Auktyon – Top (Yula): A Wicked Stew

Karandashi I Palochki (Crayons and Sticks) is a good representative track of the full LP from Auktyon. All these songs on Top (Yula) come from such different places, but the song K.I.P. has enough of the critical ingredients and textures of their unique sound to provide a flavor of this truly wicked stew from a world a bit chaotic, but glorious with new musical order/disorder. Each song is unique, with some slower paced and some very fast; with frequent tempo changes. Gypsy-Punk-Jazz? Not sure what to call it, but Auktyon will satisfy long after lesser bands have trotted out their best wares, gone home to put their feet up and drift gently back into Top-40 narcolepsy. The dudes of Auktyon are the real thing and I feel their very lives are artistically presented in this crazy, joyful and ultimately explosive music!

From the Band:

Russia’s Auktyon is a lost folklore ensemble darting behind an avant jazz collective, hidden inside a hugely popular rock band. It’s Animal Collective tangoing through the salon with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, nodding its Radiohead. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

They rock a mean tuba. They have a dancer-declaimer who spouts sudden poetry, jerking and trembling like a holy madman.

But this is no under-the-radar cult group; it’s one of the biggest rock bands to burst from the Soviet collapse, with a defiant devil-may-care attitude and a keen sense for improvisation. This improv instinct led the band to Top a wild, catchy spin through Auktyon’s magical paces. Recorded live at breakneck speed and with sheer joy, the album draws together the eerie folklore, edgy urbanity, exuberant word, and well-honed musicianship of a group uninterested in laurels or resting.