"Ardent fans of a meaningful idiocy." Dancepop with a passionate point.

November 21, 2015 7:27 PM

Today we're republishing one of Sansara's most recent and important albums for a Western audience, together with translations of the songs, thirty-one articles, and twenty-four video clips. The album's title - "Igla" (Needle) - carries a specific meaning in the context of Russian rock. It's a reference to a prior generation and therefore to any (ongoing) hope of building meaningful linkages today. For audiences across Russia, that simple noun will undoubtedly suggest a famous cinematic melodrama of 1988, in which rock legend Viktor Tsoi played a young man whose life is tragically shackled to the local drug trade.

He is killed seconds before the credits roll.
posted by rorgy (4 comments total)

My personal recommendations for starting points, if you don't feel you have an album's worth of dancing about in you:

We Dance was the song that led me to Sansara in the first place. Thunder is magnificently dark and low-key. January feels like a fiery apocalypse in all the best ways. I'm Coming is incredibly uplifting.

Really, though, the album is short, tight, and one of the best albums I've heard in years. The whole thing is worth a stream.
posted by rorgy at 7:31 PM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've got to say, "January" does it for me.

Thanks for posting.
posted by Frowner at 7:53 PM on November 21, 2015

Refreshing, raw, yet light, organic music, long spaces between beats no filler.
posted by Oyéah at 8:53 PM on November 21, 2015

I hope I won't be the last person to link to the awesome Victor Tsoi and Kino, the band referenced in the album. Here is a pretty great place to start, with the bonus that it a) has clips from the film in question, and b) teaches the genitive! as all good Russian pop must.
posted by Stilling Still Dreaming at 10:45 PM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]