Concert

When you go to live in Siberia, you expect a ton of snow, reindeer steak, and bears in the streets. You expect a totally different culture and complete isolation from the rest of the world. Now I can’t argue with the fact that there is a lot of snow here.

Lots of snow

Nor can I deny that reindeer steak is a thing (quite a tasty thing). And I have seen bears while I’ve been here, although thankfully in the zoo, and not in the street. But my expectations of isolation and provincialism have been foiled time and again. A couple of weeks ago, for example, after helping out at a friend’s kids club, that friend offered me a ticket to a Leo Abrahams gig that her husband was organising. Leo Abrahams. The London-born guitarist. From London. And he was performing here in Krasnoyarsk. In fact, he was performing in the building right in front of the bus stop where I wait for my bus home from work.

And yet, on my way into the concert, just as I was considering how connected a city Krasnoyarsk was, I bumped into three people who I knew before I’d even taken my seat. It just felt like a complete contradiction in terms to be at a Leo Abrahams concert in a Siberian city where I was probably VKontakte friends with about a third of the audience.

‘What a weird coincidence seeing you here as well!’ I said to the third friend who I bumped into. ‘It’s the sort of thing that could only happen in Krasnoyarsk.’

‘Yes’, he said, ‘it’s a magical city.’

‘I was going more for a tiny city, but sure.’

The concert itself was a world of bafflement. The guy introducing Leo Abrahams was one of the people who’d organised his tour of Russia. He was playing in something like eleven Russian cities in as many days, so he must have been absolutely knackered. The tour was partly sponsored by the British Embassy to Russia, which explains how he’d ended up in darkest Siberia. Then the man himself came on stage. This was perhaps the most baffling bit: his first words were in Russian. Now I was pretty sure this guy was British, but he was speaking decent Russian on stage, and every now again he’d throw in a phrase which was specific to this gig, so he surely can’t have just memorised it in advance. I was bowled over, and I think the rest of the audience was too.

Then he explained that he was not playing songs from recent albums, he was doing some more experimental stuff using loops and ‘noises from the guitar, not just the standard noise of the guitar’. That was alarming. Then he said ‘this is going to be challenging. I’m sorry. It’s challenging for me too.’ That filled me with confidence.

Leo Abrahams playing at what I will always consider 'that building next to my bus stop', regardless of its real name

It was challenging. Some bits were powerful, but most of it was pretty tedious. The initial effect of ‘how cool is this, I’m listening to Leo Abrahams in Krasnoyarsk!’ soon became a sort of frustration at the repetitiveness of the music, and eventually I was pretty desperate for a recognisable chord. But I didn’t get one. Cool event though.