The Useless Critic 2.0

Виктор Iванiв (or Viktor Ivaniv) & Muhmood: This is a collaboration between two Siberian artists. One is a poet and the other produces albums of ambient soundscapes by recording the hum of power lines and some such things. Вирь (or Vir') from Vyborg started out playing sludge metal, but now plays a very bizarre form of drone doom that relies on ambient sounds and scratches. There aren't many vocals, but they are abrasive. The fucking thing keeps auto-starting. Forest is a lackluster, Nazi-loving black metal band from Novomoskovsk. I don't recommend listening to them or supporting their ideals, but I said I'd give you the 360. Russia loves extremes.

So Nader Bouberhan and I have decided to discover all 360 degrees of Russia. This series may be controversial, even shocking, but we're going to give it to you in raw form. First, a joint by 19th century Pskov province composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Модест Петрович Мусоргский). It was popularized by the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Fantasia . This particular version was arranged by Leopold Stokowski, a Brit/Polish/American, but Stokowski has said that this arrangement is based on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's. Another Russian. (+2) The second song I'm posting is Armenia's entry in Eurovision 2010. Eva Rivas (Valeria Alexandrovna Reshetnikova-Tsaturyan/Валерия Александровна Решетникова-Цатурян) is ethnically Armenian, but was born in Rostov-on-Don, USSR, now part of the Russian Federation. (+1)

I was googling Chechnya earlier and Макка Сагаипова (Makka Sagaipova) came up as a notable Chechen. Anyway, this is what pop music sounds like in Chechnya. You can download a bunch of songs here , but I have no idea whether or not it's legal.