What was it like working
with producers Mike Clink,
Joe Chiccarelli, and Greg
Brimson?
Tsaler: We actually recorded
most of the stuff ourselves so
that we would put a thousand
different takes out there and
see if they could choose the
best. It didn’t quite work like
that, though.
Lagutenko: The initial idea
was to get someone onboard
who would know the Western
audience a bit better than we
did. I met Mike and Joe via
Village Studio in Los Angeles,
because we recorded a couple
of our recent albums there and
they’ve been to our live gigs. So,
we decided to do a few songs
together—we didn’t want to have
one option for the whole album,
we wanted to try different
things—and those three guys had
completely different approaches.
Joe likes to let you play live and
pick up the best performance
out of that. Mike did live record-
ing, too, but he also did his
homework: He had us do a lot of
multitracking, and he came up
with a lot of different versions,
level-wise and arrangement-wise,
circle between London, Russia,
Los Angeles, and France, and
built some tracks from scratch
that way. It was like an online
jigsaw puzzle.
The rhythm-guitar work on
“Fantastica” sounds a bit like
David Bowie’s Let’s Dance
album, while the super-catchy
leads have a more fluid,
almost Satriani-like vibe.
Tsaler: We had three or four dif-
ferent rhythm structures for that
song—and we could not make up
our minds which was the right
one! Come to our live gigs—we
are famous for not playing the
same arrangements live.
Lagutenko: To be honest,
we struggled a lot with that
song. Originally, I wrote it for
a movie [Vladimir Mizoev’s
Signs of Love] … and my friend
[Mizoev] said it should be like
this and that and have this kind
of attitude. It’s a bit of a dif-
ferent arrangement and pitch
in the movie, but I thought it
was an interesting song that we
could explore more. I like work-
ing with film directors, because
they show you a direction that
you hardly would think of for
“Come to our live gigs—we are
famous for not playing the same
arrangements live.” —Yuri Tsaler
and then we would choose what
worked better. Sometimes he
would even invite someone to
redo a part without me even
knowing. I’ve known Greg for
years—more than 10 years ago
we produced some electronic
albums for a Russian band.
Basically, I just asked him to
add some programming to what
we do. In the end, we did this
online collaboration with him
and James Sanger [Dido, Keane,
Phil Collins], who’s based in
France. We exchanged files in a
yourself, so as a favor you try to
explore unknown things, and
you get something out of yourself that you wouldn’t expect.
The lilting vibrato of the riff
in “Lucky Bride” is especially beautiful. How did
that evolve from the 2000
version, which is much more
electronic and pop-sounding,
with almost no guitar?
Tsaler: That started as a non-guitar, almost reggae song
when Ilya wrote it, but we were
Though he doesn’t take it all on the road, Tsaler’s tastes definitely lean
vintage. Here he shows off his ’ 69 Gretsch Anniversary, Fender ’ 65 Deluxe
Reverb reissue, Fulltone Tube Tape Echo, Xotic AC+, ProCo You Dirty Rat,
MXR Carbon Copy, Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe+, and Maestro Fuzz-Tone.
lost in different approaches so
I tried something different.
That’s how the piano riff was
born—which made this track
famous in Russia. This time,
though, we tried for more of a
rock attitude, and our ambition
was to mix funky piano with
live attitude. It didn’t really
work, though, so it was Mike
Clink’s idea to simply forget
the piano and come back to
guitar-based arrangements.
Lagutenko: We tried to keep
the original piano riff, and
Mike said, “Just imagine there
was no riff—ever.” So we tried
it, and this is where we ended
up. For me, it became kind
of Santana-ish—a midtempo,
guitar-based song, which is not
very characteristic of us. But it
still fits our intentions, so I was
pretty happy—it was such an
unexpected take on that song.
You also redid “Vladivostok
2000” as “Vladivostok
Vacation,” this time around,
but it sounds fairly close to
the original. What was the
goal for the new version?
Tsaler: We could not fit English
lyrics to the existing master multitrack, so we realized the best
way would be for Ilya to sing it
to a live version. So we played
it in the studio all together, the
way we do in concert.
Lagutenko: We played it the
way we play it live, because
it evolved over the years to
be more energetic. So I guess
it’s one of those things where
you try to recreate the original
sound but make it better.
Let’s talk a little about
some of the larger lessons
you’ve learned from the new
album. You formed your own
