Ole Lukkøye Doo-Doo-Doo
(Ole Lukkøye / OL001)
The rise and typical characteristics of eastern European psychedelic rock are best embodied by Hungarian acts like Vagtazo Halottkemek and Korai Öröm, and by Russian band Ole Lukkøye. The latter grew out of the ashes of St. Petersburg underground bands like Sezon Dozhdej in the early 90s. Its main figure is Boris Bardash, a very talented musician and archaeologist; he was part of a few extensive archaeological expeditions in eastern Siberia, in the Hakassia region (near Tuva and the Mongolian border). Boris incorporated his impressions of these expeditions into his music, giving birth to a new type of very psychedelic/ethnic rock that has no match in the West. The first testimony of these unique qualities came our way around 1994 with the release of Ole Lukkøye's debut LP “Zapara” (reissued on CD 3 years later), a dark masterpiece that fused psychedelic rock with strange Russian and Central-Asian ethnical influences. Their second album, “Toomze” (a CD on the German Lollipop Shop label in 1997) was an even more matured and better recorded and produced collection of really hallucinatory tracks with lots of shamanistic elements and ethnic strangeness. Personally, I rated “Toomze” as the ultimate psychedelic release of 1997; no western rock band could even come close to what these 5 young Russian musicians produced. Their most recent release, “Doo-Doo-Doo”, continues where “Toomze” stopped and explores even further the esoteric spaces and ethnic soundscapes created by a fantastic mix of ancient string and percussion instruments in combination with ritual vocalisation and totally stoned keyboards and guitar driven rock. Ole Lukkøye is nowadays reduced to a quartet: Boris Bardash (keyboards, vocals, guitar, rubab, darbuk, percussion), Andrey Lavrinenko (bass, rubab, jimbee, percussion), Frol (bassoon, ocarina, vargan, tambou-rine) and Yuri Lukjanchik (jimbee, darbuk, percussion and tablas) but their musical diversity and sense of adventure has risen to shamanistic heights. Each of the 7 long tracks on “Doo-Doo-Doo” is a magical journey to ancient times when the powers of nature and the pagan beliefs of men were one; in other words: true earth psychedelics. All in line for a spoonful out of the cauldron with the mushroom brew! Mega-recommended. One of the best of'99, that's for sure. Crohinga Well's mail-order stocks all 3 Ole Lukkøye releases.
Crohinga Well (Belgium), #15, 1999