CULTURE

Chernov’s choice

By Sergey Chernov

Staff Writer

Moloko went out with a bang on Sunday. The notorious underground club had to shut its doors early in the day because it was besieged by hundreds of fans arriving for a free farewell party.

Forced out of its basement location by the city authorities, the club hopes to reopen at a new venue, possibly in March. Its closure leaves a hole in the local club scene. There are only a few places that are open to innovative music and friendly to fans.

Boris Kovac, a composer, musician and multimedia artist, will perform this week with his latest ensemble La Campanella.

Kovac comes from Novi Sad, a multi-cultural city in the former Yugoslavia, now in Serbia. After 1991 he lived and worked mainly in Italy, Slovenia and Austria. In 1996 he returned to Novi Sad.

“His composition, like a great release, possessed the spellbinding quality of great folk music: easy virtuosity, attention to the minutiae of expression, unembarrassing pathos... a deep base of audible, almost tactile emotion,” British musician Chris Cutler has written. “Kovac slips easily across that twilight zone where contemporary composition and folk music touch.”

With Kovac on vocals, alto and soprano saxophones, La Companella includes Goran Penic on accordion, Vukasin Miskovic on classical guitar, Milos Matic on double bass and tamburitza, and Istvan Cik on drums.

During its visit to Russian, the band is scheduled to play five dates in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg. The concerts are likely to be based on Kovac and La Campanella’s first album “World after History,” released last May.

Kovac and La Campanella perform at Platforma on Wednesday.

A pair of concerts to look forward to have been announced. Jane Birkin and Arto Lindsay will perform in November.

The London-born, Paris-based singer and actress Birkin was part of “Swinging London” in the 1960s, famously appearing in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup,” then becoming notorious for being the wife of the late French singer Serge Gainsbourg. She made a sensation with the controversially sensuous “Je t’aime... moi non plus” in 1969. Birkin’s most recent album, “Rendez-vous,” was released in March 2004. It features collaborations with Bryan Ferry, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons and Placebo’s Brian Molko as well as Manu Chao and Caetano Veloso. Birkin performs at the Music Hall on Nov. 19.

Lindsay is a New York vocalist and guitarist who first found underground fame as the frontman of DNA and a pioneer of “no wave” in the late 1970s. DNA was featured on the Brian Eno-produced four-band compilation, “No New York,” which also included Lydia Lunch-fronted Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance and the Contortions and Mars.

Since then, Lindsay’s work has gone in several different directions including playing with punk-jazz band Lounge Lizards and producing Brazilian pop records.

Lindsay will perform on Nov. 27. No venue has yet been named.

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