Y*nka Dy*leva-Styd i Sram LP (1991)

"At that time, in that country, life was cheap. That's about all I can really say about it."-Kevin Failure on life in Siberia, ca. 1992

Dead musicians, especially suicides, invite bad, romanticizing writing. When said suicide was also from a place as remote and oppressive as Soviet-era Siberia, and the writer doesn't speak Russian and hence can conveniently ignore the dead on her own terms, it's hard to stop the purple prose from irrupting outta yer bowels.

   So I'll keep to the basics with Yanka Dyagileva. She played in Grazhdanskaya Oborona and, as a member of the fledgling Russian underground music scene, led a marginalized, itinerant life. She recorded it in 1991, shortly before her death, which was probably a suicide.

The album alternates between plaintive, slower dirges and tunes dominated by Dyagileva's urgent guitar strumming; the final 9-minute epic ends with 3 minutes of chaotic clamor akin to GrOb at their best. What stands out about Shame and Reproach is how defiantly, passionately alive Dyagileva was: After all, shame and reproach both require some sort of community to have any meaning at all. Not knowing Russian, my final impression is that these songs are melancholy not fatalistic, angry not despairing.

We're the flowers in the dustbin. I don't think this was ever released commercially, but this site has downloads and info, if you read Russian. Also peeps this for a good, English-language bio. Big ups to Substix blog for puttin' me on to Dyagileva.

p.s.-The first song was cut off and I haven't been able to find a full version of Styd i Sram online. If anyone has a full copy, please let me know!

*Edit, 7.19.12: Re-upped the file. Unless you're a member of the Dyagileva family and don't want this circulating, fuck you to whoever reported this file as copyright infringement to Mediafire. This album never even received commercial release in the USA!*