The experimental band Ole Lukkøye (often just “Ole Lukoje”) formed in 1989 by keyboardist Boris Bardash and bassist Andrei Lavrinenko after their stint in the art-rock group Season of Rain. They stood well outside the usual lane of late-Soviet “Russian rock.” Bardash mixed instrumental psychedelia, hints of prog, trance, exotic folk instruments, and synth-ambient textures with ethno-style vocals—without committing to just one genre. The band put out all kinds of albums, but they really took off in Europe more than in Russia.
Musical Divorce
Season of Rain, whose progressive-rock sound was already losing steam by the mid-1980s, was admitted to the Leningrad Rock Club (LRK) in 1986. Even though they had decent name recognition and successful shows, Bardash and Lavrinenko soon left to try something different:
“We walked away from a hyped band—’hyped’ in quotes, because we didn’t have songs about fighting the Communist Party anyway. It was a musical divorce. The bassist and I were entering a whole new musical world. It’s not that complicated, rehearsed-to-every-note music built from the head, but something meditative—a new sphere opened by bands like Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins. They sounded super fresh at the time and totally refreshed the whole musical landscape. We started getting pulled in the same way: something more natural, immersive—toward a different sound, stripped of all the art-rock/prog-rock complications and bells and whistles, and down into the depth of human ‘ethno,’ the primal sound, essentially.”
Bardash says that Ole Lukkoye’s music is like a screen that listeners use to project their own feelings and thoughts. The band’s name is a nod to Hans Christian Andersen’s Ole Lukoje, but Bardash says he actually meant the character’s brother.
“[In the USSR there was a censored version, but] One day we read the tale to the end. At the end Ole Lukkoye introduces the boy to his older brother, who comes to people once—people call him Death. He rides a black horse and, taking people with him, seats some in front and tells them kind stories, and others behind—according to their deeds—and their stories turn out not so cheerful.”
A couple years after Ole Lukkoye formed, the USSR collapsed, and the LRK’s concert-and-recording pipeline collapsed with it. Bigger names could handle the shock better, but new projects were hit harder.
“When everything was going up, it felt easy, and then—full speed—crash! We started a new project, and it was a total disaster. Before, we had trips under the banner “Leningrad Rock Club presents.” You’d go and play four shows here, then two there, at high rates (for us back then), plus travel and hotels covered. With Season of Rain and the rock club, we toured the entire Soviet Union. And as soon as we created Ole Lukkøye, assembled the band, built the set—everything turned to dust. Only the mastodons stayed afloat: Aquarium, DDT, Kino, Nautilus Pompilius.”
At home, long instrumental pieces weren’t as popular with listeners, and critics who were used to mass-appeal, lyric-driven rock had a harder time understanding them. Bardash is pretty straightforward when it comes to the look of the place:
“To enter a certain state, you need time—that’s why there are constant repetitions, as if it’s the same thing. “They play the same thing, they don’t know how to arrange!” Andrei Burlaka said about us, completely missing the fact that it was on purpose.
Selected Discography & Modern Works
In 1993 the band released beautifully recorded Zapara, and in 2004 they recorded Kumaneira—both at Andrei Tropillo’s studios.
Tropillo released it and later handed over all rights, saying: “From now on, you can do whatever you want—with both Zapara and Kumaneira.”
From 1996 to 2000, Ole Lukkoye worked closely with visual artists, brought early computer animation into its live shows, appeared on psychedelic compilations, and recorded covers of Brian Eno and David Byrne. They toured Europe extensively and played festivals with Faust, Magma, Porcupine Tree, and others.
Ole Lukkoye never had a professional manager.
“At some point, it just became a must: to get radio play, you had to pay up, and so on. All that stuff is grime we never took part in, because we were from a different time.”
The group keeps releasing new albums with unusual instruments and guest players. You can legally stream and buy their music on Bandcamp:
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