Based in Sant Petersburg, Dvanov is one of the most interesting and less canonical Russian rock bands, formed in 2015 from an area of Russia known as the “Secret South.” A place with a 3,000-year-old history comprising nomadic tribes, civil war, and the point where an endless sea of plains and dark hidden crimes meet to form a one of a kind sound, defying uniform categorisations, drawing from the influences of Psych-Rock, Blues, Kraut and Folk with Gothic-Rock leanings, set to life with an evolving arrangement of drums, guitar, violin, banjo, old analog synths and organs, vocal polyphony with strange kinds of accent.
The evocative and haunting, krautrock tinged, track “Мы отберем у них всё / We will take everything from them” ignites fierce, urgent moods of fearful tinny sharp keyboard slivers burst into a droning backdrop of disharmonic frequencies, swirling around low falling bassline menace and warm slinky synth flows in warped expansions, to bleed extreme conflict into the strong, emotional, and anxious male vocals rapid release of tension.
Nostalgic lyrics inspired from the small Russian town of Uvarovo, where Revolutionary spirit and ideas still linger in the air, weave class struggles, political views, and childhood memories ‘about long summer evenings and nights with the smell of wild grass’ into a picturesque poem set to song.
The accompanying video, directed by Svyat Brusnikin on location in Saint Petersburg, near the deserted cultural centre of “Nevskiy”, sets the stage for a hypnotic dance sequence, choreographed by Nadya Omut and Nikolay Sobolevshot, perfectly aligned with eerie synth swathes dire melodious intentions. Vexed by a mysterious woman’s majestic dance moves, a man finds himself distracted and overtaken by a group of street thugs who beat him senseless while under the spell of the secret vixen. Unharmed by the bloody attack, an immediate possession by the contagious serpentine flow of energy causes a dramatic dance-off where, one by one, the men fall asleep under the woozy charms of the blonde seductress.
Keep up with Dvanov:
