Sergei Kuryokhin - "Iblivyi Opossum. Live in France" {Russia} [1991] (avant fusion)

"Iblivy Opossum" is the account of live performance by Sergei Kuryokhin and his Pop-Mechanika Orchestra at Nantes, France on October 22, 1991. In my view, it is one of the most powerful and significant albums by Kuryokhin on the jazz side, featuring intense upbeat avant-fusion full of adventurous yet structured and coherent improvisations. The music combines thoughtfulness and wild epatage in just the right proportion and is indeed performed with a stroke of genius.


Line-up:

Sergei Kuriokhin - keyboards
Aleksandr Lyapin - guitar
Mikhail Kostyushkin - sax
Aleksandr Titov - bass
Sergei Letov - bass clarinet, tenor sax
Andrey Romanov - acoustic guitar
Sergey Schurakov - accordion
Boris Shaveynikov - drums
Aleksandr Kondrashkin - percussion
plus 13 guest artists

The following short bio of Sergei Kuryokhin is compiled from various sources, major ones being www.discogs.com and www.raig.ru: "Sergei Kuryokhin was a pianist, composer, band leader, actor, director and a prominent figure in the USSR. He first attracted public attention in late 1970s as a jazz pianist, playing solo as well as with Vladimir Chekasin, Anatoliy Vapirov and others. In the early 1980s, before he was allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union, some of his works published by Leo Records in the UK, as well as a number of TV programs made him one of the cult figures of the burgeoning Russian underground. In 1984, developing the concept of melting various art-elements, aesthetics, traditions, and cliches to form the new kind of art, he founded his own project known as Pop-Mechanika Orchestra. The band, which could be anything from a modest trio to a full blown multimedia extravaganza featuring a symphonic orchestra, a brass band, a rock group, a circus, a zoo, a gypsy singer, and whatever else his fantasy could bring up at the moment, subsequently toured most of the world. His music could be best described as a sort of spontaneous improvisation with strong elements of avant-garde jazz and rock, though there are quite many works which could easily satisfy tastes of admires of solo-instrumental, chamber, minimalist, or post-industrial music. He also scored for a number of popular movies, theatre spectacles, and documentaries. Sergei Kuryokhin's discography comprises over 40 LPs and CDs, but his importance stretches beyond his documented legacy. He was known and valued as a tireless catalyst of artistic life, as a creative force which united and formed the artistic community, as one of the strongest and most vital voices of a revolutionary era, the era which transformed the stagnant Soviet Union into new, yet unknown, but vibrant Russia".

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