«Luxury Wafers Exclusive: Мумий Тролль — Mumiy Troll, Live@Chessvolt Studios» — Luxury Wafers

Luxury Wafers Exclusive: Мумий Тролль — Mumiy Troll, Live@Chessvolt Studios

Our Luxury Wafers Session with Russian trendsetting megastars, Mumiy Troll, was a barrel of fun, for sure. In a peaceful quest to take over the world with their ROCKAPOPS*, the Vladivostok constellation (Ilya Lagutenko with the velvety engaging voice, guitars, texts, music; Yuri Tsaler tearing it up on the Jazzmaster + keyboards; Eugene «Sdwig» Zvidionny, fun on bass and backup vocals; Oleg Pungin — killer drums) blazed brilliantly beyond language barriers with an energetic and very impressive live set in the studio.

These guys are the real deal and Ilya, the frontman, modestly takes credit as THE definitive force in currently trending music and style in his country. He also paints and stars in film, by the way. As a band, Mumiy Troll modestly appreciates iconic status as the cultural equivalent of The Beatles in Russia. Absolutely charming, warm and sincere, Ilya and the band were fun and easy to work with. How I wish I`d had the forethought to find an incandescent teenage girl from Siberia to come and glean every last drop of appreciation for the spectacular immensity of the occasion.

Born to be subversive, Ilya, who drips of magnetic, ambiguous sexuality like Bowie, has been rocking since even before he entered puberty. His band carries a reputation for energetic debauchery, considered both `one of the most socially dangerous bands in the world` and `Best Band of the Millennium` in Russia.

It`s significant that Mumiy Troll is the only band to be produced in modern Russia since the fall of the Soviet regime.

*Contemporary Russian music is actually divided into what was before and what came after Mumiy Troll. Band founder, frontman Ilya Lagutenko, defined their music style as «rockapops» just to avoid pointless Russian media debates on the definition of what is rock and what is pop. Mumiy Troll became the leader of an entire new musical trend, copied now to greater or lesser degree by Russian wannabees and mainstream artists.