Playing against absence
Absinth is the third part of the musical and poetic trilogy, created and performed by Ukrainian poet Yurii Andrukhovych, Polish-Swiss band Karbido, and VJ-band Cube (VJing is scenic mix of music and cut image, often done in live mode), that was presented at the Great Hall of Ukraine’s National Academy of Music. We should remind the readers that the earlier parts of the trilogy were the albums Samohon (Polish edition made in 2006, Ukrainian – in 2008) and Cinnamon (in 2009 and in 2010 respectively). Both the albums themselves and their concert performances on the stages of Ukraine and Poland have become prominent, widely discussed phenomenon of modern culture. The creators of Absinth present it as an original, lasting from 60 to 80 minutes, soundtrack to the not filmed movie based on the novel by Andrukhovych Perverzia (Perversion). By the way, the director of the movie was indicated as the main character of the Perverzia Stanislav Perfetsky. According to the authors, the name “Absinth” is a kind of a paraphrase on the theme of the favorite drink of all decadents, which being defected through the “texts of Perfetsky,” carries a message about Wormwood Land (Ukraine after Chornobyl) and its painful absence (word-play “absinth-absent”) in modern Europe. Active denial of such absence is the cooperation of Ukraine and Poland in the project: of Andrukhovych and Karbido band as well as Ukrainian and Polish video artists.
The main impression of Absinth is that it is a complete show in two parts with visual and music components dominating. It would be difficult to overestimate the work of Cube: in the first part, when Andrukhovych and the musicians were behind the screen, VJs managed not only to pick up or create images that were the most consistent with the mood of a song, but also set the desired mounting rhythm, so that music and screen image are perceived as a whole. Karbido band consists of incredibly skilled musicians with plastic thinking. It seems that there is no style they wouldn’t be able to master: from reggae to avant-garde jazz, from psychological rock to hard rock, but each time it is exactly their sound, their unique style – there is not even a closest sign of eclecticism. For every text by Andrukhovych they picked up accompaniment, which seems the only one possible there. Andrukhovych recited both old texts and fragments created specifically for the show. Sometimes he sang (however not as well as he did in, let say, Cinnamon), more often he recited – in any case one could feel a lot of experience of live performances and the skill of keeping the attention of the audience. In general, it came out as a perfect concert line of the novel, which the author of this article has personally seen for the first time.
In the beginning, back in 2005, when “Andrukhoid,” created by the Ukrainian poet and Polish trio of Mikolaj Trzaska, came out, reading along with music seemed just an interesting complement to the already established form of poetic concert. Today, this experiment has reached its peak and has become an example of a synthetic genre at the intersection of literature, music, and video art. Andrukhovych himself hasn’t turned into a rock star, he remained a poet. However, the poetry now transferred into an art of gesture.
