Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all! I see I’ve picked up a few more subscribers since the last post. This is good….(rubs hands). Welcome!
Every so often you stumble upon something amazing that takes you completely by surprise. Such was the case with USSSY, an accidental discovery made while looking for songs by Afghan singer Naghma Shaperai. Mixed in with what I found were tracks titled Naghma 1 through 5 which clearly were not hers.
Turned out it was USSSY’s latest album (2022) entitled Naghma. Naghma is a woman’s name, but it also means ‘song' or ‘melody’ in Persian and a half-dozen other languages which have borrowed the word. As soon as I started listening to them everything else fell by the wayside and I went in search of more of their amazing music, which fortunately I found.
Given the amount of digging I do I'm surprised I missed these guys, as they’ve been around since 2007 in one form or another. USSSY are currently Pavel Eremeev and Artёm Galkin. Various drummers have come and gone, and for a while Artёm left the group then at some point returned. No details on that, but I’m sure glad he did!
USSSY started out as a ’noise rock’ band, and their first 2 albums are in that style. Frantic incoherent chaos is how I’d describe it. The original line-up was Artёm Galkin on guitar, Pavel Eremeev on baritone guitar, and Sergey Ledowski on drums. Ledowski left after the first album and they became a duo, continuing down the noise path. They underwent a complete style change on their 3rd album (2011) and have been strictly awesome ever since. The material presented here is from that point forward as that marked the beginning of their “Middle Eastern” sound.
There are plenty of examples of bands using a Middle Eastern sound of course, especially in the Jazz and Club DJ scenes, but these guys take it to a whole new level. I’ve never heard anything like them before. It’s all I’ve been listening to for the last two weeks, and each time I do I hear something new.
A word about the instruments used, since that's one of the things that sets these guys apart. It's easy to simulate a Middle Eastern sound using the so-called Arabic scale, but that only gets you a facsimile. For the real thing you need an instrument that can play quarter-tones. Listen to track 4. You’ll never get that sound out of a conventional guitar with half-tone intervals.
Now look at the photo of Artёm below. Not only is this a baritone guitar which allows him to play lower pitch notes, it has additional frets to capture the quarter-tones found in Arabic and related scales. So that guitar can be a lead, rhythm or bass instrument, and can transition seamlessly from western to Arabic modes, something these guys take full advantage of. I may have missed something, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone do this. As for their music, at first listen I thought they were mad Arabs or Afghans, they get it so right.
Artёm Galkin Pavel Eremeev
Like I said, I’ve been listening non-stop since I first heard them. That’s why the previous program arrived late. It just got pushed aside. That said, USSSY may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For those accustomed to western music it will sound dissonant at first, but hang in there and it will eventually make sense. I think Bach would have liked these guys. USSSY went straight to my top 10 list, that’s how much I like them, and I hope you will too. Something like this doesn’t come along all that often. If you’ve got the watts, peg this one at 11.
Please don’t ask what USSSY means or how to pronounce it. It’s the first question I’d ask if I were doing an interview, but somehow that got missed. It sort of hints at USSR, but who knows? Whatever, these guys are freaking awesome!
“We drove out demons, not called them in.”
Put me into a trance.
Struck me as North African music (not that I know anything about NA music!). The opening track is one of those noisescapes, then structured pieces emerged. The middle of the show, the drummer really kicks ass! Don't know which drummer this is. The middle pieces started to sound pretty catchy, too.
Although a guitar can certainly play quarter steps by bending, it sure can't by means of frets!