beauty delux

Tesla Boy: a magic pill of happiness from Russia.

 

Things musically have come a long way in Russia since Mr. Trololo hit the airwaves.   Case and point: hip and happening synth-pop trio Tesla Boy: after three years building a name in Russia, and a few different line-ups, they are finally spit and polish ready to enter the “global” music scene. Not since the faux-lesbian school girl rock band TATU in the early 2000…a guilty pleasure if there ever was one…we all hated it but we all watched the video…  has there been a truly relevant pop musical act poised to capture a Worldwide audience without having to make out with one another : on video any way… You do not need to listen to Tesla Boy as a “Russian” band; it maybe adds a layer of novelty, but it does not make their music.  The band produces pure New Wave pop,  with a retro feel informed by today’s electronica dance beat. The whole thing makes for a very fashionable music cocktail. Great for those evenings when all you want to do, is slip into your Versace’s skinny jeans and go dancing ….

 

Interview magazine snagged a Q&A session with Tesla Boy’s lead singer Anton Sevidov about the attraction of synth music, the history of Russian pop, and Sevidov’s privileged upbringing….

Check it out.

AGE: 28 (Anton), 27 (Leonid Zatagin), 25 (Mikhail Studnitsyn)

HOMETOWN(S): Minsk, Moscow, and Rostov-upon-Don, Russia

BAND NAME: Does our name come from Nikola Tesla? Yes.

My great-great-grandfather was a Serb, and Tesla was also a Serb.

NUBILE NEW WAVE: What attracted me to New Wave music? A condition that is difficult to describe with words. It’s like wild sexuality placed in a very strict and clear structure. It’s as if a beautiful, sexy woman wears a tuxedo and behaves in a very, very restrained way, and only by a few of her gestures can you understand what actually hides behind [her] cool exterior and even coldness.

FIRST SONGS: Do I remember the first song I ever played on the piano?  Yes! It was “One Note Samba” by Antonio Carlos Jobim, my father’s friend. My dad taught me; it was the first thing I have learned. The first thing that I played on the synthesizer was the song “Don’t Be Cruel,” it was preloaded. I just needed to push the DEMO button and pretend that I played, it was my first synthesizer, it was a phonogram. I was a trickster and still I am, but now I write and produce tracks myself.

My family belonged to the Soviet sporting elite, thus we could travel abroad, and my family was very fond of music; for them it meant a lot. Although it might seem strange, I grew up in a totally non-Soviet environment; my childhood records were of Stevie Wonder, Prince, James Brown, and David Bowie. My parents often took me to their private parties, where jazzmen jammed! It was at that time [that] I decided I would be a musician. Before I started my music classes, I was very serious [about] tennis for many years.

 

IF ENGLISH IS THE LANGUAGE OF… I began to learn English at school, and then with a private tutor, who lived in our house. It was easy since I had been listening to English music since childhood. When I write lyrics, I always write them in English, sometimes I even think in English.  Sometimes I think that [there are] several Anton’s living inside me and one of them thinks and speaks exclusively in English. I used to write in Russian, but Russian is the language of literature and poetry, not pop music. It is the language of Dostoevsky, but not the language of Ray Charles.

BACK IN THE USSR: Of late, I think I have turned into an expert for the Western media in the issues and analysis of the Russian pop scene. If we mean synth-pop in its broad sense, there are plenty of people who love this kind of music. If we mean New Wave, they are way less. Dance club music is very popular in Russia, but it is rather cheesy music.

The story of pop music in the USSR is quite sad. Throughout the Cold War, it was a hostage and never was free; [pop] music always had to squeeze in rigid limits—but not [dictated by] the market as it was in the United States, but [dictated by] the Soviet propaganda machine.

The USSR lost this competition at large, and in music as well. Lost unconditionally and with a crash. After 1986, [pop] started to make its first steps to join the Soviet underground music wave, but [at that time it] was unable to be digested. The underground music has become the new pop music, same as in the US or Europe. Now we’re reaping the fruits of those lost times. At present our pop music is dull and boring, it is a mixture of trash and self-mockery to make it short—it is terrible!

THE POINT OF MUSIC IS… To give it away, like a magic pill of happiness.

Video of one of their live performances in St.-Petersburg 22/06/2012