ndrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece, Andrei Rublev, is the most interesting period film I've ever seen, if only because his take on the period in question—the "dark ages" of 14th & 15th century Russia—is an amazing blend of light and dark, beauty and terror. The people who inhabit the film—the icon painter Rublev, his fellow artists and priests, the kings, bishops, the peasants who wander around him, and the Tartars who invade and kill so many—are both beautifully alive and horribly impoverished. The work is filled with horror and sadness, yet it is above all a graceful, spiritual film, dominated primarily by the faces of actors bringing to life the feeling of a world where everything is a mystery and death is always nearby.


Well, as I listen to Die Blutleuchte's RUS, I can't help but think of Tarkovsky's film. Like Rublev, RUS brings Russia's turbulent history into sharp focus, except in this case the beauty is musical, not visual. This is, literally, a musical history through Russia's turbulent past, from the Tartars who killed the people and ravaged the country centuries ago to communist dictators who killed the people and ravaged the country only a few decades ago to the current capitalist dictators who continue to kill the people and ravage the country. The tracks include musical paeans to the invasion of the Mongols in the 15th century, the brutal oppression of Ivan the Terrible's Opritchnina in the 16th century, Peter the Great's battles with Finland in the 18th century, and to the many battles Russia fought in the 20th century.


To express in musical terms the horrors of these many events, Die Blutleuchte employs Russian folk music, ambient sounds of water, ice, and fire, assorted Russian vocals either ordering or proselytizing, some drum, guitar, and organ sounds, and a hell of a lot of industrial noise. This is, indeed, a rather eclectic album, filled with brutal, piercing white noise at one point and soft, tranquil folk songs the next. What binds all these disparate sounds together, however, is a menacing, almost terrorizing array of voices, voices that pierce away the veneer of gentility in even the most innocent of folk melodies. For example, track 8, begins with the sound of fire and a church organ playing Bach (or what sounds like Bach). Nice, huh? Well, then a voice pipes in—the voice (apparently) of Ivan the Terrible sounding a lot like Hitler speaking into a microphone. I can't make out the words (my Russian's not that good), but the tone is one of absolute command, absolute certainty, and anger. It's a freaky track, yet it's not evil. If anything, it's a track of remarkable contrasts—beauty on the one hand, terror on the other. I think the track, like the album as a whole, is trying to convey a sense of both the horrible history of Russia and the stubborn ability of Russian people to survive and even thrive despite everything thrown at them.


I haven't listened to or even purchased any industrial music for years, and the only reason I actually purchased this disk in the first place was that it came out on Sähkö, the wonderful Finnish label. I can't say I enjoy listening to this album, but I do appreciate it. I also know that most of the historical context revealed throughout this album will be lost on western (read: non-Russian) ears. However, what cannot be missed is the album's emotional depth. At its heart, RUS is Russia: a picture of humanity at its best and worst.