Going back a bit into a more straight up Soviet Wave sound with a new release from MOLCHAT DOMA. I stumbled upon this Belarus export a few months back and they’re up at the top of my list on the Pos-Punk/Post-Soviet tip. It’s a nostalgic, melancholic echo from before the wall came down. To be honest and fair, these sounds were not on my personal playlists back then. It was a regular vibe in bars and clubs so it was always there, but not exactly on my radar. It’s only in the following years that it grabbed me, when it started to fade into the distance.

Now in these Covidian Days, the echoes come in with more… something. It all makes more sense now, even in a foreign language. We didn’t get music from Eastern Europe for the most part. Or anywhere really. Music from outside the US or UK was rare and considered almost a novelty. The “World Music” sections of even the largest record stores was relatively small and much of what you found there would have been more curiosity… regional folk music recorded and brought back by westerners to appease western curiosity. What filtered into Eastern Europe though seeded and took root apparently. The Cold Wave sound persisted… and as i said makes a lot more sense to me now than it did thirty and more years ago. The dark urgency makes a lot more sense now.

There’s more to say today, about Molchat Doma and life in general… the world in general. My thoughts are addled though and words aren’t coming. What seems vague and far off in the above paragraphs.. what seems disconnected isn’t that the ideas are vague… they are razor sharp but there are too many at once.

Let’s leave this for now. This new album is… fucking gorgeous. It speaks for itself.