Black Gosudar: ‘Tired millennials find strength and write after a 12-hour shift at the factory’

“All music distribution happens through vertical videos”

There is a band I know that started playing for fun. As a result, they have a bunch of releases, a tour in Britain, and their serious projects have flown by. Isn't it a shame sometimes that something cool, like the song The Boar hits the charts?

Mitya Burmistrov (voice and songs): At first, we also thought that our band was just for fun. But in general, everything becomes successful depending on luck and the level of effort.

Aidar Gainullin (bass guitar): I agree, it's strange. Before the album's release, I was counting on other songs in my head. I thought they were soulful, cool, that they could be sung in a choir, but The Boar made it.

Artur Jerk (voice, songs and guitar): I think it always happens like that: a song seems stupid, but it becomes successful.

Mitya: It seemed stupid to Jerk. I always liked it. In general, there are no hard feelings, because it is never possible to predict a hit. Some musicians claim that they know which of the 10 songs on an album is a hit. This is nonsense, no one knows anything, the people choose for themselves. Kaban now has a million views on TikTok. Now the song On the Poppy Fieldsagainst this background is a microelement of our career. Tired millennials write that after a 12-hour shift at the factory or after two nights in intensive care, they listen to Kabanand they gain strength. This is great, the song has reached the people.

Aidar: There are people like me who do not film anything. And good songs reach good people just like that.

Mitya: But they reach fewer. Because now all music is distributed through vertical videos.

It seems to me that in a sense you anticipated this. At first, I perceived you not as a musical group, but as a visual one.

Mitya: Our style has always gone hand in hand with the music. Perhaps, it was even primary at first. But already in the first album, you could feel what kind of soulfulness had leaked out, and the jokes ended. In the latest album, everything comes from the heart.

“Simply because we had nothing to do”

Tell us then, how it all began.

Mitya: It all began in 2017 with the song The Black Raven. Jerk and I came up with it simply because we had nothing to do. I released the album Monument, I went on tour with it, I was very tired, I wanted some jokes. We picked up guitars, found leather coats, cowboy hats and some attributes of the aesthetics of Russian rock of the 1990s. On our knees, line by line, we came up with The Black Raven. We immediately recorded a video, got 60 likes from friends. A year later, the song Love and Wine was released according to a similar pattern, we immediately shot a video. Liya Safina, my wife, showed up and started helping with the visual style — covers, costumes. And singing in the background. A year or a year and a half later, we decided to record more than just one-minute versions for the YouTube channel where I posted my sitcoms and parodies of commercials. We played our first concert with Aidar, realized that we had a real bass player and we could play real classic rock, and finally recorded studio versions of the songs The Black Raven and Love and Wine, mixed them, and got into some playlists for the first time. I thought, wow, we're a real band. I had demos, Jerk had them, then I wrote more songs, and that's how the album came together.

And then you broke up.

Mitya: We didn't break up, it was just 2022, everyone left. I recently came back. Since last fall, BG has been releasing singles, and new demos have accumulated. I wrote music every day, sent Jerk what was in our style. We released The Diary, then On the Poppy Fields — this is an old demo of Jerk's, which I finished in Serbia, and then we invited Sergey Khramtsevich, who added a saxophone.

And what is it like to get together again?

Mitya: We just haven't seen each other for three years, haven't smelled each other, haven't touched each other. It was very strange, when I was still a resident of Belgrade, I was invited to Sol barfor a concert last December.

I arrived a week before the performance, we got together for the first time with drummer Vitalik Kiselev to “re-play” songs that we hadn't played for four years, new songs. It was stressful, we even all got sick. Jerk's temperature, I think, rose on the second day of rehearsals and didn't go down. I got sick closer to the concert and then it took two months to recover, I was terribly ill.

Aidar: As far as I remember, a year ago Mitya sent me a number of songs so that I could record the bass. And some of them didn't even make it into the album.

Did he give references? For example, the song Karachun reminds me of some band from the 1980s.

Mitya: I think it happened by accident. I rarely use references, most often in my solo project Mitya. I spent about three years making the album Tuu, there were references there, I remixed everything 120 times. By the way, Jerk recorded the bass in Karachun. Aidar's part was too good.

Jerk: I was inspired by the group Crematorium.

Mitya: In some tracks, I play the bass myself. I didn't have a bass guitar in Serbia, I just lowered the guitar recording an octave. Somewhere I used midi bass. But when Aidar touches the bass, it turns out to be the real style of Black Gosudar. I listen to, for example, Poppies and understand that without Aidar's bass the song would not have happened.

“Maybe you yourself have changed?”

How much nostalgia is needed in your music? For me, your album is music that sounds like a memory of something. And it is very sad for some reason, unlike the first album.

Mitya: Maybe you yourself have changed? Because in the first album, for example, there was a song called 5 am.

Jerk: I have been very nostalgic for my youth for the last three years.

Aidar: I told Mitya that most of the songs even resonate with me like some old VIA. Sometimes I expect them to sound like a record from Melody. Maybe this is from some childhood memories?

Mitya: One of my mom's favourite bands is Agatha Christie. I have been listening to Agatha Christie since I was about five. In fact, I have always associated myself with Metallica, which I have been listening to since childhood. At the same time, I remember going to my first children's camp and singing there with Dozhd, DDT. All these groups are our DNA, our cultural code. It is very pleasant to evoke something similar in listeners with my music now. But without being a parodist showing miniatures from the past.

This is not KVN TV show, but a reminder of what was good and what is good now. I do not want to fall into nostalgia: “Oh, there used to be real music.” This is a kind sadness with hope and confidence in the future.

