. It was a different band back then. GS: Completely different, yeah. I'm a founding member, so I stayed since then. It was a sort of typical teenage rock band. I couldn't play any instrument properly, so I was chosen as a vocalist. It lasted for a few years. Then we broke up, naturally. I was against it. I was probably the only member who actually wanted this to continue, so I started to work with people individually and recording the music that we were playing as a band, sort of post-breakup. So it became like a studio project until it became a band again. So we had sort of many phases and many, many periods. IR: Because the first album came out in 1999, that was Экспедиция. GS: Yeah, that's the initial rock band that existed. IR: And then it was a sort of 11-year gap until the next Staraya Derevnya album. GS: So I guess it's probably better to give a bit of a context to describe myself. I was born in Ukraine. I moved to Israel when I was 12, and there we started the band. We were all immigrants from the former Soviet Union. We were all inspired by Russian rock music of the end of the 80s period. We played together for a few years until I moved to the UK. So that's about time when I finished mixing Экспедиция, and that's when it came out. So the following few years I didn't do much music. I was busy with just setting my life here and trying to survive in the UK. IR: What first got you interested in music and sound making? Do you have an early sonic memory that you come back to? GS: My memory would be when we had a rehearsal as a band, and someone brought an 8-channel mixing desk. I was the sort of closest to the mixing desk. I started to move faders, and you suddenly feel in full control of what's going on. I think it made me very clear what I want to do. IR: Is that when you decided that you wanted to become a sound engineer? GS: Definitely, yeah. I would think of myself as a sound engineer slash musician, and nowadays I view many things through the sound. IR: So we're sitting inside the British Library in the sound preservation section, surrounded by lots of tape machines and audio cassettes. GS: Yeah, those are audio cassettes. This is an amazing collection, actually, I'm working on right now. This is Michael Gerzon's collection, amazing mic techniques that he himself invented, and also a really interesting snapshot of live recordings in Oxford and London, from early Radiohead to Derek Bailey's company and Estonian band Ne Zhdali early concert. There's some really amazing stuff in there. IR: So this is part of your job to sort of preserve old formats and digitise them for the greater good and for the future. GS: Yeah, so I'm transferring all sorts of recordings. So cassettes are relatively straightforward formats, but we have lots of Open Reel, lots of records, digital formats like DATs and MiniDisc, early PCM recordings on VHS and Betamaxes, Cylinders, Dictabelts, many, many other formats. So you need to learn about the history, how it was recorded, when and by whom, what equipment was used, how to get the sound that was intended in the first place. IR: Because there's also a sort of creative element to what you do. And I'm thinking now, particularly about the Breathe In Breathe Out installation that's upstairs in the Treasures Gallery, which you mixed, I think, for 8-channel surround sound. And I had the opportunity to visit it yesterday, and I really enjoyed just letting myself be washed over by the sound. And the bit that I caught is Hildegard Westerkamp's walk along Kits Beach [Kits Beach Soundwalk, 1989]. And I know that recording quite well. It's a foundational recording within sound studies. But having all these other sounds worked into the mix when she's talking about barnacles or whatever, and what you're hearing isn't necessarily barnacles, it's bells or... I'm not quite sure what it was now, but I just wanted to ask about that particular project. What was your brief? What was the work like? GS: By the way, the other sounds you've heard, most of it, I think, is Giuseppe Elassi studies. GS: So I came to this project quite late. The initial idea was to have a sound installation, and the main theme was relaxation. And I don't think we quite knew what that was supposed to be. Like, how do you interpret relaxation? Because what's relaxing for one person might be incredibly annoying for the other person. There were already some recordings that were selected on the project, so that's when I joined in. So we talked about a few things. One thing, I think the way we decided to interpret it at the end was relaxation in form of escapism. So throughout the piece, there's like 20-something minute piece, there's different environments. So there's a section about the forest, there's a section about the sea, there's a section about mountains. And the idea was to let the sounds to transform you to these places, which doesn't necessarily mean literal illustrating. So if you talk about, say, sea, you don't need to put a sound of the waves. It has to be more subtle. You don't need to write a little note like, this is waves, this is trees, this is forest. You should really feel it on the emotional level. So we took a few groups of sound from the British Library collection. So we took some music, we had spoken word, environmental recordings, soundscapes, and we mix all those things based not on what this sound means literally, but trying to create somehow or some kind of emotional journey throughout those different places. And to make it more exciting, we did it in a channel setup. So the sonic picture sort of moves around the room. And it was quite interesting sort of mathematical thing, because I mixed it on stereo ProTools. So a lot of it is just