Ambassador21

First, could you tell me a little about your band?

AMBASSADOR21 is 3 years old… we’re two persons: Natasha and me, Alexey Protasov. Natasha writes lyrics, sings and takes charge of live visual media as part of our shows. I sing, do programming, sampling and noise. We make all our music together, with one other man who’s directly involved in A21 – J. aka CTRLer – our studio guitar player. This guy closely co-operates with us; we recorded our 2 last records – full-length “Akcija” and “I Wanna Kill U.COM” EP with his help – and his contribution was very strong and influenced the final sound of these albums so much. He lives in Madrid.
We released a lot of as full-length albums, as some collaborations, singles, EPs, some split-albums, compilations on many labels (like Susan Lawly, Liquid Harsh, Sudden Death, D-Trash, Axxescode etc.) and finally in the end of 2004 we released our first 12” – “I Wanna Kill U.COM” – on the German Restroom Records. Also we active works as remixers: we remixed songs of SNOG, LEECH WOMAN, BEINHAUS, PHALLUS UBER ALLES, HYNNNER, SYNAPSCAPE, SCHIZOID, HANSEL, PROYECTO MIRAGE and many more.
Regarding AMBASSADOR21 sound: we sound different. Yeah, we called our style “digital hardcore”, but sure, it’s too broad notion, so let’s say: we mix a lot of different things in our music – broken beats, death metal guitars, some dark drum’n’bass, noise – I don’t know what to call it! So, we do all what we want in these concrete time cell. Last October we finished the AMBASSADOR21 Akcija!-Tour 2003-2004, during which we played a lot of shows in Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria and Slovakia. So, now we work on forthcoming A21 UK-tour. Any details about current work, releases or something like this you can know on our web-site in any time, at www.ambassador21.com .

Why did you choose 21 and not 53 or 98?

It’s very simple. First of all, speaking by math language, 21 is a product of two prime numbers, each of which has certain own symbolic importance. From other side, from science point of view, 21 is weight of the death, what even more interesting and symbolic, we think.

Why use the DJ-title J. Christ? Don’t you think people will point fingers and such?

Why J. Christ? Yeah, firstly was Jesus Christ, now J. Christ. Maybe it will be J.C. or Jay C.H or something in the future. It’s OK for people’s own fantasy. No, I don’t think some over-religious people will point fingers or something. I don’t care about such people, really. It’s just a name. Really, it’s not important. I guess, if I’m DJ Destroyer or DJ Fireball or some shit like this, nobody bothers – why, isn’t it?

I read a lot of people are comparing Ambassador 21 with Atari Teenage Riot. Can you find yourself in this comparison?

Yeah, let’s say – some people are comparing. Well, no problems. Personally we don’t think so this comparison has any reasonable base. It has more reasons to compare our creativity with CRASS or BLACK FLAG if you want to compare us… Because I can’t say, ATR influenced us more than this bands, for example. Yeah, sure, we listened their music a lot, as ATR, as Empire or Nic Endo solo-stuff, as well as many DHR classics. But before this we did grow up with hundreds of another punk and industrial bands.
I think we can compared to various bands on these fields;
Male/female vocals? CRASS. Fast and hard? RAMONES. Angry? BLACK FLAG. Impudently? MINISTRY. Cynically? DEAD KENNEDYS. Loud? BIG BLACK. Humour? NOMEANSNO. Riot? Camus. Politic? All together. Yeah, and ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, sure. It’s OK?
But what about male/female vocals? ABBA is two ATARI TEENAGE RIOT. We play punk. Digital? Yes, but it’s only way, technology, isn’t it?

There’s a Jello Biafra cover on the album; “Attack Of The Peacekeepers”. Why exactly this song by this person?

