Aquarium was created in Leningrad in July 1972, when Boris Grebenshchikov, a university math student and budding songwriter, teamed up with playwright-in-training Anatoly “George” Gunitsky. BG was already in a school band playing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and he was already writing in English.
By 1973–74, with bassist Mikhail “Fan” Vasiliev on board and Andrei “Dyusha” Romanov joining soon after (keys/flute/voice), Aquarium started to come together. The band’s first gigs were pretty casual, like weddings, school nights, and sharing the stage with other groups. Its artistic style was unusually diverse for the time, incorporating elements of psychedelia, theater of the absurd, Eastern thought, fantasy literature, and theology, all mixed with Western rock influences and Russian avant-poetry.
Aquarium started recording themselves pretty early on, which was a big deal. From 1973 to 1976, they produced a bunch of home-taped albums (like The Temptation of St. Aquarium, Camel-Architect, and The Parables of Count Diffusor), while members also released acoustic music with friends. These tapes were passed around by hand, setting the stage for Aquarium’s unique voice and the wider Soviet magnitizdat scene.
The line-ups kept changing. Cellist Svyatoslav “Seva” Gakkel and bassoonist Alexander “Fagot” Alexandrov added some nice chamber colors. The drummers also rotated between Michael Kordyukov, Alexander Kondrashkin, and Pyotr Troshchenkov. Singer Olga Pershina and guitarist Mike Naumenko (future Zoopark) made intermittent appearances. Back in ’76, BG put out an album called On the Other Side of the Looking Glass. It was mostly solo and acoustic.
A big step was the Tbilisi Rock Festival (1980), which was put together in part by critic/promoter Artemy Troitsky. Aquarium’s set—loud, dissonant, satirical, and confrontational—split the jury and the hall, but it changed the game. Overnight, Aquarium became heroes of the underground and targets for cultural gatekeepers. The pressure didn’t stop them; it made them focus.
Classic albums recording
The band’s studio era was a hit with producer Andrei Tropillo, who had set up the Antrop studio in Leningrad, which was pretty much a pro studio. They recorded The Blue Album there, and then Triangle (1981) with the amazing Sergei Kuryokhin playing the piano and arranging the music. After that, they recorded Taboo (1982) and Radio Africa (1983). Musically, Aquarium moved from 1970s folk-baroque toward punk, new wave, and reggae, adopting whatever suited BG’s authorial world without apology.
Aquarium was one of the founding members and a winner at the Leningrad Rock Club festivals from 1983 to 1984. Things got a little rocky in late 1984 because of some internal issues. BG was showing some real leadership skills, and there were some creative differences with Kuryokhin and Tropillo. There were a lot of side projects too, like Kuryokhin’s Popular Mechanics and BG’s acoustic shows with Alexander Titov. By September 1985, Aquarium’s “classic” lineup got back together on a big stage, and they started doing concerts again. This led to Children of December (1986), the last thing they did during the Tropillo era.
Back in ’86, the American compilation Red Wave featured Aquarium and other Leningrad bands. This got the official folks riled up, but it also helped start a thaw in the political climate. Melodiya released two albums, and Aquarium’s music was featured in Sergei Solovyov’s cult film ASSA. The media frenzy over BG led to what some called “Aquarium-mania.” Tragedy struck in 1986 when violinist Alexander Kussul drowned, and the group expanded with conservatory-trained strings. A 1987 concert with a chamber orchestra showed how diverse Aquarium’s music is.
Cover art design
Aquarium were among the first Soviet rock acts to treat album presentation as part of the art. The first tapes had sleeves that the musicians put together themselves. Their first full-on package, The Blue Album (1981), had a documentary feel — Andrey Usov’s stairwell shot — but it was totally flipped the same year by Triangle, a staged, dreamy pic from a youth-tech center hallway with BG wearing a metal reflector as a head and Seva Gakkel half-hidden.
This surrealist thread ended with Radio Africa (1983): no band name on the face, just a hybrid human-statue, again with Gakkel as the subject. Across eight studio albums—from All Brothers Are Sisters (1978) through Children of December (1985)—Usov defined Aquarium’s early visual language. Two exceptions marked transitions: Day of Silver(1984), with an Aztec in-and-out spiral glyph and no Usov, and Ichthyology (1984), which initially circulated cover-less.
