«Mumiy Troll`s pitchman promises fun for all» — Georgia Straight (Canada, Vancouver)

Mumiy Troll`s pitchman promises fun for all

Ilya Lagutenko`s résumé suggests he`s a man of many talents. In addition to fronting Mumiy Troll, the Russian “rockapops■ act that he founded in 1983, he`s worked as a business consultant in China and Great Britain, done time in the Russian army, and made an effortless jump to the silver screen in the big-budget foreign horror film Night Watch.

Spend 25 minutes on the phone with Lagutenko and you`ll come to the conclusion that he might also have toiled for a year or two in sales. Reached at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, the excitable frontman proves quite the pitchman. Ask him what people can expect from a Mumiy Troll gig, for example, and he`s convincingly effusive.

“Why shouldn`t you need it?■ Lagutenko says in an accent that, awesomely, makes him sound more than a little like Borat. “We attract a lot of Russian girls. The second you come to the gig, it means you are showing the appreciation of what they like. As a result, we usually have shows where there is a very friendly atmosphere. You will never have regrets about those couple of hours.■

Mumiy Troll`s first few visits to these shores had the band playing for in-the-know Russian expats. That audience has now changed, with the quartet scoring invites to such forward-thinking events as the Anti-Pop Music Festival in Florida. What probably impressed the event`s organizers was Mumiy Troll`s effortless genre-splicing, not just on its new (and first) English-language EP Paradise Ahead, but also on efforts such as this year`s Comrade Ambassador. Compiling the best of past Russian records for North America, Comrade Ambassador is something of a trainspotter`s delight, with Mumiy Troll drawing on everything from Studio One retro ska (“Musician■) to gospel-fortified garage rawk (“Venomous Star■) and boozed-up `30s cabaret (“Drunken String■). As for Paradise Ahead, imagine the Thin White Duke if his drug of choice had been gloomy `80s postwave.

Mumiy Troll`s seemingly huge list of influences can be explained by Lagutenko getting into music back when the Iron Curtain still separated the USSR from the rest of the world. With his hometown of Vladivostok not exactly a hotbed of hip record stores, he picked up bootlegs on the streets, taking a flier on everything from Deep Purple to Blondie to Duran Duran.

With the pirating of music so rampant, Mumiy Troll decided early on to concentrate on perfecting its live show, rather than worrying about how many records it was selling.

“You can find our CDs at any dodgy kiosk in whatever part of Siberia,■ Lagutenko says with laugh. “Who actually manufactures these CDs I have no idea. We have basically a collection of our CDs with several hundred different designs and different compilations. So in 2000 we were the first band in Russia that basically gave our album away from free download over the Internet.■

Now Mumiy Troll has a grassroots strategy for winning over North America—one that involves more than Russian eye candy.

“I don`t really care if you don`t understand the words to most of our songs,■ Lagutenko says. “It`s basically about the energy of the actual performance.■

By Mike Usinger