Big in Russia, kinda sorta big with us…
[Video]
[6.50]
Thomas Inskeep: This Ukranian hip-hop smash is actually a fairly tender love song with a “you and me against the world” vibe to its lyrics. Griby rap over a fairly downtempo house track — it could almost be something by Luomo from 2002 — with a puffed-up snare, which becomes more affecting with successive listens. Even if you don’t understand the lyrics, you can definitely catch the mood.
[6]
Jessica Doyle: You know you’re an Ugly American when your first reaction to “Ukrainian deadpan indie becomes a massive hit in Russia” is to coo, “Oooh, irony.” But the unvarying beat and almost exclusively measured voices work better for remixers and satirists who don’t start from zero. If you’re already ignorant, “Taet Lyod” isn’t interested in enlightening you. (For Ukrainians, By Ukrainians?)
[5]
Iain Mew: It’s not often that a fadeout is the highlight of a song, but I love how the one in “Taet Lyod” contextualises the rest of it. Throughout, the austerity of their muttered vocals and blank house beats sculpt a mood; the way that it melts as hotter synths arrive leaves a lingering sense of a lot more having been going on beneath.
[7]
Ryo Miyauchi: The shy beat doesn’t ask for much movement to the rhythm from Griby, who indeed keep their head down and hands in their pockets at all times. But it’s the modesty that draws me in, from the beat’s downcast minimalism reminiscent of early ’00s UK bass to the group’s chilled-out calm.
[6]
Cassy Gress: As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m married into a family of Russians, my husband being the only one of the bunch who came to the US young enough to now speak accentless English. I can’t speak Russian for crap, but I can follow along with conversations well enough, to the regular delight of my mother-in-law. “Mezhdu nami taet lyod” means “the ice is melting between us”, and on my first run at a translation on this, I somehow either misread or was distracted by the general blankness of the vocal performance and parsed this as a creepy come-on song. But upon more focused review, part of Yurii Bardash’s third verse talks about “our son doesn’t like chocolate, he eats honey with his hands like a bear, and we look at him, and the ice melts between us.” I do not really have the words right now, as someone with a half-Russian son who likes Маша и Медведь, as someone married to a Russian and experiencing periodic marital issues that are somewhere between cultural and familial, to describe what that verse means to me.
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Katherine St Asaph: Always good to be reminded that even in 2017 it is possible to make a house track sound dangerous.
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