Lenin i Shumov

Vice Magazine’s Guide To Toronto http://www.viceland.com/issues/guide_to/htdocs/band.php Fronted by Ruso-Canadian Eugene Slonimerov, this band is the sonic equivalent of a Kusturica film. In the midst of Slonimerov’s howls and the two-drummer pomposity, you expect to see pigs and chickens and rusty old Fiats cross the stage. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------- Now Magazine, Toronto http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2005-11-17/music_feature7.p hp Russian-born Eugene Slonimerov leads his army into a foamy lather of angular guitar stabs, bombastic drumming, operatic vocals and chaotic strings. LiS conjures up rural and Eastern Europe, yet even with Slonimerov's out-there vocals, they never descend into self-parody. The true Leningrad cowboy. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------- 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Brighton, UK http://20jazzfunkgreats.blogspot.com/2005/06/white-drizzian. html And let us continue up north in Toronto, one of those places where you raise a stone and there's a good band waiting to be discovered, you go to the band store and bands are half price, dog bands, it is band-land! Wait, I am having a Homer Simpson dream. Must be those repeats on Channel 4 at 6. Oh lordy... Anyway, I've been into Lenin i Shumov since I listened to Sebia vs Sebe in the Toronto Blocks! compilation, would've posted it but you can find it in their website. Now they have come with a 'real' debut ep also out in Blocks Recording Club and it's, erm, how do you say 'great!!!' in Russian? (you say it бол..ˆÐ¾Ð¹ This place can't handle Cyrillic.) Cos they are the winners of the 'Russian-Language Noise-Rock band most popular with anglophones in the Greater Toronto Area' award! And according to Mark they are a good dance too! Well, you've listened, you already knew that... With intersections with Creeping Nobodies, Barcelona Pavillion, Ninja High School and many other people, what would you expect? hysteric ranting, mad man manic (apparently they have split up) animal collectivist celebratory spirit, Mahjonggian percussive rattling, no wave inside a bouncy happy bass scabbard and insanely catchy summery riffage, it couldn't be any other way. If this music was a city it would be Constant's New babylon, a place with arcades built on top of each other ad anthill, crazy labyrinths and traps filling the sonic spectre, check it out, in this city the lamplights have switches so its inhabitants can reconfigure the streets at will, well, Lenin i Shumov have turned everything off, I don't know where I am, but it's very fun. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------Aaron Wherry, Toronto http://popwherry.blogspot.com/2004_03_28_popwherry_archive.h tml You really should take a moment (doesn't need to be right now, but soonish) to listen to Toronto's Lenin i Shumov. In their own words: "Lenin i Shumov sing in Russian and play in music." In mine: Brilliant, thrilling, noisy, brassy, post-communist chaos fronted by an angry, diary-reading, Russian David Byrne. Plus, Carl Wilson likes them.------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------Lenin I Shumov - In C Probably the crowning work of this defunct Toronto band, a track that does for Terry Riley's In C what Guy Fawkes almost did for Parliament. While his band sways and tumbles, Eugene Slonimerov roars in Russian or gibberish or both, long lungfuls of madness while the piano resounds. More Mark E Smith than Tom Waits, more Velvet Underground than Gogol Bordello, more mosh-pit than funeral parlour. Sean Michaels, The Skinny, Saturday, 24 June 2006 www.skinnymag.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------How to buy Self Titled EP: In Toronto: Soundscapes and Rotate This. Everywhere else: www.blocksblocksblocks.com