Actually, we made this song as cover-version for electronic tribute to D.O.A. “Let’s Start The Action”. Invasion Wreck produced this release for D.O.A.’s own Sudden Death Records and it was published in 2003. This track has been taken from the Jello Biafra & D.O.A. “Last Scream Of The Missing Neighbors” EP. But we really like this song and did put it on “Akcija” too, because the song fitted very well in the concept of “Akcija”. Russian text has some differences between Biafra’s original lyrics, it’s not adapted translation, but the main message hasn’t changed.
Why? The theme of this song a little bit refers to the country in which we live, and the only role of “peacekeepers” here execute other forces, who also sincerely believes they stay on guard of the peace and fairness.

What are you trying to point out with “Akcija”? Is there a general theme throughout the album, or does every song has it’s own meaning?

“Akcija” means “Action”. Well, we mixed all songs in one continuous mix, because this record has a main concept. And this record is dedicated to our country, even more than all our previous albums. Each separate song has its own meaning, but all of them bound between themselves on sense and general ideas.
Well, “Akcija” is most conceptual album in AMBASSADOR21 discography. It’s about present day. Not in Belarus, but sure, it’s related with this country. But I guess, we’re still not stupid bastards that denote our own life to mythological fights with some local sma-a-al tyrants, even if these guys think they are very big and powerful. In this world is too much shit, everywhere, any time. Our creativity is therefore more existential, than you can imagine on first view. Personal riot has the biggest role and is a more destroyable thing than revolution. Revolution made by people, who have concrete targets, and it’s not funny for us. Personal riot hasn’t got any concrete aims, so impossible for system to control it.

 

Is it difficult to promote your music from Belarus?

No. It’s difficult to promote our music INSIDE Belarus. But not difficult to do it FROM. Yeah, sure, we feel a lot of things, which disturb to some work processes and give us some delays or something. Still too much borders between us – I mean official borders, and not only. But we do it, and still do very active. If you speak about promotion of our music here, in Belarus – we almost don’t do nothing for it ALREADY. We did a lot of deals with it some time ago, but now we stopped any artificial attempts to show for ourselves – people here need it. Not. It’s too bad, sure – but unfortunately, it’s a fact. Some few people need it, yes, but most of people (as fans, as artists) prefer to stay in isolation, because isolation is very good for some of them. It’s more easy to be like stars in weak closed community, more easy to seem very smart. So, some people just afraid if this situation will change, but it will be changed anyway. Well, but for the moment ideological barriers inside human brains are much more stronger than real politic or geographical borders.

How is the scene in Belarus, actually? I wouldn’t call it a breeding point of famous bands..?

Nothing. I know nothing about the Belarusian scene of TODAY. Sure, we got some news about some “parties”, some “labels”, some “releases”, but we prefer to spent our time and energy for real things, but not for fake-projects, all life of which can be put only into some fake-newsletter. So again, if you’re in isolation from the rest of the world, it’s very easy to show to all that you’re very big in Belarus and there’s a very active scene.
If I will tell you – hey, man, we have fuckin’ great movement here, hundreds of labels, CDs, Ambassador21 playing shows every week and 1000 people visit each our gig even at Monday morning – you will published this bullshit and people will read it and think: “Holy shit! Belarus is last battlefield of real digital hardcore and industrial-community! Wow!” But all this not truth, sorry.
Let’s take obvious example. What do you think – why no ANY Belarusian projects in Invasion Wreck’ compilation-projects? All info about planning releases you can find on our web-site, it’s not too difficult. And artists like SYNAPSCAPE, CONVERTER, DONNA SUMMER, BONG-RA or APHASIC takes part in this with pleasure – but not Belarusian artists? In 2 years of active work we didn’t got any single demo from Belarusian artists. Why? But, if you will check Belarusian internet, you will read at forums: “We play breakcore! We play hardcore and have a lot of brilliant albums on our own bookshelf!” Cool! My congratulations, but it’s not interesting for us to spent time for fake-scene, as I said. Yeah, they can lie to some Western labels and in one evening to record 5 tracks from “different” projects for some western compilation – it’s ok for foreigners: “Wow! Cool! Bands from Belarus – where is? Anyway, exotically! Perestroika!” Sorry, but we are only interested in real acts, who produce music, play gigs, promote it by themselves and just do something. So, I don’t know any Belarusian famous bands, as you.

