ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what it is that is ‘completely different’ about the Vorkuta scene and those who move on it. As outlined in Chapter One , Vorkuta is a rapidly deindustrialising city in the far north of Russia that has experienced extensive out-migration since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Without the gas or oil deposits of other cities in the region to replace the coal mining industry upon which the city was founded, Vorkuta is widely considered to be in its death throes; it is ‘a rotting city’ (Daniil, 18 October 2009). Urban decay can be associated with the generation of distinctive city sounds of course; Manchester, Liverpool and Detroit are classic examples (Cohen 2007 : 51). Indeed this not a purely organic, but a refl exive process; the product of musicians’ and commentators’ own engagement with the mythologisation of place. This is evident in Roger Hill’s characterisation of the Liverpool sound as that of ‘an economically isolated city talking to itself ’ (Roger Hill cited in ibid.: 65) and The Fall’s ü ber-northernness created through their very dissociation with the Factory Records-focused ‘Manchester sound’ (Hannon 2010 ). Vorkuta, in contrast, carries no musical narrative of place with which to associate or dissociate; to most punk scene members it is simply ‘a shithole’ (Yaroslav, 18 October 2009). What is ‘different’ about Vorkuta, it follows, cannot be read from media discussion or performer and audience dialogue with a distinctive ‘Sound’ but understood only through a less mediated situating of punk music and practices in their socio-economic, cultural and physical context.
