«Very Cool People» Wander into the Field of Electronic Music and Rave

Jazz and Rave? «Very Cool People» Show How to Combine Them Very Cool People’s Tenth Life – A Review of the Album Dzīvs

Musicians often dislike it when their creations are placed into a particular stylistic niche. The usual counter-argument from music critics is that such labeling is necessary for listeners to give them at least some idea of what to expect from a specific album and its performer, so they don’t form the wrong expectations based only on a band’s name or its previous work. A vivid example is the group Very Cool People, who almost every time deliver something stylistically different. As a result, it’s difficult to predict whether their next project will appeal to fans of jazz, funk, rock, or maybe rap. You’ll agree there’s a huge difference between works like Pa apli, created with Kristīne Prauliņa, Edavārdi and ansis; Woodstock Renaissance, recorded with Aija Andrejeva on vocals; the playful Snowman Express together with Ralfs Eilands and Prauliņa; or the group’s more typical jazzy funkologies!

The tenth full-length by Very Cool People, Dzīvs, is presented as the band’s «most explosive album yet,» and once again, it is completely different from its predecessors. Stylistically, how could it be described… hmm, as what exactly? «We ourselves call it a rave program, but ravers disagree with us. We call it electronic music, but the electronic music crowd doesn’t. It turns out it’s a rave where electronic music is played live using the instruments available in our band. And don’t forget the clarinets!» laughs VCP’s artistic director, spokesperson, and guitarist Elvijs Grafcovs. But there’s more than a grain of truth in the joke—on this album, you can really hear elements of rave and electronic music, but also jazz, funk, pop, even hip hop, and more. Since no single style dominates, one can only sympathize with the «Golden Microphone» Award jury, who will nevertheless have to categorize it accordingly.

The album Dzīvs is a surprising and risky experiment that will make Very Cool People fans take a seat, pause, and think—wait, wait, what was that we just heard?! The opening track, Izejpozīcija, tries to prepare listeners for the journey deeper into the record—had Elvijs thrown in a few sharper guitar parts, this rave/techno intro alone could have been used to open for The Prodigy! It’s almost a pity that VCP didn’t carry that line through to the end, since only a few other tracks are aimed so clearly at the electronic style of which Lec could have been—no, should have been!—this summer’s club hit. Almost psychedelic hip-hop-dance wonders can be heard in Hooking Up, Turbulence has an elegant atmospheric feel, while Rondo Alla Šubi Duba Dirlli is… no idea what that even is.

Three of the album’s explosive new tracks were already familiar to fans before the release—Rikšiem, Ko tu vēl gaidi?, and Plastmasmens. Alongside the album came the fourth single Nē Nu Jā Nē Nu Nē, featuring vocals from Paula Saija and the band’s trombonist Laura Rozenberga, as well as the voice of LTV Rīta Panorāma newsreader Gusts Kikusts. By the way, this song is the only one that deserves some criticism regarding its lyrics: it seems VCP had nurtured the idea of playing with the «ethnographically peculiar expression» where negation simultaneously means affirmation and vice versa, but failed to pull it off, so the comparisons come across as rather clumsy.

Beyond those, Paula and Laura’s collaboration on Ieelpo izelpo should be highlighted (Paula’s feminine romanticism and Laura’s combative energy seem very different, yet blend together surprisingly well). From the already mentioned songs, Ko tu vēl gaidi? (leaning more toward electronic rock) and Rikšiem (oh Lord, what a powerful voice Paula has—her vocals could blow the roof off, quite literally!) deserve to be underlined again. Which means that of the 11 tracks on the album, the only one not mentioned here is Vasaras nakts Daugmalē—and frankly, it’s the only one about which there’s nothing at all to say; the record could have done just fine without it.

The album was named Dzīvs («Alive») because «it really is ‘live’-played electronic music, mixed with jazz, funk, and rock, using all the instruments available in the band—including, for example, clarinets,» as Elvijs once again explains, best quoted directly. «The result could be compared to Frankenstein, because lifeless objects have been given life. That’s why the album’s symbol is the so-called ‘googly eyes’—stick them onto anything and suddenly the object comes alive. The legendary Very Cool People cats in the album design this time also got their googly eyes.»

The album was in the making for a year and a half, during which time VCP debated their future direction—at the Rīgas Ritmi 2023 festival, it sounded like the band was about to record something entirely, entirely different. «We worked like crazy for a year and a half. First we wrote the music, then recorded it, then threw it away, then added samples, recorded again, threw it out again, then started writing and sampling ourselves, recorded all sorts of live instruments, vocals, shouts, and every possible sound one can make with the mouth, and tried to make the guitar sound like an organ, the trumpet like a truck, the saxophone like a bass, and so on. When we’d finally recorded it all, we realized we had a problematic question—how on earth to play all this live in concert? Then our small collective grew, adding new people, more synthesizers, and other gadgets. Now we ourselves no longer even know how many people and instruments the band has…» laughs Elvijs.

It all sounds perfectly simple and clear, doesn’t it? But once again, there’s a lot of truth in the joke: the final result contains by far the largest number of instruments, synthesizers, and other electronic devices ever used in VCP’s work—at times the recording features nine simultaneously played guitars and 15 different synthesizers, while for some songs the number of individual soundtracks reached 200. The plus side of VCP’s broad line-up, in terms of both professionalism and sheer number of musicians, is that they can play anything—and at a very high level. Which meant they could afford to set no limits to their creativity, whether in composing, improvising, or crafting new sounds. And that’s exactly what they did on Dzīvs.