“Akvarium” is a Russian rock band. They are the pioneers of Russian rock. The band appeared in the early 70-ies and still exists. Boris Grebenshikov is the leader of “Akvarium”. In 1979th he was expelled from the Komsomol (All-Union Lenin Communist Youth League) because of the participation in the rock festival. In 2003d he was awarded with the Order of Merit for the Motherland.
Most of the songs by“Akvarium” are in Russian. Also there are several albums in English: “Radio Silence” and “Radio London”. Beside that in 1997 they created so called Russian-Abyssinian Orchestra and recorded an album that was called “Bardo”. The songs of that album are performed in imaginary language. Experimentalism is one of the features of the “Akvarium” creative work.
The oeuvre of “Akvarium” is significant for its multifacetedness. The songs are not only performed in different languages, they even possess to different genres sometimes. Many of them may be considered as classical Russian rock. Some of the tunes sound like musical fairy-tales. There are also songs that have features of metal, blues, folk, reggae, classical music, romance and even rap. Listening to “Akvarium” you may notice Celtic and Indian motives… also mixed in the same song from time to time. The topics of the lyrics are also various: social, theological, mythological, esoteric, philosophy, love, etc. Acoustic and electric albums of “Akvarium” are created using different music instruments sets of cause. You can find a song performed with the only single guitar and vocal. As well some of the compositions are made with the help of the small orchestra: guitars, bass, different percussions, flute, alto, keyboards, violin, etc, - up to more than ten instruments at once. Very complex and nice professional music composition you can hear in a song called “Брод” for example. While one melody is soft and slow (“Аделаида” for example), the other is fast and powerful (“Максим-лесник” for example). Some songs are performed in major key and some are minor and quite dark (“Ангел”, “Волки и вороны”, “Рок-н-ролл мёртв”). Also I’d like to notice that there are serious lyrics as well as humorous in the repertoire of “Akvarium”. The examples of ironical songs are: “Шумелка”, “Древнерусская тоска”, “Бурлак”, etc. Some people may say: “Hm… probably this band is not able to find their own style, their own way”, - it is not true. Songs of “Akvarium” are recognizable and authentic. All the differences in songs of this band shows the many-sidedness of its members personality. There are more than three hundreds songs and musical compositions created and performed by “Akvarium” at the moment. Also there are nearly fifty songs of the other authors, which were performed by this band. It is worth to listen to the most popular songs of “Akvarium” at least.
