Aliosha Give me a chance!-s/t EP (2012)

Even for a blog that specializes in weirdo, left-field eccentricities, Aliosha, give me a chance! is pretty fucking bizarro. These Belorussian punks burble out seven tracks of longform, clanging, relentless glum rock, and in the process manage to turn a Bob Dylan song into something approximating the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray." Which they also cover, incidentally.

I'm usually pretty down on bands that record covers, especially if the covers constitute most of a release. How hard is it to scrape together original material? Apparently Aliosha began as a Sex Pistols cover group(?!?), and morphed into a real band when they started playing real drums instead of books (?).

Anyway, I will say that this thing is a partial exception to the anti-covers stance. The only one remotely close to the original is the "Sister Ray" version, and, as noted, they morph the other covers into droning, humming, bass-driven torment closer to Throbbing Gristle-style industrial misery than good-times rock.

"All I gotta do" scratches out an almost-danceable beat in the midst of xylophone- and bass-driven torment. Forlorn words float in and out under the din, and the end result is the sort of dance music that PiL specialized in ca. 1982: yes, one could dance to this stuff...if the Black Death was the only other gig in town, y'dig?

I have no information on this group beyond their facebook page. I really am at a loss on this stuff, but it's interesting enough to keep me coming back to it, again and again. With no firm conclusions.

DIG IT...or not.