Aquarium Brief History

There is hardly a Russian in the world that hasn't heard of the legendary underground rock band Aquarium and its leader Boris Grebenshikov.
During the 70's and 80's Aquarium created an entirely unique musical and social aesthetic. Influenced by a variety of music styles and cultures, the group's sound nevertheless remained recognizable - whether performing quiet love ballads, light dancing reggae or powerful rock-n-roll anthems.

Grebenshikov is also no stranger outside Russia. His albums were recorded and released throughout Europe, and North America, and he is widely known and respected among top Western musicians. In 1989, Grebenshikov toured the West, releasing an English-language album, "Radio Silence" which featured appearances by Eurythmics' Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde  and percussionists Ray Cooper and Olle Romo.

In the end of 80's, Grebenshikov found himself writing new songs deeply inspired by Russian folk culture, so in 1991 he renunited Aquarium and recorded, employing traditional instrumentation, the famous "Russian Album" which is considered by many to have changed the definition of Russian rock'n'roll music forever.
Having cultivated his "traditional" sound through several masterly albums, in 1997 Grebenshikov made another abrupt stylistic departure. While his music still retains something of the Russian folk sensibility, it has definitely returned to it's rock'n'roll roots.

Recorded in 1997 album "Lilith", marks the beginning of a new chapter in Aquarium's music. Featuring an all-american band (famous The Band, which used to accompany Bob Dylan  in the '60s and 70s), the disc exemplifies the new folk-rock sound he's developed.

In the next decade Aquarium developed an interest for world music and electronics. The first album in the new millennium "Sister Chaos" featured Djivan Gasparyan, the most famous master of Armenian duduk. The next one - "Songs of a Fisherman" - was mainly recorded in India, with traditional Indian musicians. In 2005, for the recording of the "Zoom Zoom Zoom" album, BG invited musicians playing traditional Celtic instruments headed by  Michael McGoldrick, who played Uillean pipes.

 New times brought about new opportunties. In 1999, after Boris Rubekin, keyboard player and sound engineer joined the band, Aquarium finally set up their own studio which opened up the horizon for sound experiments.
Political boundaries, too, ceased to be a barrier - people in Japan, China, India, Israel, Czech Republic, Swiss, France, Germany, United Kingdom and USA finally had a chance  to listen to Aquarium's songs in concert. 

Collaboration with musicians from around the world was an integral part of all the albums of the 2000's - Aquarium was joined by Hariprasad Chaurasia, Henry Kaiser and many others. 

In 2008, BG devised and created the project Aquarium International, bringing together two dozens musicians from all over the world to play the most diverse instruments on one stage. Concerts took place in London (Royal Albert Hall), Dublin, Milano, Kiev, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. To listeners’ enormous delight, Aquarium performed their songs of different years, in extraordinary and unexpected arrangements (listen to one of the records at Kroogi.com)

 Musicians united in this project, also took part in the recording of another album named "White Horse". Aquarium developed a close collaboration with the legendary Flook (disbanded at the end of 2008) who have been recording with Aquarium ever since. Later Brian Finnegan joined Aquarium in its never ending tour around Russia and the neighbouring countries, offering his magical flute’s voice to audiences from East Siberia to West Ukraine.

Crowing the decade, Aquarium put together some archive records and released two reconstructed albums of the first period of its history which had been impossible to complete at the time. So Aquarium's classical discography consists now of 28 studio albums. 

 Taking great interest in the internet technologies from the early days, (www.aquarium.ru was created in 1996) Aquarium constantly carried out various cyber projects - there have been internet-only albums, studio out-takes etc. In 2008 Aquarim was the first to join the internet project Kroogi.com which makes it possible for any artist to publish their works on the "pay as you wish" scheme. Each new album has been published on Kroogi.com since, and almost all previous studio and live ones will be there soon.

2011