Оле Лукойе | en

The “Ole Lukkoye” Project (OL) has been living and developing since 1993 when its first album Zapara came out. Boris Bardash created a group belonging to a musical trend which turned out to be very difficult to define, though the group’s music was undoubtedly contemporary. There was one thing common about the estimations of this music - the use of the word “psychedelia” in the sense of “clarifying the mind”, but no precise label such as reggae, trip-hop, jazz, rock, etc. had been found. The main thing about the OL group has always been a powerful rhythmic base consisting of electronical loops and sequences along with live instruments - from the African jamba and the Turkish darabuka to the shaman drum. The combination of the sounds that belong to different ethnic cultures and the contemporary rock instruments paradoxically doesn’t create a sense of eclecticism. The musicians don’t play the music of this or that country but they create the language of their own images which is common for all nations, for the roots, the source, the oldest motherland. That seemed strange in the cold northern city of St Petersburg. So OL was taken as some natures wonder existing on its own. At different moments, according to the set task, the OL Project co-operated with musicians playing various instruments: bassoon, rubab, bass guitar, cello, banjo, trumpet, bayan (Russian accordion), etc. When Sergey “Macho” Kuznetsov joined the group he added visual elements (such as video performance, computer animation) to the music; thus the OL Project acquired an extra dimension. Beginning with 1994 OL has been touring Europe a lot. The tours and festivals in Norway, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Sweden, Poland, Belgium, Czechia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland brought the group constant friends and admirers. After their successful performance at Burg Herzberg Open Air ‘99 the OL musicians got to know the legendary cult German group “Faust”. The result of this co-operation was the issue of the OL album “The Crystal Crow-Bar” with the “KLANGBAD” label in 2000 (recorded and produced by Johen Irmler, the leader of the “Faust” group). The artistic friendship between Klangbad and OL has lasted until now, and in the summer of 2004 a fresh album is planned to be recorded by the OL Project at the new Klangbad studio. By now the OL group has issued 8 albums: 5 studio ones and 3 live ones. By the moment of the creating of OL Boris Bardash (BB) was not only a mature musician. His interests were much wider: philosophy, ethnography, archaeology. In his music all this becomes one magic alloy which goes deep through the ethnic motifs and archetypal signs to the spiritual roots of the mankind and then ascends high. But the way there always runs through the heart. The music of OL works on many levels of the mind, of the subconscious or of the mere aesthetic feeling. In BB’s songs there are no precepts at all, on the contrary - many of them are written in a language that doesn’t exist. In a paradoxical way this language turns out to be understood by listeners of many countries. And many people feel nostalgia for some lost homeland. The OL’s audience is not at all limited by age, it’s quite various and even paradoxical in its composition. Some consider OL an excellent rhythmic group with music to which one can dance with pleasure. Other people take this music as meditation and an impulse to travel beyond the borders of everyday life and limitations. And the most incredible group of admirers are the deaf and dumb people who attend the concerts by OL in St Petersburg and come home feeling happy. It isn’t known how the music affects them. Many people consider this to be witchcraft but it’s more right to call it magic, or inner alchemy; and OL are people who have come too close to the fire. .