Kyrgyz Music Friday is a weekly feature in which I post a pop music video from an artist in Kyrgyzstan. It could be catchy, annoying, funny, insightful, brilliant, awful, or anything in between. It’s what’s playing on the radio, what all the cool kids are listening to these days. Kyrgyz Music Friday is not trying to appeal to your musical taste (which I’m sure is awesome), but simply gives you a glimpse into how pop music is done on this side of the world. Feel free to share your thoughts on this week’s video in the comment section!
This week’s video is special, and if you don’t usually watch the accompanying videos for these posts, I highly recommend that you make an exception this time.
This is the video for Dad Manki’s song, “Destroyer”. Dad Manki (it’s Dead Monkey with an accent) is cool for several reasons:
– They’re a local band who sometimes perform with Plov for Two.
– They write their own original music.
– They sing in English (impressive for non-native English speakers).
– Their video has a zombie in it.
With Farrell’s band playing more shows with more bands around the city, I’m finding that Bishkek really does have a robust local music scene (In fact, if you’re interested in keeping up with all things live music in Bishkek, check out Stayin’ a-Live) and I was happy to hear that Dad Manki recorded an album and made a video. Bishkek’s most innovative trends in music are happening in bars and clubs (not on Komuz TV or Tumar radio, no matter how much I love their pop music) so it’s great that these guys are helping to make the scene more visible.
The song is not typical of Kyrgyz Music Friday posts. Nobody would mistake this for pop music (duh, with a name like “Destroyer”). This is loud, raunchy rock music. And one thing I like about the song is that it’s not obvious at first listen where these guys came from (except for a strong dose of accents), I would say it’s much more universal than a lot of other music being made in Kyrgyzstan.
The video is awesome. It was directed by Evgeni Chistyakov, whose dreamy colors and fantasy-like plot you might recognize from a previous Kyrgyz Music Friday video. You can tell it was probably shot on a tight budget, but that’s part of its charm in my opinion. As I’m discovering while contributing to the making of Plov for Two’s first music video, this stuff is hard, so I can definitely appreciate the work that went into filming this. I’m most impressed with the compositions of the shots and the different camera angles, as well as the sweet ride and the campy, horror-movie details they threw in.
Nice work, men. Sorry that your zombie bride ate you, though.
If you’re interested, check out some behind-the-scenes photos of the video shoot. Also, if you’re in Bishkek, Dad Manki is having an album release party tomorrow night (April 13) at Zeppelin and Plov for Two will play a few songs.