2011 in review
Well, time to wrap up two-thousand-and-eleven. I want to remember only the good — that’s what I’ll write about. Or not exactly «good» — but definitely not the bad. And since I took quite a few photos, I’ll use my own. The post turned out huge, but that’s because of the pictures.
I saw 2011 in in Finland, holidaying in a quiet town — or rather a village — on the Hanko peninsula. Just before the New Year, I think I’d burned myself out, and the after-effects, as the saying goes, lasted half a year. Getting there was an entertaining affair: my visa came through on December 31, so I ended up buying the very last tickets on the train to Helsinki (Allegro) and chasing the friends who’d already crossed the border.
The house we stayed in.
Riding, holidays, sheer fairy tale. The week flew by. We managed both snowboarding and downhill skiing.
The riding spot.
We made a trip to Turku. I’d read that they once wanted to make it the capital, so I expected a big «metropolis» like Helsinki — saw nothing of the sort. Photos from that week in Finland I still haven’t got around to sorting :)
The year started in the usual mode — heard plenty of horror stories about how the New Year went down in St Petersburg from @stay_positive, and we kept working on AllCafe. Soon we suffered losses — @remedge left our glorious team. A couple of work photos:
@stay_positive at the office. Typical scene — development interrupted by a call or text. Hi Varya :)
The magic of equilibrium — I managed to find a way to nap at the office.
Soon afterwards we moved down to the ground floor, into a properly renovated office where we’ve been ever since.
That day will partly stick in my memory for how splendidly we larked about and took the piss.
2011 was rich in all kinds of concerts. In February there was a gig by The Casualties from the USA — punks — at Orlandos. On the way to the club, someone beat one of the punks up, slashed him and shot him with a non-lethal handgun. People were in shock (many in the crowd knew the guy), but went to the show anyway. So the gig is on, and between songs someone steps onto the stage and announces that the guy has died in hospital. The band don’t understand Russian and keep playing, baffled as to why two-thirds of the audience suddenly walked out of the room. Quite a scene — lots of crying people being comforted. The band finished up, walked off intending to come back for an encore — only to be told what had happened, and they decided not to encore after that news. The mood was ruined for everyone, until someone phoned and said the guy was alive — people gave a happy yell, and that was that. The gig itself was, of course, a trip :)
The Casualties live.
My buddy Komatoz (a.k.a. Radio) with the guitarist of The Casualties.
Then there were gigs by Moi Rakety Vverkh, Psyhea — whom I saw live for the first time, since they were playing at our Aurora.
Moi Rakety Vverkh at Orlandina, 7 March 2011.
@theproof, Varya and @stay_positive at the Psyhea show at Aurora, 18 March 2011.
There was also a Triada show, but what I remember most about that night is how I crashed in the second dressing room during soundcheck and read a book there almost up until the show started — Triada and a heap of supporting bands didn’t know there was a second dressing room and were all crammed into the first. At some point the door opened, Lyosha from Triada walked in and asked to sit with me :-D — we ended up having a really good chat.
The concert season ended somehow gradually and summer began. We coded, hung out, went out to the countryside, rode bikes, even ended up at The Place at a night bike-meetup with various Psyhea Soundsystem-related projects playing — though it’s mostly the same crowd. @stay_positive beat me at table tennis (he’s pretty much our pong master) and I still owe him some kind of forfeit, like crawling under a table while shouting something. Once we even drove out to the Gulf in the middle of the week at night because the heat was unbearable, after which I got barely any sleep and was horribly late for work.
Sunrise in Komarovo at 5 a.m.
In June I went on a 2-week holiday — my first since I’d started this job. Somehow I’d skipped the first one. Two weeks in a village near Izhevsk, in the silence, where mobile signal doesn’t even reach — that’s great. You read books, get your head straight. Probably this holiday cleared away the burnout and got me back into the groove. And it was good to see the family.
A walk to the reservoir with my cousin.
That summer we went out to Afisha Picnic. First time at this event — the scale did surprise me, the band Narkotiki rocked, the rest was so-so since we travelled to Moscow on seated train tickets and barely slept all night.
Afisha Picnic, 23 July 2011.
There were a couple of other trips — to the farewell Moscow show by Moi Rakety Vverkh, after which they did one in St Petersburg and split up, and a trip to Google Developer Day. There @stay_positive introduced me to SPB GTUG, and along the way I met people from other cities. The event itself wasn’t especially educational for me, but it was the first such gathering I went to.
Google Developer Day 2011 in Moscow. Closing.
