Nürnberg are Oleg Savutin (Олег Саутин) on guitar and Yury Lugaўtsov (Юрий Луговцов) on vocals and bass. High school friends from Minsk, Belarus, the duo formed in 2016 and released their debut album ‘Skryvaj’ in 2018. Subsequent releases were ‘U Nikudy’ in the same year, ‘Paharda’ in 2020, and ‘Ahida’ in 2023, plus various singles and remixes along the way.
I didn’t actually like Nürnberg when I first heard them. Fortunately I’ve learned not to go by first impressions, so I put them aside for later consideration. They sat on my drive for over a year until just last weekend, when I was on a run and they came up on random select. Rolling down the road with plenty of time to listen, I realized I not only liked them a lot, but I figured out why I didn’t the first time. They reminded me of a time in my life when things weren’t going so well, which is probably why this kind of music appealed to me at the time. I won’t go into details, but if you lived through the 80’s as I did, you probably know what I mean.
I found a couple of interviews that shed some light on these guys. Nothing too deep, the usual fanzine stuff. They’re in Russian, but if you’ve made it this far you probably know how to use a translator program, so I’ll leave it at that.
EatMusic.ru interview. Рок на БиС interview.
What surprised me was that neither person thought to ask the most obvious question: how did you come up with your name? That’s the first thing I would ask. A tribute to Joy Division would be my guess. They definitely play in that style, plus the name Nürnberg hints at Warsaw, which was Joy Division’s original name. Joy Division was my first introduction to the genre back in 1978, which probably explains my initial reaction to Nürnberg. Songs can trigger memories and emotions, both good and bad, which catches you off-guard sometimes.
Nürnberg definitely have that ‘retro’ sound, which some people call post-punk. To me they sound more like the New Wave bands of the 80’s. The mood and the chops are very similar. Going by their photos they’re clearly too young to have been there, so I’d be interested to know what motivates them. Their Soundcloud page has them angsting over post-soviet decay and despair, but they seem a bit young for that as well. Nonetheless, they do an excellent job portraying the music of that era.
Their music is simple and to the point, which is representative of the 80’s underground. That was a time when kids picked up guitars, learned a few chords, and formed a band. Results were all over the map, which made it interesting. You never knew what would turn up because there were no creative limits apart from what you could actually play. Things were simpler back then, even though we didn’t think so at the time.
This mix is a little shorter than the usual program. There’s a lot of high-end in Nürnberg’s music and I didn’t want to lose any of it, so I used a 320 bit-rate. To do that I had to keep it under Substack’s 100mb limit. It’s in character anyway though, because that’s about the amount of music you’d get on an LP record back then.
Their lyrics in Russian can be found here and are worth translating.
Tracks: 01. Intro --- 02. Los --- 03. Valasy --- 04. Patanuć --- 05. Niemahčyma 06. Сэрца feat. Чёрная Речка --- 07. Biessensoŭnasć --- 08. Usio Roŭna 09. Spać ---10. Žorstka --- 11. Mora --- 12. Sviatlo --- 13. Nadzieja
I like these tracks, and this is not really my normal oeuvre.
Much preferred Blankenberge. Both Russian bands attempt to release the recovered memory of former melancholy. But the Berge sound like adults extending and refining their wistful experience until, climactically, it breaks into a rush of joy. The Nurns seem youngsters toying w/ Joy Division's sound architecture w/o the emotional depth or musical experience to fully inhabit its existentially sorrowful space. Shoegaze trumps New Wave, at least in my match up.