creating a matrix of how the sound's going to go through the space. And then using this matrix, mixing each speaker separately together to get a complete picture. IR: Within that soundscape is also your own project called Skull Mask. GS: That's right. Yeah, I sneak a little bit of my own music in there. IR: And that's Miguel? GS: Miguel Pérez. IR: Miguel Pérez, who's based in Mexico, and he plays guitar, and you play the wheel lyre or hurdy-gurdy. GS: Yeah, that's right. IR: Can you tell me a little bit about that project? GS: Sure. I met Miguel online. We both played in Tusk Festival in Newcastle at different years. And Tusk Festival played a huge part in Staraya Derevnya as a band. We played that twice. We played in 2016 in Newcastle, and then at the virtual Tusk at the time of the COVID. And so did Miguel, actually. So he played as a solo project, which is called Skull Mask. It's just him on the acoustic guitar. And I saw there was quite a lot of similarities in sort of his approach to music and the way we try to do it with Derevnya. So I reached out, asked if he wants to participate. He sent me a few files. We started working sort of together online. And then last year, we finished an album, and we played a few gigs in the UK. And that was a great opportunity to invite him over. And about the same time, I started experimenting with the hurdy-gurdy, and I suggested we do something together. So basically, I joined him in Skull Mask to play those gigs. So the recording in the exhibition is the album that came out this year. And it documents two performances in the UK last year. One was in Café Oto, one was in Supernormal, and these were literally our first and second time playing together in this setup. IR: You and I met at Supernormal. We happened to be camped next to each other. And then that's when I first saw Skull Mask, and I didn't realise that it was only your second show at that point. GS: Second show and basically second time of us playing together. We did exchange a few files online, but it's not the same. I think with this particular project with Skull Mask, you absolutely have to be in the same room together. That's when the magic happens. IR: And what is a hurdy-gurdy in terms of... how does it function? How do you play it? How does it respond to the guitar? How did you get interested in it? GS: I'm not a very good musician, so I'm not playing it in the right way. But I'm absolutely in love with sound of the hurdy-gurdy. It's one of the very few actual acoustic drum instruments. There's not that many. There's like Schruti Box, various types of harmonium, maybe bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy. That's it. And hurdy-gurdy is also very tactile. So whatever you do with the instrument, you can hear it straight away. It's quite expensive. It was really difficult to find. I found a guy in Russia, in Perm, who made it for me incredibly cheap, comparing to what other instrument of the kind costs. When I start playing it, and I don't think it's this particular instrument, what I found out is that this instrument is incredibly temperamental. When you take it and start playing, you really don't know what's going to come out. Because temperature, humidity, tiny little things change it completely. It's a lot less consistent than any other instrument I've ever played. And I think my approach to this is that I view it as an advantage of the instrument. So it allows me to come in and not being afraid of making mistakes, sort of embrace it. And when I hear these artefacts, instead of trying to hide them, I start playing with them, and I start to make something out of them. I also use guitar pedals when playing. Some very basic distortion and delay effects, but nothing else. And I think Miguel's approach to guitar, the way he plays guitar, I think our two approaches really complement one another. IR: He plays sort of maybe a hybrid flamenco style, but he comes out of the metal scene. GS: That's right, yeah. He's incredibly versatile. His main thing is metal and harsh noise, but he's very interested in jazz and very interested in folk. He's an incredibly open-minded person. And I think all his influences, I mean, I can hear them really well in everything he does. And I think that's probably why we started working together, because I think we're not going for a specific style. We're not trying to emulate anyone. But all that we heard and all that we like somehow makes its way to the music we create. IR: Miguel also played guitar on the last Staraya Derevnya album, Boulder Blues, which came out in 2022. How do you choose who to work with? Because you have quite a lot of contributors. People come and go, they add various different elements. And I'm interested how physically it works, because you're spread across different countries. GS: As I mentioned, the band changed many times, so what's true now might not be true for how it was 10 years ago. Currently, we exist in two forms. One form is a live setup. And in terms of live, we're quite limited. We're five musicians plus a fine artist who does the visual stuff. There's a complete democracy in what we do, because we improvise, so we have to look and to listen to one another. When we do recordings, it's much easier in a way that, well, if something doesn't work out, it just doesn't end up on the recording. So I can try anyone who's interested and see what happens. Usually in our albums, there'll be much more participants. And then sometimes, if it works out really well, then we can think maybe we can ask the person to join us on stage and do something sort of much more closer and more collaborative like it was with Miguel. But I like to invite different people. I like to think