In 2011 I started learning Objective-C in order to write iOS apps. Conveniently, that was needed at work too. I don’t think I made huge strides — there’s a lot more to learn. But I did ship 2 apps — AllCafe for iPhone and «This Day» for iPad. That’s all I’ve managed to release this year. The fact that I’d coded websites for ages turned out to be a plus — the backend for «This Day» came together easily and naturally. It’s nice when you can do everything yourself. I write various notes and articles in the blog for myself — and as a result, the bulk of search-engine traffic to the blog comes on Objective-C-related queries.
Since I had two jobs, I didn’t do much side-work on websites. Although I did manage some.
Website for Indigo Costa restaurant in Spain.
This site was being designed by a designer I know — and a strange story unfolded around it. I’d turned down the work, found him a developer, but the two somehow didn’t see eye to eye. I ended up being asked to do the site, and as usual the deadline was tight. I figured the extra money wouldn’t hurt, and I really wanted to redeem myself for one of my earlier slip-ups and do something properly. In the end I made it (not the entire build was on me). Then a strange story unfolded with the client — he didn’t want to pay despite getting the site. Mind you, only 2 of the 4 languages on that site work. I got paid; the site is still hanging there with two languages.
In autumn Delfin was getting ready to release a new album, which they duly did in November. For the music-video release of the first single I made them a landing page (coding and HTML, no design).
dolphinmusic.ru for the new Sunset music-video premiere.
For the album release I made the current version of the site. It’s a continuation of that video page — only it scrolls down further and contains various information. The band wanted a one-page site, taking some inspiration from social-network feeds — Facebook and VKontakte.
dolphinmusic.ru as it stands.
That site, mind you, isn’t considered finished — but knowing these guys, it never really will be, because something’s always changing and they want to keep tweaking it (funnily enough, while I was finishing this very sentence I heard a Mail notification — Delfin’s manager wrote about more changes to the site).
And the last one is probably the Orlandina site — our new art director, who I think is just brilliant, banged out a new design and I plumbed it into the site.
orlandina.ru as it stands
I can also throw in apps.arm1.ru — hopefully it won’t stay in this form for long and will soon expand with more apps.
In 2011 I bought a new camera — Canon 60D — and so far I’m happy with it; I shoot photos and video at gigs with it. I think over 2011 I got noticeably better at taking photos. And it’s not the new camera — recently I had a Canon Mark II in my hands and played around with it. Well, the stuff I shot with it back then was rubbish :) . I’m still not a photographer and don’t shoot well, but there’s progress, I think.
In summer 2011 @stay_positive joined a Google Chrome hackathon (somewhere around August), at which he built an app called VK Offline. And @theproof and I shot promo clips for him :)
That hackathon, in fact, led on to my acquaintance with SPB GTUG in Moscow and the after-Google-Developer-Day pub session.
In September I finally caught an Est Est Est show — a really cool band that I listened to a lot during the year. The blame, of course, lies with @theproof. On the flip side, I missed two shows by «..And My Friend Lorry» — hopefully I’ll catch up on that in 2012.
Oh yes — over the year I went to 3 weddings. Why people get married I still haven’t worked out. But it was nice to be invited.
Three times I went to gigs by my Vietnam friend Komatoz’s band (a.k.a. Radio). The band’s name is the rather amusing Deti Doski :) I’d also like to remember that. Their crowd is just plain fun. Still-not-grown-up teenagers, cheerful and positive.
Deti Doski.
And this photo of Komatoz I think is one of the best I’ve taken this year.
Komatoz aka Radio.
The second half of the year was rich in new events and new acquaintances. In August there was a solo show by Pavel Dodonov in St Petersburg at Kitayskiy Lyotchik Dzhao Da. Rare cases like this — when you can sink into your thoughts and float somewhere through the entire show, almost not noticing the music. Lots of concerts during the year put me in that state — I haven’t worked out whether that’s good or bad. Pavlik’s solo shows are also a very rare event, and at the time he was actively recording Delfin’s new album.
Pavel Dodonov, Kitayskiy Lyotchik Dzhao Da, 26 August 2011.
At Pavlik’s gig I met this very interesting guy:
Sasha Salmin.
Sasha Salmin is one of the hosts of the Record Dubstep show on Radio Record. But what’s more interesting to me is that he’s been running the [uho] project for many years. In that project he records interviews with various interesting people and then presents them in a really compelling way. I really recommend listening to the episode with Gonjasufi to get a sense of what the project is.
