56 STUFF vs. Leo Tolstoy. "The Girl and the Mushrooms" FSST0178 electronica 8 tracks Total time: 33:09

"Two girls were coming back home with mushrooms…" - Leo Nikolaevitch's text got new life in combination with music by Jeune Homme, Moonscape, Few, Booka Dehuk and Yellowhead. Once known as a short story for children it became a unique musical-literary project.

Few (Alexander Filippovsky) was the one who came up with the idea of combining his music with a piece of Russian literary heritage back in 2000 when he was rummaging about among the pile of Yellowhead's story books. After doing some research the two agreed that "The Girl and the Mushrooms" deserves a creative reincarnation.

In the course of repetitive synchronous reading they learned Tolstoy's short story by heart and later they couldn't get it out of their heads - sometimes the story started to tell itself against their will with or without any cause.

Using their own larynxes, egg cutters, plastic rulers and other non-musical objects, Few and Yellowhead began to combine the great writer's prose with their terrible music. It should be mentioned that the project was never taken seriously by its creators and was never meant to have any commercial value. Nevertheless, the collaborators released their work on audiocassettes. To Yellowhead's surprise people appreciated the project, which made him think of taking it further..

The new project,"The Girl and the Mushrooms", was not a rerelease of original material, while the first version had a very simple approach, the new version was more elaborate and more serious.. This time the project had more people involved. Jeune Homme, Moonscape and Bookadehuk came aboard with Few and Yellowhead. Yellowhead divided Tolstoy's story into five parts and distributed them among the musicians for each one to create his own accompaniment.

Track-list

The Girl and the Mushrooms:
1) to home with a mushrooms / jeune homme
2) don't go back / moonscape
3) drop the mushrooms / few
4) engine-driver could not / booka dehuk & yellowhead
5) head down / yellowhead

bonus:
6) mushrooms and berries / few
7) enter view / moonscape
8) everything and the mushrooms (organ donor track) / yellowhead