of us not as a band, but rather as a collective where our roles are very loose and people can come and go. And if someone wants to contribute two notes for individual songs, that's perfectly fine. And if another person wants not only to play, but also to listen to all the versions of each song and discuss and help and all this, then that's great as well. It's a very open way of working. IR: Do you have a conceptual drive behind the band? The reason I ask is because the name is quite evocative in terms of imagery. Staraya Derevnya means old village, and it's a reference to an area in St. Petersburg. But also you describe yourself as a krautfolk collective. And so to me, there's a sort of rustic or a folk music element to what you do. GS: Yeah, in terms of name, it's quite random. In the first iteration of the band, one of the people who played brought this name. Everyone just loved the way it sounded. I didn't actually know that this was a neighbourhood in St. Petersburg, but so be it. So I still like the name, but I'm not looking for any literal meaning. In terms of genres, everyone wants the definition. When we were setting up this tour that, as I mentioned, probably not going to happen, one of the concert organisers mentioned that, I don't know how to describe you. You're one band that I really don't know what to write about. So in a way, when we put this name, psych folk or krautrock or post-punk, it's a way of helping people to find some references. It's not necessarily a band that playing in a certain style. These are reference points. So if you want to know what it's going to be like, think about these people playing these genres of music. There's no more than that. The rustic feel, yeah, I think it is. A lot of it is also, I think, my approach to sound. I like texture. I like to think about music more as a sound than melodies and rhythm. And I try to be as intuitive as possible with it. I had a funny conversation with one of our members who said that for him, the folk music is not a genre. It's the way to approach music. So basically, if you like something, if something sounds good to you, then it's yours. Go on and play it. Sort of this sort of disregard to different styles and the rules. So you know these rules, you know this style, but you have a freedom of operation and pick what you like. There's like a citation from an aquarium from a Russian band, like, I take mine where I see mine. So this approach. IR: I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I would even go as far as to say that all music that isn't academic music is folk music, because it's made outside of the academy. And all those genre divisions, they're sort of part of an industry that's trying to sell different products to different demographics. You mentioned texture just a minute ago, and you are credited as playing lots of different objects. And there are things like kazoos and cymbals that are played with violin bows. I want to ask, how do you choose these objects? And what is it that attracts you to all these different textures? GS: Sound. I just listen. That's all there is. It's funny, if you go to a percussion shop, and they sell shakers, and they sell all kinds of ethnic percussion, or whatever, different types of percussion. But they're all made by a professional percussion company. You pick, and they sound exactly the same, every single one of them. On the other hand, if you go to Camden Market, to some sort of cheap touristy souvenir shop, and take a look at different drums and different tiny bits of percussion from there, every one of them is entirely different. So you just pick each one, and you listen until you hear something that you absolutely must have. And that's not necessarily percussion. It can be, I don't know, a household object, a mixing bowl, or a lid from a pan. You know, you pick it up, you accidentally hit it with, I don't know, with a spoon, and then boom, this is what you're looking for, you must have this. It sort of comes intuitively, you listen all the time. I guess it's a sound engineering thing. A lot of it is listening and noticing things. IR: Do you make your own instruments as well? GS: No, our violin player does. He makes his own violin, and recently he's been making some amazing dulcimers. Currently they all go as presents for friends' kids, but I bet there'll be lots of these instruments in the next Staraya Derevnya album. IR: Is that Ran? GS: Yeah. IR: Yeah, he also made his own cello. GS: That's right, yeah. Did I say violin? Okay, I meant to say cello, sorry. IR: But it's almost the same size as a violin, I think. GS: Yeah, it's a portable cello. IR: Yeah, because a standard cello is quite difficult to take on board the plane. It might get damaged, or you have to buy an extra seat for it. And you can take this one apart, I think, or it's so small that you can fit it into a suitcase. GS: It's a purely practical thing. He made it for travel, but yeah, he makes his own instruments. He plays the theremin that he made, and cello, now dulcimers. I'm secretly hoping that there'll be a hurdy-gurdy one day. IR: And you also have Danil Gertman, who is this sort of visual arm of Staraya Derevnya. I read a couple of interviews with you guys, and I think it was on The Quietus where he said that the visual element is just as important as all of the sounding elements, the rest of the musicians, and when you play live, you'll face the projection, the screen, so that you're responding to what's happening on the screen. And he's creating visual elements, and he's animating them live. And I'm interested to find out, how did you arrive at this way of working? GS: So I know him for many, many years. I know him when he wasn't a