While we were getting acquainted I said I’d like to take part. As a result, over six months we recorded several interviews together, and these were proper events in my life. I was nominally meant to be a photographer, but ended up being more of a translator :).
The first interview he asked me to come along to was at the Cosmonaut club, at Trans Mission, with the famous Paul van Dyk. Just before us, the Muz-TV crew went in to interview him — and he apparently kicked them out; they came out very unhappy. We tensed up a bit, but our interview went brilliantly — Paul van Dyk turned out to be a great guy, and it was a real pleasure to talk to him.
Recording the interview with Paul van Dyk.
The Paul van Dyk programme isn’t mixed yet, and there’s no telling when it’ll come out — [uho] is currently a non-commercial creative project that gets done when there’s time and mood.
By the way, in September I finally got to an Enter Shikari gig that I’d been dreaming of for nearly a year. @stay_positive got me hooked on them. The gig was great, I went all-in — I even handed over everything except my money and ticket to @theproof for safekeeping beforehand. The only thing that spoiled the impression was the GlavClub venue. Zero ventilation. A 1,500-strong crowd is slamming at the gig, and they have 4 fans on the side handling the lot — I didn’t notice any other source of fresh air, although the air was definitely being shifted a lot in the room. I’d hold the owners criminally responsible for that. Very much hope I never have to go there again. And almost every time I went there for shows, the sound was rubbish. At Cosmonaut, by the way, also rubbish.
Probably the most interesting day of the year was 26 November. That day the Elektromehanika festival was on at the Kuryokhin Centre. Sasha [uho] was working there as stage manager, and at the same time wanted to record a few interviews with the artists who came in to play. At soundcheck we recorded an interview with Shigeto — he’s an American of Japanese descent; I hadn’t heard his music before the interview, we had a good chat, recorded everything, then I saw his set and was floored. A really pleasant musical discovery — I keep his album on repeat.
Shigeto at Elektromehanika, 26 November 2011.
At soundcheck we also recorded an interview with Oneohtrix Point Never, for whom we spent the better part of two hours coming up with questions, since the guy had initially turned down all interviews — said he was sick of journalists with stupid questions — but, after we explained what the project was, he agreed. With that kind of start we tensed up, afraid to fluff it, and got down to writing questions :)
After that I went off to Aurora to photograph and film The Qemists — these guys put on a hell of a show, I was very impressed. I also had a really good chat with them after the gig. Magic phrase to use on a British musician — «The best music is made in UK» — positive reaction guaranteed.
The Qemists at TsKZ Aurora, 26 November 2011.
The Qemists asked me to send them photos from the gig. The nice part — I hadn’t even finished uploading the photos to Facebook yet, and they were already tagging themselves in them.
After The Qemists I went back to Elektromehanika, which had already started. While I was away Sasha had recorded another interview, with someone — I don’t remember whom. Basically from there we just hung out until Emika’s set was over.
Emika at Elektromehanika, 26 November 2011.
I’d listened to Emika shortly before the festival and really liked her album, so I was looking forward to her set and the interview with her. The set, sadly, didn’t deliver. Something was off with the sound — her sultry vocals were barely audible in the room. The interview with her was supposed to be only about 2 minutes, since we hadn’t had time to come up with questions and were dead tired — by then it was around 5 a.m. But somehow it all just happened, and turned into a proper interview.
Recording the [uho] programme with Emika.
That day was very full — I can’t be bothered with the rest of the details.
Over 2011 I listened to a lot of different music, but most often — The Streets, Enter Shikari, The Music and Moi Rakety Vverkh. Sadly, 3 out of those 4 bands split up this year. Mike Skinner (a.k.a. The Streets), on that very same day, 26 November, when we were recording all those interviews, gave a farewell show in England, treating the crowd one last time on his 32nd birthday. The Music played a few farewell shows in England and Japan for the fans and split. Moi Rakety Vverkh went on a «creative break» — but in practice, split. A sad outcome.
The strongest musical discovery of the year — The Streets. Although Shigeto and Emika happened towards the end of the year.
Throughout the year my friends @theproof and @stay_positive accompanied and cheered me, big thanks to them.
Hanging out at my place. Mess.
Sadly, @stay_positive left our team and went to work at Yandex, which means moving to Moscow. Such is the disappointment at year’s end.
The year was tough, plenty happened, both good and bad, lots of changes. The next year promises to be no less tough than the one going. Happy upcoming/just-arrived to everyone. I’m off to pack — we’re leaving for Finland soon.
