Winter retreat
Zorge relocates to Tbilisi to continue work on its latest project, ‘Mongoloid.’
Published: September 26, 2012 (Issue # 1728)
ZAL OZHIDANIYA
Zorge frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov (c) says the band is not moving to Georgia to escape political persecution but to focus on creative tasks.
Yevgeny Fyodorov, the frontman of Zorge and earlier of Tequilajazzz, dismissed media reports this week that he had emigrated to Georgia for political reasons, saying that Ukrainian journalists who interviewed him had “misplaced accents.”
“I haven’t emigrated, we’ve just temporarily settled here,” said Fyodorov, speaking by phone from Tbilisi on Monday.
“It’s like everybody does in the rest of the world; if somebody wants to live for a while in some other place, without being bound by their propiska [residency permit for Russian citizens that has remained since the Soviet era], they go there. For instance, a band from Los Angeles goes to rehearse in Canada, or quite the opposite, a band from Canada goes to rehearse in Cuba. It’s just the same, because I have found a very favorable atmosphere here — on both a creative and human level — and I am going to spend some time here. Not the rest of my life.
“We’ll just stay here during the cold St. Petersburg November and December, there’s a very good studio and very good working conditions here. So I’ll be living between three cities: Tbilisi, St. Petersburg and Moscow, because I’ll have a lot of stuff to do in Moscow and St. Petersburg, so I fly back and forth.”
Zorge will open the band’s new season with the release of a new episode of “Mongoloid,” its audio and comic strip series, this week, just before the band relocates to Tbilisi for the autumn.
“Mongoloid” is a post-apocalyptic series of songs, prose and drawings that the band posts on a specially designated website, www.zorgemongoloid.com.
“I don’t know what to call it, an audio comic strip or a multi-episode audio book; it consists of many parts,” Fyodorov said.
“We post an episode once a month, as if it’s a television series. It was supposed to be about the songs, but we happened to meet an artist who does drawings, something like a comic strip. It’s not animation, but rather a slide show.”
“Mongoloid,” which Zorge launched in May, was nominated as the year’s “most interesting Internet project” and “best design” at the Steppenwolf Awards, the alternative music awards founded by Moscow music journalist and promoter Artemy Troitsky.
“It’s unique, because no one has done anything like it so far,” Fyodorov said.
“We’ll be uploading episodes for 12 months. In the acoustic version, the story is told by its character, while on the web site, there is also a narrator’s detached point of view, a literary version of the events, so it’s sort of a multi-dimensional, multi-media thing. The professionals noticed it immediately; the first letter of thanks I received was from [film director] Timur Bekmambetov.”
The materials are available for free and can be downloaded both as video and audio files in different formats. “You can download the whole soundtrack, or you can download just the songs separately,” Fyodorov said.
As with Zorge’s debut album, the project is crowd-funded. Those wishing to support “Mongoloid” can do so on the website www.kroogi.com.
The “immigration” news perhaps stemmed from earlier interviews with Fyodorov in which he said he was considering emigrating after Putin and Medvedev announced a year ago that they would swap their jobs as president and prime minister. He said at the time that he found the moral climate in Russia “disgusting.”
“In fact, [the alleged immigration news] was distributed by the Ukrainian press,” Fyodorov said.
“I gave an interview when I was there, and the Ukrainian press approached it from their specific viewpoint, and distributed the information, having changed the accents a bit, it’s as simple as that.”
Zorge did not perform at the Free Pussy Riot Fest held at Glavclub earlier this month, but Fyodorov signed an open letter from artists in defense of the imprisoned members of the feminist punk group.
“My name is no. 151 on this letter, which has now been declared a list of enemies of Russia,” Fyodorov said. “So I am now no. 151 as a ‘Jew’ and ‘Russophobe’ on a special website — I don’t want to call it ‘Orthodox Christian,’ because it’s false Orthodoxy.”
He said he did not mind being included on the list, but has some apprehensions.
“It’s actually a ridiculous thing; they simply copied the list of signatures of artists in defense of Pussy Riot, and added their own commentary,” he said.
“It amuses me a lot, but it’s a grassroots movement, some volunteers make those lists and that makes me a bit nervous. Because it’s not the KGB who compile those lists, but people who travel in the same metro as you do. It’s a portent not of state terror, but for what can happen if there’s civic disagreement between different social groups or other kinds of groups. That’s what makes me nervous. It’s a grassroots initiative of ordinary people. That is what’s disgusting about it.”
Fyodorov said he had reservations about joining the campaign in defense of Pussy Riot, who were arrested in March and sentenced to two years in prison in August for their anti-Putin performance in a Moscow church, because he subscribes to Tibetan Buddhism, rather than Orthodox Christianity.
“I didn’t take an active part in this situation initially, because it’s common knowledge that I belong to an entirely different confession, and I didn’t want to meddle in Orthodox business,” he said.
“But when the situation stopped being a purely religious dispute and moved into the legal field, it was of course impossible to stand by, and my comments were on Reuters and in Afisha magazine. After web broadcasts from the court ended, I turned off my computer and was happy not to check the Internet for two weeks.”
Although many rock musicians supported the imprisoned women, a number of them said Pussy Riot should be punished for alleged sacrilege.
“It came as no news to me, it only proves that we are all different,” Fyodorov said.
“Just like the rest of society, musicians can be divided into those who are more educated and less educated, those who are rooted in the Soviet traditions and those who are not, those who are inclined to make xenophobic conclusions and those who are not. Reality shows that nothing has changed since 1905.”
According to Fyodorov, the other important issue worthy of attention right now is the activists arrested and investigated in the aftermath of the May 6 demo on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in Moscow, which broke into riots when the police started arresting protesters.
“It’s a matter of prime importance now, but one that has unfortunately been forgotten about,” he said.
While Fyodorov dismissed the immigration rumors, he admitted that his wish to spend more time outside Russia and temporary relocation with his family to Tbilisi was connected with the deteriorating climate in the country.
“There’s an indirect connection; I don’t always find it nice to walk amid people in the street now,” he said.
“It’s not directly connected to the political situation, because there are also issues here in Georgia, as everybody knows. I’m not following politics too closely right now, I decided to get it out of my head a bit and am exclusively focusing on creative tasks. I am interested in it only to the extent of what cleverer and more informed people are writing about it. I just read, and form my own opinion.”
After the “Mongoloid” showcase concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow this weekend, the band is set to spend the rest of October in a St. Petersburg studio.
Zorge will go to Tbilisi to continue work on the project at the end of October.
“We will become a Georgian band for a while; we will be living and working there,” Fyodorov said. “We will just relocate for the fabulous golden autumn and grape season in Tbilisi.”
Fyodorov said he had paid brief visits to the Georgian capital in August and September.
“We like the situation there, apartment rental costs suit us, we like Georgian food and what goes on in Georgia.”
Zorge will not release a regular album for the time being, according to Fyodorov.
“We’re not recording albums at the moment; we record one ‘Mongoloid’ song per month and upload it, as well as some instrumental cinematic music. I can’t rule out that after Tbilisi, we will find ourselves at some other point on the globe, where we’ll be doing just the same thing.”
Zorge will perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 28 at Zal Ozhidaniya, 118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala. Tel. 333 1069. M. Frunzenskaya / Baltiiskaya.