Давид Тухманов ‎- По волне моей памяти / DAVID TUKHMANOV - ON THE CREST OF MY MEMORY

The Soviet Union existed from 1922 to 1991 and in that time created some of the most distorted art forms in all of the 20th century with the communist party dictating exactly what was permissible for its citizens to experience on every possible level and no more was this true than in the field of music. While Russian folk music dominated the behemoth nation's imposed musical palette, a strange genre of pop music dubbed Soviet estrada emerged in the 1930s which showcased government approved songwriters who crafted catchy pop tunes that would be backed up by professional musicians often in the form of orchestras. This music was fronted by strong vocalists with the music being secondary to the stilted themes that focused on romance, comradely and patriotism. Therefore while most of the world went from blues to jazz to rock and beyond, the USSR was pretty much limited to a few styles of music that rarely escaped the censors' strong scrutiny.

One of the major players in the large pool of estrada composers was DAVID TUKHMANOV ( Дави́д Тухма́нов ) who came from a musical family and wrote his first piece of music at the tender age of four. He was scouted out early and became one of the USSR's most famous popular music composers racking up a number of hits but by the time the 70s hit, TUKHMANOV found that even the USSR was faced with the dilemma of worldwide popular music seeping into the hands of the populous and like putting a genie back into the bottle was impossible to contain. Faced with this unique situation, the censors began to loosen their iron grip a bit and allow greater license for more artistic expressions provided of course it didn't go too far in promoting anti-government dissatisfaction or other treasonous ideologies. TUKHMANOV had a huge knowledge of classical music and while some of the most progressive forms of rock and pop were being unleashed on the other side of the Iron Curtain by 1975, the Soviet control system was only beginning to allow such forms of music to exist on an official level.

TUKHMANOV envisioned a form of classical music that incorporated the rhythmic forms of pop music accompanied by electronic sounds and progressive rock arrangements. Along with lyrics based on classical poetry from different cultures narrated in the original languages, TUKHMANOV set forth to craft one of the Soviet Union's most famous releases and the end result was "По волне моей памяти" or translated into English "On A Wave Of My Memory." This concept album featured a large number of artists and performers making it a huge endeavor as well as perhaps the Soviet Union's very first art rock album that was released officially. Given the novelty and hunger for something so bold and daring, the album became instantly popular and sold out within the first few days of release and inspired a whole new genre of the Soviet rock opera with many more to follow from 1975 on but this one raised the bar high with few even coming close to the efforts and popularity of "On A Wave Of My Memory."

Coming off as some sort of Soviet estrada version of Aphrodite's Child's "666," "On A Wave Of My Memory" runs the gamut of styles ranging from the expected Russian folk and Soviet estrada influences to Western classic rock, prog, funk and art pop. The rich vocal section included Mechrdad Badi, Natalia Kapustina, Igor Ivanov, Alexander Byrykin, Vladislav Andrianov, Sergey Belikov, Alexander Lerman, Ljudmila Barykina as well as the vocal group Sovremennik Orchestra gave the album a richly varied texture of singing styles and somewhat of a circus effect in the process. Seasoned Soviet musicians such as Boris Pivovarov (guitar), Arkady Feldbarg (bass, violin), Vladimir Plotkin (drums) and TUKHMANOV himself (piano, organ, synthesizers, electric piano provided the tight rhythm section while the lush classical orchestration was provided by the Melodiya Ensemble on brass as well as the USSR RTV Large Symphony Orchestra on strings.

"On A Wave Of My Memory" is quite the wild ride for a Soviet rock album from this era as it's all over the place with classic estrada type sappiness to fully fueled prog workouts but as an album to my Western ears it sounds a bit dated and a whole lot of stilted as it just doesn't flow like a prog album should. It simply sounds like too much is being crammed into too little time and gives the impression that this was supposed to be some sort of double album that got trimmed down for the sake of editing. Given that the music is set to the emotional impact of the lyrics which is primarily in the Russian language, i presume that the album would have a greater significance if the references were understood. This is by no means a bad album but seems like something is missing to make it great. Given the unique situation of the time and place, a miracle of existence for sure but as i listen to this for the first time in the year 2020 it just doesn't seem to stand the tests of time as a musical specimen but is highly recommended as a piece to experience for historical relevance. Very good but not great.

3.5 rounded down