From Day of Silver onward, the group really went for it with the fine-art covers. Sergei Debizhev delivered Day of Silver and Equinox(sun and moon sharing one sky), Alexander Florensky illustrated Ten Arrows with miniature scenelets, and Vitaly Valge framed BG’s Russian Album with a Slavic mythic bird-woman motif. In the 1990s, there was a shift towards symbolic abstraction — things like portholes, Celtic stones, and vortices. Then, in the 2000s, we saw a return to more figurative art. BG’s solo portraits and, on ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM, the whole ensemble.
1990s
Back in ’88, BG inked a deal with CBS/Columbia—a first for a Soviet rock star. He traveled abroad and recorded Radio Silence with Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), then toured worldwide with Western players and Sasha Titov. Meanwhile, the alumni pursued parallel careers (Lyapin’s blues trio; Voropaev’s projects; engineer Vyacheslav Egorov emigrated to Canada). Romanov, Vasiliev, Reshetin, and accordionist Sergei Shchurakov performed as Trilistnik—often billed, in a playful nod to their name, as “Aquarium without BG.”
By 1989, BG had put together a working unit with Reshetin, Shchurakov, and flutist Oleg Sakmarov, and then they had formalized a larger BG Band. The farewell “Aquarium” concert at the Leningrad Rock Club’s 10th anniversary in March 1991 was Mike Naumenko’s last public appearance before his fatal accident. Tours kept going under the BG Band name. BG tried their hand at painting and film music, and also tried another studio collaboration with Kuryokhin. That was later put out as Children’s Album (1998) and the compilation Aquarium 1972–1992 (1992).
The early ’90s were productive: The Russian Album and the live double Letters of Captain Voronin solidified BG’s position in the post-Soviet era. Guitarist Alexei Zubarev anchored the sound, and the drum chair rotated (Kondrashkin, Troshchenkov, Alexei Ratsen). By late 1993, with Titov back on bass and Ratsen on drums, BG had gone back to using the Aquarium name. The mid-’90s saw a steady run of hits, starting with Favorite Songs of Ramses IV in ’93, followed by Petersburg Sands and Kostroma Mon Amour in ’94. Then there was Navigator, recorded in the UK and produced by Joe Boyd. On it, you’ve got Andrei Surotdinov on violin, Dave Mattacks on drums, and even a guest appearance by Mick Taylor, formerly of the Rolling Stones.
Selected Discography
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Aquarium — The Triangle (1981)
When you want something—not consciously, but with your whole being—it comes true. In the spring and summer of 1981, in a studio that quite literally fell from the sky into…
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Aquarium — Radio Africa (1983)
Two summers had already gone by with mass late-night bike rides through the then-popular resort of Solnechnoye (see Music of the Silver Spokes). That’s how the album began — first in…
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Aquarium — 10 Arrows (1986)
The studio went under renovation (as it turned out later—forever), but the songs demanded immediate recording. (Maybe I’m wrong, but it always seemed to me that if a song is…
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Aquarium — Blue Album (1981)
In the summer of 1980, a barely familiar figure named Andrey Tropillo appeared out of nowhere and said, “I’ll help you.” The first sign of that help was a homemade…
Key Facts
- Founders: Formed in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in July 1972 by Boris Grebenshchikov (BG) and Anatoly “George” Gunitsky.
- Role in Russian rock: Became the movement’s central catalyst from the early 1980s, shaping taste, vocabulary, and cultural horizons for at least three generations.
- Sound & influences: From psychedelic folk-baroque to punk, new wave, reggae, blues, and chamber textures; inspired by The Beatles, T. Rex, Incredible String Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Tolkien, Eastern philosophy, and Silver Age poetry.
- DIY recording legacy: Early and prolific tape-album (magnitoizdat) culture (from 1973) defined their sound and spread nationwide outside official channels.
- Breakthrough moment: The polarizing, history-making set at Tbilisi “Spring Rhythms–80” put Aquarium at the center of Soviet rock.
- Studios & allies: Core partnership with producer/engineer Andrei Tropillo (Antrop studio) and collaborations with Sergei Kuryokhin; a revolving cast of elite Leningrad players.
- Institutions: Founders and laureates of the Leningrad Rock Club; repeated festival wins in the mid-1980s.
- Mainstream turn: Featured on Red Wave (1986), recorded for Melodiya, and filled arenas in 1986–87—de facto legalizing rock for mass audiences.
- International step: BG signed with CBS/Columbia (1988), recorded Radio Silence with Dave Stewart(Eurythmics), and toured globally.
- 1990s reboot: BG Band morphed back into Aquarium; notable 1990s albums include The Russian Album, Favorite Songs of Ramses IV, Petersburg Sands, Kostroma Mon Amour, and Navigator (produced by Joe Boyd, guest Mick Taylor).
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