As for me, Russian rock is childhood. Okay, question: how did life in Serbia influence you?

Mitya: I have definitely become much more productive. When you do not have 10 synthesizers, guitars, several pairs of headphones and monitors, you have no problem with where to start a track.

I came up with a wonderful ritual: last July, after exercise and breakfast, I started writing a new track. I had a small midi keyboard, a guitar, headphones and a microphone. And that was more than enough to write a new song. That's how we recorded most of the demos for BG, for Mitya's future album and other projects.

Of course, I missed the guys. Since I didn't have any instruments, it was nice to send the demo to Jerk and say that, for example, acoustics were needed here. I was sure that he would record it properly. The same with Aidar's bass. All this helped to somehow distribute responsibilities and speed up the process.

“Song No. 4”

Tell us about the song The Boar.

Mitya: This is song number 4 in our album. It's about everything, about you and me, Radif. As it turns out, people like to identify themselves with it. It grew out of an old demo from 2021, originally there was a chorus: “We know how long a person lives.” A bit of a strange message, but at first we liked it.

But when I started putting everything together into an album, I realized that the story of the lyrical hero was not taking shape. The unjustified anguish of this song was unclear, who is our main character? And then Leah suggested writing the lyrics from the point of view of a boar. We immediately felt very funny and good at heart, and a day later the new lyrics were ready, which have already resonated with many. I remember, I replaced “lie down by the garage” with “lie down by the reeds.”

It's much sadder to lie by the garage than by the reeds.

Mitya: Yes. And you had to lie in a hole by the garage.

And the song became successful thanks to the short videos.

Mitya: If earlier, in the 2010s, we, indie musicians, discovered ourselves thanks to websites, blogs, VKontakte communities, now only short vertical videos give a start in life. Previously, you had to take many small steps, record a record, give it to the radio, find a label and give it all your money, perform in bars for years in the hope that Igor Krutoy will see you... And now you just post a video.

Aidar: So you posted a video? I think, looking at other videos: who is this 40-year-old woman who cooks something and sings to our track. How did she find it?

Mitya: The thing is that I send the guys bright characters who use our sound. For example, yesterday in the selection there was a real “hog” who works out to BG. In another video, someone is getting a back massage. Some woman is eating burgers and gesturing very brightly. Or a guy of about 50 on the bus just stares at the screen and barely sings along. And this song is playing in the background. Aidar's head is spinning from this, it seems he can't comprehend it. And I'm just grateful, because we've reached the very core audience of TikTok.

I recently read a study that big numbers in the stream do not ensure sold-out concerts.

Mitya: That's right, one does not always make up for the other I recently watched an interview with DenDerty. He complained that 300 or 500 people came to see him in Moscow — a thousand times less than his streams on Yandex. And this is an absolutely normal reality.

But you have to understand that you are still in the one percent of musicians who are lucky enough to be heard. I don’t see any unsolvable problems in this, you just have to keep working hard. You’ve already found an audience that streams you, and now you have to somehow convey to them that you have concerts.

Such democratic times in music. You don’t have to invest several thousand dollars in a studio recording, as was the case in the 1970s, and then try to distribute your record to the listener. You take your phone, shoot an acoustic 15-second video of your song and post it. And this can be your bridge to finding a grateful listener.

It's too early for us to draw conclusions, because we literally just got this video yesterday. We've been sharing this for so long because we have fresh impressions from a new audience. And tomorrow it could end, or maybe Yakubovich will invite us to his show.

What I mean is that all of this is one step away from either a lull or further development. And we can't control it, just like we can't control who will listen to us. Maybe people who come for one song will listen to us... That's still great.

“The main thing is to constantly adapt”

While we were agreeing on the interview, you played two concerts: in Kazan and Saint Petersburg, at Stereoleto.

Jerk: These were my third and fourth concerts without beer.

Aidar: We just introduced a dry law at concerts.

Mitya: I like everything in general. I was very happy to be in Saint Petersburg, because I was invited to Stereoleto last year, with MITYA. And then our On the Poppy Fieldwent viral, I suggested BG, everyone picked it up. I saw all my old friends, half of Kazan moved to St. Petersburg at one time. I performed with ear monitoring for the first time. For the first time I didn't lose my voice, because I had been studying vocals with Masha Dibrova for two months. Just like my wife, she prepared for her concert using a “trick.” Also, Khramtsevich and I performed for the first time without any rehearsals at all. I was happy with everything and thought that this was our best concert. I leave the stage charged up, and the guys are standing there half-dead... It turns out that Aidar couldn't hear himself at all, Vitalik immediately started watching the video again looking for mistakes, Jerk almost passed out. Jerk: In general, concerts are very hard, very resource-consuming, you come home, you're tired. You lie down for another five days, you have a hangover, although you haven't been drinking. Then you recover. I think it's a matter of habit, if you perform often, once a week, for example, over time, maybe it will go away on its own. I used to always perform drunk, but now I look at what's in people's eyes.

Aidar: I took the guys to the booking office of Fuzz and Friendship so that they could make a tour for us. And after these two concerts, I realized that I probably won't be able to play in small, greasy clubs anymore.

Vitalik: The fact that we played much better the second time than the first got me hooked on the process, and now I want to play again and again.

Artur Jerk: And not to die like artists.

And did artists die badly?

Jerk: I mean that the inner artist doesn't die.

Do you have a strategy?

Mitya: I remember I was writing out a strategy for releasing the Tuu album: I sent out promos to hundreds of journalists, sent press releases to a ton of blogs, contacted radio hosts and musicians. In the end, it turned out to be a million times more effective to have a viral video with your own track. So you always need to make plans, but the main thing is to constantly adapt.