The Art Video Exotica Festival will bring some strange noises to enliven the city's soundscape this Friday.
The three-day event will be held on the premises of the mostly underground Gora Club and coincide with the opening of the venue's larger hall, which fans have been waiting for a little too long.
Two smaller halls, located in the same building, will host quieter performances and video showings.
The festival is operated from Moscow by a team of Russian TV's "Exotica" program, which is devoted to all kinds of off-the-wall sounds. The same people publish the "Exotica" magazine, though only two issues have appeared in the last few years because of a total lack of commercial potential.
The Art Video Exotica Festival started in 1991 and has been held annually since that time. Its founders' concept was to choose a new city every year, so the fifth festival will be held in St Petersburg -- after Moscow, Izhevsk, Tver and Sochi have played host to the event.
This year's festival will be headlined by Holger Czukay, who has become famous as a leading member of the German avant-rock band Can. The group, which Czukay co-founded at the peak of the psychedelic era in 1968, incorporated every possible influence -- from early Pink Floyd to Karlheinz Stockhauzen, and affected many musicians, including Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks fame and ex-Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon.
After Can had split, Czukay started a prolific and creative solo career in 1980, which included work with musicians as diverse as the Eurhythmics and Jah Wobble.
In St Petersburg Czukay will perform something called a "video light show."
Other acts include band Die Schwarze Katze, whose members live in Moscow and Denmark, and Moscow's somewhat ephemeral band, Myagkiye Zveri. Zveri perform a new age sound melange, with results largely depending on which musicians the band's leader Ivan Sokolovsky has invited to back him, while the industrial-influenced DSK promise what they call a "disco night."
Local rock groups like AVIA, Games, SS20, and Tequilajazzz will also perform.