painter, and when, in fact, he was a singer-songwriter. So someone gave me a cassette of his recording. That was when Staraya Derevnya just started, that's many, many years ago. And I was a huge fan, and then I met him, and we became friendly. And since then, I was really hoping that one day we would do something together. I think in 2013, we were going to record a concert, and I invited him, asking whether he wants to draw live on stage as a fine artist, because I still think that his approach to what he does is very musical, and it's pretty much what we do. So that didn't quite happen, but a few more years went by, and then Attack Tool came out, which is an iPad software that allows you to draw and animate at the same time, and he became interested in that. And finally, that was an opportunity to invite him to the band, and it finally happened. So the way we treat what he does is like with any other instruments. So he's not illustrating, he's playing with us. When we play live, it's not 100% improvisation. We have some sort of structure, we have some sort of idea where we start and where we want to arrive. The question is, how are we going to arrive to this point? And it's very similar with the visual side, so he knows the general roadmap of how things are going to evolve. But by listening to us, and by us seeing him drawing, together we can arrive to the same place. IR: You mentioned Tusk Festival, and we talked a little bit about Supernormal as well, and you've recorded quite a few things at Café Oto, which is, for anybody who isn't aware, it's a music venue in East London, which has for 15 years, I think, been basically a staple of the experimental music scene in London. And I'm curious to find out how you got into the music scene, and why record there? Is it because you don't play live very often, so when you do play live, it's a good opportunity to record? GS: I mean, in terms of recording, I just record everything, and nothing goes to waste. At the moment we get together in the room, I would start recording, and that includes tuning instruments, that includes any mistakes, I don't know, broken strings, anything. Everything goes into this pot, out of which the album hopefully one day comes. And the same goes for all the concerts. So everything is recorded, and because we can't see each other every day, I have a lot of time on my hands just to sit and listen to all the recordings. Anyone, I think, who's interested in open-ended music in London will inevitably come to Café Oto, there's no escaping. And it's more than that. It's definitely the best, the nicest venue I've ever played. Compared the two recordings for Skull Mask album, because we did two shows, and the one in Supernormal was a lot more aggressive, a lot more sort of emotional, and Café Otto, to my taste, was a bit kind of laid-back, and I wasn't quite happy, and I wasn't sure why it was happening. And we discussed that, and it turns out we were just too comfortable. Sometimes you actually want the stress, but the way Café Oto functions, they really make everything possible to take the stress out. They also do a great recording. Every show is recorded, and it's recorded really well, comparing to all the other venues we ever played with, just comparing the quality of recording. I don't know how they do it, but they manage to get excellent quality recording, so it's a pleasure to mix and do something with it afterwards. And it's, sorry, by the way, it's the next album that comes, we're probably going to get it announced next week. IR: That's the Café Oto live album. And this is coming out on Blue Tapes? GS: Yeah. IR: Is there anything else that you want to say about that album? GS: So this would be the second live album we put out, and the second live album that I mix, I find that mixing live album is very difficult. It's just different to studio recording, and I try not to make the same mistakes I did in our first live album, and actually this time I'm really proud by the result. Blue Tapes, it's a really amazing label with its own aesthetics, with its own vision, and you can both see it as a visual, sort of the items they put out, but also the choice of music and everything, and I think we're an excellent company. IR: Is it on cassette? GS: It will be on cassette, yeah. IR: And for anybody who's not aware, they do cyanotype artwork, it's always kind of like blue hue... GS: Yeah, usually all the artwork, as far as I know, is made by David, the guy who runs the label. This time we really wanted to bring Danil into the picture, because it would be wrong not to include him in this. He played such a huge part. So it is David's artwork based on original Danil's painting. IR: Can you talk a little bit more about why mixing a live recording is so much more difficult than a studio recording, and what are those mistakes that you made the first time around? GS: I think when you are in the room, when the music is playing, you perceive it very differently to when you hear the recording music, and I think that's why there's not that many good improvised recordings. I've seen some amazing, amazing concerts, some of the best in my life, and then you finally get the recording of this, you put it on, and somehow something is lost, so you have to be present. Improvisation is a lot about presence, about feeling what's going on, and when you try to take this and convert it into an album, convert it into recording, documenting is not enough. You have to find where those important things are not captured, and somehow to compensate for them. You need to find this energy that somehow seeps through the cracks, and bring it in, and compensate it, and try to make these little corrections. It sort of