RUSSIAN CULTURE ►

RUSSIAN ROCK AND UNDERGROUND

The most comprehensive guide to Russian rock and underground on the Web.

► AUKTCION

This rock band never became a mainstream group, but at the same time the history of Russian Rock would be incomplete without mentioning them. This band is really Leningrad's baby! It appeared in 1978 on the banks of the Neva River and the band started its career with strange music and shocking performances. Only after the band spent 15 years creating and performing music did people finally realize that AUKTCION was one of the best examples of avant-garde Russian rock. The band was always one of the brightest representatives of the Russian underground music scene, but never popular and never well known. Their records were hard to find, but people searched and eventually found some copies. AUKTCION gained more and more fans as time passed.

Despite a few changes here and there, the main members of the band were always the same: Leonid Feodorov, Dmitriy Ozersky and Oleg Garkusha. Feodorov was always responsible for the singing and guitar playing, Ozersky wrote the songs and was the keyboard player and percussionist, Garkusha was the dancer, lead singer and the performer of the group, but he also wrote some songs. There were always a lot of musicians on stage during AUKTCION shows and brass, percussion, and classical instruments could all be found along with the very unique vocals of Feodorov.

Starting in the 1980s, the band became more well-known among music lovers and even became recognized abroad. They performed in Germany, France, Holland, Austria and many other countries. In France they became friends with Russian artist and musician Aleksey Khvostenko, who emigrated abroad in 1977. Together they made several interesting recordsm, for example the album "Tchainik vina".

All in all, during their career AUKTCION produced about 15 records and Leonid Feodorov himself made several solo albums. In the past few years the band has pretty much given up on performing live, but Feodorov sometimes puts on a pretty impressive solo act. Every year the front-man surprises fans with new and experimental music, which is no less impressive than AUKTCION's earlier work.