Pussy Riot: CYKA review – the first album from the Russian pop scene has been brought down by the energetic EDM | Music

Great music doesn’t usually make people fall in love, and the result is certainly true of Pussy Riot’s debut album. A mix of icy electronic guns, pumping EDM and whispering rap, CYKA (“bitch” in Russian) follows a decade of protest music from the dissident group. Created by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova (she and Maria Alyokhina were incarcerated separately between 2012 and 2013), CYKA’s strong ideas are tempered by weak delivery.

Candy Dopamine, who owns the metal band Avenged Sevenfold, hides his opposition to big drugs with funky vocals, corny electric guitar and unnecessary changes. Often moody synths and sirens are heard frequently, as does EDM: Nothing to Lose is a weird track, and hated by the Russian “liberal intelligentsia” for supporting Ukraine.

Harder tactics are made for angry mobs. Gore (and Cypress Hill’s B-Real) is an angry send-up from LA’s anti-ICE protests, where Disobey sang Pussy Riot’s song. actions against the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Using a raw, boneless nose, the goal is not to make music but to grab headlines. So is CYKA’s Putin-trolling title track, which uses Vladimir as a gimmick to talk about Russian censorship.

Alyokhina once told me that the attention from the West is a necessary protection for the members of Pussy Riot from “disappearing”. In this sense, the disturbing EDM of CYKA has nothing to do with any conversation it causes due to the urgency and difficulty of the impossible – especially when the hyperpop near the Outro shows the human cost of Tolokonnikova’s life in captivity.