Look at the wild lllllllll9l 

(Math. 6:28)

“Lilia” is a musical project from Perm, which emerged either as a lesson in a horizontal arts school, or as a teenage garage band from films about some American college. This is how my little opus about Anya, Dana, Ilya and Natasha could begin if I had something to say about “Lilia” besides the fact that it should cease to exist.

desire

Play starts because it is driven by a desire to be one sound. Then a miracle happens: this shared existence is saved, although, not everyone is ready to discuss what happened. And they certainly won’t let anyone else come close. Everyone is hiding, hiding, hiding, keeping silent about the important and later should fall apart.

While I was thinking about “Lilia”, all the time I saw that none of them wanted me to write. And that, despite our friendship, I cannot approach. Sometimes a lively conversation was torn at the exact moment when I asked about the group. Maybe it’s my embarrassment or a long illness. Only once did I manage to ask direct questions. We spoke with Anya.

Voice, a longed-for sound, has a power to disorient (whose is it? Where is it coming from, how and when is it awakened?). A twin-voice howls like a ghost plane, and a distorted reflection rises in front of your eyes: someone – not you, but also not someone completely different – is looking straight at you. 

Anya told me that voice has a face, an unkind face. And interest is beyond looking into it. The aesthetics of sound doesn’t follow the information that it contains. It’s best it to collect shells on this rift.

Of course, I answered that I knew nothing warmer and more desired than a voice, because if it belongs to a person, then this is probably the voice of a Friend (1). And then it is clear what is happening and where to go. Why split sound into essential units, when it is so hard to believe that there is at least anything that is not split in two? A song is an integral knowledge that I cannot try on. Voice is calling home, this is a voice of a Friend, you should go where it comes from.

Anya answered that she found such peace and clarity in an Image, not in voice.

plane

More than once I have heard, as they say with a bit of envy to Perm residents, that the city is stretched along the Kama river into the horizon and not compressed to one point. It turns out that when everything is so extended and smeared, there is absolutely nowhere to hide from the deafening howl. And in order to get together, you need to make extra efforts.

Planes fly low over Perm every 15 minutes. It is impossible to hear a voice of a friend walking alongside if a winged car is buzzing right above you at that moment. Bogdanova writes about a “sound community” (2). This is a group, for which sound is a wire of communication with environment. Though, sometimes you can’t tell a signal from noise.

Why am I writing about these planes and urban planning? I am trying to figure out an abstract noise enemy that seems to have surrounded “Lilia” from all sides, since they always want to defend themselves.

The protective square of «lili» looks as follows. Each play has its own pattern and flexible functions: Anya is responsible for voice, Dana is responsible for melody, Ilya for rhythm and Natasha makes dampen waves. The formula is defined and internally clear, therefore it can be translated into other languages. For example, you can say: “Lilia” consists of a confused old fairy, a cute moon prism, a squeaky guy and someone fourth, self-excluding, but with sharp teeth.

I hear such an outwardly clear “Lilia” as a diamond fortress, entangled in wires. There is absolutely no one around it: only a plain, swamps and a deep river. And on the highest tower four knights are fighting. Without looking, they fire in all directions, and I don’t know if they are having fun or do it out of despair. I do not have time to really think, because there is not a single minute for listening. And even from the ground you see that the battle goes on inside – who will outscream the rest.

To perform in the field of music, it seems, one must consider the fact that music exists only together with its tasks and means. And this requires silence.

When the background is too demanding, I cannot make out important signals. Here a plane flies again, which means we have to interrupt our conversation and cling tightly to the cut off phrase so as to get back to it later. Words of friendship need a pause and silence. Manage to pronounce and listen, no one is chasing you and does not want your death.

three reasons

  1. With wires and unfunny jokes “Lilia” endlessly fights against abstract evil.
  2. “Lilia” is not music, because it disregards music. But these four found themselves an elixir from “petrified numbness” and dryness (3) – a play and constant reinvention of themselves. They are Power Rangers, Totally Spies, US girls and group «Death at Once».
  3. Then, perhaps, it’s not a big deal that institutions still recognize them, rather, as “a group of Ilya Grishaev and charming (unnamed) participants from art school”, and a half of “Lilia” did not know until recently that it stems from a pedagogical experiment and imposed care, and not from a spontaneous collective decision to gather your own band.

It is incredibly interesting how you can be one whole, having radically different ideas of what is happening, and, most importantly, how “Lilia” emerged, how it grows and where.

My version: “Lilia” “dances on shit” * and grows wires from swamp **.

https://vk.com/lllllllll9l  – memes and lives

* “Tng” or “dance on shit” – a series of self-organized noise concerts in Perm; “Lilia” band is a permanent participant.

** swamp does not show any movement that could be seen from the outside. I think that this is like a house (this is Perm), but dangerous and dreadful for a stranger. There is another element in the myth about swamps and wires: what connects should fit everything and in theory should break any static. The metaphor was borrowed from Polina Kolosaridi (PK), Internet researcher. PK wrote that she anticipates an unknown connection between swamp and wires.

(1) Fedier, François. Voice of the Friend. Ed. 2nd, rev. Saint Petersburg: Ivan Limbakh Publishing House, 2018.P. 80.

(2) Bogdanova, Elena. The boundary between public and private in the sound community: a study on the modern Russian countryside // Laboratorium. 2017.9 (1): 4. P. 29.

(3) Theophan the Recluse. Heartlessness and coldness in the soul among the deeds of salvation // URL: https://religion.wikireading.ru/8400  (date of entry: 25.11.2020).