On the one hand, three is a magic number. Historical digressions and religious analogies aside, consider, for one, the Russian tradition of consuming not-really-nonalcoholic beverages. Four partakers is too much, two is not enough, and only three can share in the sacred meaning by emptying the glass vessel.
On the other hand, rock 'n’ roll has always favored the trio format. Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Blue Cheer, Thin Lizzy, Stray Cats, The Jam—the list can go on and on. A trio is compact, a trio is convenient: a singing guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer; nothing in excess. And it’s a litmus test, too—any unspoken awkwardness that a barrage of keyboards and, say, the brass section can disguise gets thrust out into the open.
To Vezhlivy Otkaz, however, a deliberate return to triunity (recall that the band has had its stints of “compact” music-making—enter the famed vinyl release of 1989 through the then-Soviet Melodia gramophone record firm) is, at heart, a creative experiment as well—akin to spiritual practice or even comparative anatomy. By stripping the many layers of arrangements off the familiar tracks, Roman Suslov (guitar, vocals), Mikhail Mitin (drums) and Dmitry Shumilov (bass, backing vocals) reveal their skeleton, their groundwork—and in the most incredible of ways the basis without any superstructure whatsoever shines as a work of art all its own.
What's more, there's no cherry-picking of repertoire with these “à trois” performances in mind. This challenges the band members to take a complex orchestral piece (most the Otkaz’s pieces of the past two decades were written for a sextet) and then, as Auguste Rodin would put it, “chop off whatever is not needed.” This exercise impels the musicians to be even more demanding of the precision and sound, says Roman Suslov.
Finally, listening to Vezhlivy Otkaz “à trois” makes it especially clear why musical critics still diffidently pigeonhole this Moscow band as “experimental art rock” and dare not offer other definitions. What we have here is exactly that—a “circle of musical studies,” as the musicians once self-defined, a hermetical one to a degree but not opposed to being observed. And there's no purer happiness to a drive lover than being part of these observations.
Movement Theatre
Aghmashenebeli av. 182 / Mushtaidi Garden