Tourism

Intourist
Tourism
(Incompetence)

During the last day or two Iranian singer Mehdi Yarrahi was given 74 lashes - for making a piece of music. Just to reiterate, that’s being tied down and whipped 74 times because he made a song criticising those in power. Meanwhile in the UK, we have Sam Fender or Johnny Rotten… who, think we can’t say anything these days. I’d take a good cancellation over a good whipping, any day. Or a forced vacation, which has been the inspiration for Evgeny Gorbunov’s last few albums. 

A war-dissenting Russian, Gorbunov has lived in Germany, Israel and now Serbia. Which is all nice and lovely if you’re taking a gap year or two but not so healthy when the option is to go home and hence on to a gulag, or worse. There is a Slavic sense of humour, at the risk of getting a bit racist, that is ironic and dark and seriously hysterical and which infects this album. And, genuinely, I think that the process of pop music’s cultural impact in former Communist bloc countries means that they arrive at sounds with a whole different perspective. 

Tourism could be the soundtrack to an endless movement through Charles De Gaulle airport, dragging suitcases containing digital synths that can mimic Soviet era knock-offs of western analogue synths (keep up), which wobble and oscillate like the emotional inner core of a traveller who comes up against yet another customs official, another closed door, who looks with despair at the numbers and zeroes on the screen of a cash machine… But can still find humour in it all. Oh, the desolation of the soul, but, here we are - prrring! - in the great western, shrink-wrapped experiment in freedom - bllllooog! - looking for a cheap sandwich - beeeep! - and a couch to sleep on.

I don’t know how Evgeny survives, maybe he has a rich daddy or maybe he works wherever and at whatever he has to but, somehow, he not only survives, he records and releases albums. Imagine, fellow western creatives, having to leave the UK or USA, under risk of death or incarceration because you once tweeted a criticism of some soulless tech bro or member of the Skull and Bones society and still managing to be creative?! Won’t you be more worried about your crispy socks, finding somewhere to sleep, your family back home? 

That this album has all the paranoia of Orson Welles tiptoeing around post-war Vienna is not a surprise. Twanging guitars are poisoners, following you on a train. The ever-present slap-back echo is your footsteps down alleys. Running away but, still, somehow present and available. You should make the most of this dichotomy. 

The Guardian website has a fascinating story about it all, here.