sounds a bit abstract, but it's a very real problem. If you listen to a lot of improvised music, it's hard not to notice how difficult it actually is to capture. IR: You're also the vocalist of the band, and sometimes the words are yours, but a lot of the time they're based on the poetry of Arthur Molev, and he is a visual artist who's also worked with the Russian rock band АукцЫон. I think he did some of their artwork. What is it about his poetry that speaks to you? Why have you adapted it so many times? GS: Arthur, when he was in London, gave me a book of his poems based on him visiting his parents in Israel, so there's nothing specific, but there's something in it that I can relate to. I don't know how to explain it. I think that what we do are songs, really, and vocal plays an important part. That's why we have vocals in almost every track, but I think the role of the vocals is different, sort of to conventional song. The voice is like a focal point, so in order to perceive the piece, when you're listening to the piece, you need something to hold on to, something to pay attention to, and that's the role of the vocal. The lyrics, the actual message, is not that important. The lyrics are mostly in Russian, but half of the band doesn't know Russian, and I don't think it's a problem, because the vocals are there to create a certain type of tension. On the other hand, the words are important, because I cannot sing about random stuff, it just will be fake. So the vocals are important to me, they allow me to give the certain performance. I think that it's very repetitive and dreamlike, regardless of examples are or not. In one of our albums, we took a lyrics, it's also one of Arthur's songs, so this is a song about Christmas, New Year, candies, presents, and Santa Claus, and smell of pine trees, and so on. And in terms of vocals, this is probably the angriest, the loudest track we ever did, like really psychotic screaming on top of your lungs. The two opposites of the meaning of the songs and the way it's performed, that creates tension, and this is what I'm trying to get. I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be like the opposite meaning to the performance, it can be different types of tension, but I'm trying to find this tension, and around this tension we can build the song. IR: And a lot of times you've been described as psychedelic as well. GS: I think surreal is probably more accurate. Psychedelic is this sort of feeling of falling through music, that's how I describe this feeling to myself, that's why this sort of falling through is also in some of the titles of the albums and things we make. The feeling of uneasiness, it's like, I don't know if you know this David Lynch film, it's basically like a series that he made into a film called Rabbits. IR: Yes, I know it, yeah. GS: Yeah, so like you have people with rabbit costumes and masks, saying things that don't make much sense. Full of non sequiturs and really strange sound design. Yeah, and then there's a laughter in the background, and you feel dread, like real dread, you get like cold sweat by watching this, and you don't know like why, why is it so scary? IR: Because it's like a sitcom format, isn't it? GS: Yeah, it's like a sitcom parody, there's a lot of self-irony in it, so it's not like he's trying to make some very serious point, he's having fun. But by watching this, somehow he managed to touch something that makes it incredibly scary. Sort of try to talk about the most important basic things, like human sort of, I don't know, existential horror, without actually talking to them. This is where I would like to get, this is the direction I want to get. IR: So speaking about where you're going next, let's reflect on where you began, how your sound developed, particularly since 2016, which is when the album Kadita Sessions. IR: Yeah, that's the improvisation, that's when the improvisation kicked in. It's a funny story about Kadita, actually. I was playing with another band at the time, called Translit. Derevnya was a completely studio project, we didn't think about this as a band, and I had an idea, let's rent a little place in North Israel, it's like a tiny little village, and I'm going to invite all the musicians I worked with, plus a few of the friends, and we're going to record some music. That's actually when I invited Danil to physically paint, to what we were doing. So that was the initial plan, and then many things happened. So one person got like an urgent abroad trip for work, the other person was fighting for his life in the hospital, the third one got a divorce, the life intervened, basically. So none of the people that I initially invited actually could make it, but other people did. We just sat there and we said, okay, we're here, let's improvise. And most of these people are actually making up of the current Staraya Derevnya band. I think that's when we actually made the new band and the new approach, that's when we understood how we want to proceed. IR: And where do you think Stara Derevnya is going to take you next? GS: This year has been incredibly productive for me, so I think I started to do much more music than I ever did in previous years. So I'm trying to be more open, I'm trying to have more collaborations, have a lot of ideas about Derevnya and different songs, and every day brings something different. Coming back to where we started, we're taking a huge hit now, because we were preparing for this tour all year. And we need to reorganize and to find a way so we won't have a year wasted. We don't want to say, okay, we give up, let's wait another year, then we try again. We need to get from this situation somehow. But meanwhile, we keep working.