You are the owner of your own label, if I’m not mistaking. Is it a difficult job to combine your own band, target the market for it, and yet distribute and promote other bands (Rasputin, to name only one).

You’re right, we’re run Invasion Wreck Chords with Natasha. And yes, it’s difficult job to combine it… As any job can be difficult sometimes, even job which you like very-very much, isn’t it? We like it. It’s not difficult for us.
Not very much artists signed on Invasion Wreck Chords. From other side, I can tell you – a lot of artists took part in a lot of our compilations and remix-projects. So, I can say, we have a lot of acts at Invasion Wreck, really. But we’re not very big corporation with any external sources of the financing, so we just return to ourselves and report that we can do, but what we can’t for each concrete moment.

A lot of the promotion of this CD is done by Ant-Zen and Ad Noiseam. Do you think these two labels target the relevant market for your music?

I know a lot about markets and laws of economic policy, believe me. But fortunately, I don’t work in bank or finance company. And I can allow me just DON’T THINK about all this bullshit like marketing, micro- & macro-economy and other crap. Regarding our distributors/partners: we just know, they are very nice people and do good work with our releases. They support us in some projects as well, and we never get any problems or weird situations in our cooperation, which is very good for us. Actually, we work with other distributors as well, like Decadance Records in Italy, Praxis, Restroom Records, some others. So, we build market, he he!

Word has just gotten out that you will release “Akcija” in a remixed version. Could you tell me something more about? How did the collaboration with the involved bands go?

Yeah, it’s great project and we’re looking forward to take it by our hands, finally! We’ve worked together with artists on this album for 9 months… So symbolic…and now it’s coming out. Our main aim was to make a new sound of A21 “with a little help of my friends”… This was a reason we didn’t ask digital hardcore artists to remix A21 songs for this project, because we’d like to avoid any cliches in this. And we asked very different musicians about remixes, because it’s fun – to be always different. Like it’s one of the general concepts of A21’s creativity – “be different”. And we guess we could show it in “Akcija V1.1”. Sure, it was great work from the remixers side – thanks em all again for brilliant result!

I was expecting to see Rasputin on the remix-list, but there’s none there?

Actually material for “Akcija V1.1” was ready before we took decision to sign RASPUTIN on Invasion Wreck Chords, so all is simply. But we have SYNAPSCAPE remix in this album – as you know, Phillip Muench from SYNAPSCAPE is a producer of RASPUTIN’s “Das Leberwurstbrot”. So, a piece of human-maschine there, as well.

What else can we expect from A21 in the near future? Is there any chance you’ll do a European tour or such?

As I said above, now we are preparing a A21 UK tour – in the end of March we’ll playing at Resistance Festival UK, in London’ Slime Light club, together with many our friends like FRAGMENT KING, EITERHERD, CTRLer, PROYECTO MIRAGE, Pablo & Javier IA, BOOT SECTOR VIRUZ, MOTHBOY, HECATE, 2ND GEN and many more.
Also, we hope to play couple of shows in other cities. At the  moment we have been invited to play at Maschinenfest 2005.
Now we work on a “Ambassador21 Akcija!-Tour 2003-2004” movie, which is a really big movie, longer than 1 hour. It’s not trivial one-point-record of, where guys stay on stage and play long-long time. It’s clip-manner movie about A21 tour, with a lot of other artists, faces, it’s some look from inside. Many countries, many venues, many people. It would be great! We’d like to have finished it in March, so soon you could watch it.
Regarding studio-sessions, we started work on the A21 next full-length album. We can’t say when it will be done. But now we can say it’ll be something great, hahaha! Because it’ll be some sort of collaboration again, each track will be produced together with some additional act, like MIMETIC, HECATE, CONVERTER, MALADROIT, FRAGMENT KING, PUNISH YOURSELF and some others. So, we guess, it will be interesting process to do it. Also we would like to produce a collaboration EP together with Canadian FANNY. We’re talking about some details regarding how we’ll proceed with it. So, a lot of plans, as always.

 

By Eelco, January 2005