Natalie Beridze - Street Life

A Closer Listen

When does a drone become a protest song? The audible echo of the ongoing demonstrations that have been taking place in Tbilisi, the capital of the Sakartvelo (Georgia), since the recent contested parliamentary elections (26 October 2024), constitutes the raw material for Natalie Beridze’s latest, Street Life. So, should this album be considered a collection of protest songs?

Before we answer this question, it might be useful to look at the political backdrop against which these “songs” are being played out. Sakartevelo has long been vying for EU membership. The ruling Georgian Dream party had a different agenda, i.e. realigning itself with Russia. The first step was ratifying the Foreign Influence Law, commonly known as the Russian Law, something that Georgians have been fighting against since 2023. First introduced by Russia back in 2012 to curtail any possible form of protest against the return of Putin to the presidency, the Foreign Agent Law requires media organisations and NGOs to register as foreign agents if they receive at least 20% of their funds from abroad. Critics argued that the law would be used to threaten civil liberties as has been the case in Russia. What followed were parliamentary elections with the Georgian Dream party — led by billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili — winning a majority amid reports of widespread fraud. Press freedom and LGBTQIA+ rights were the first casualties. After the predictably swift abandonment of EU aspirations, the electronic music scene declared the recently elected government illegitimate and called a strike, emphasising its refusal to participate in government events. The ensuing manifesto signed by clubs, labels, promoters and artists, also condemned the violence meted out on protesters at the hands of Interior Ministry personnel.

To chronicle the unfolding events, Natalie Beridze took field recordings from the November -December 2024 Tbilisi street protests. Using them as her sole sound source she created Street Life with no additional instruments / electronics, effectively translating her production process into a collaboration with the Georgian people.

As Brandon LaBelle writes in Acoustic Territories, sound culture and everyday life, “The city is a sort of barometer for the confrontations, radicalities, and imaginations that may be said to define history.” Included in the chapter “Riots, Street Fights, and Demonstrations”, this specific quote positions Natalie Beridze as a meteorologist intent on observing and understanding Tbilisi’s aural atmosphere. To take an accurate reading of its temperature, Berizde adopts a forensic approach, the track titles pointing to the infinitesimal, “Minute Portion of Matter”, “Atomic” while ultimately focusing on the “Irreducible Unit”. There are no clear sonic markers, no discernible voices.

Beridze believes in the aural potential of music to unify communities and excite a longing for national unity. She records the changes in temperature caused by the expansion or compression of sounds that create disorienting ground fog. By the second track, “Honk Section”, the sharp tones of car horns stretch into siren-like wailing expressing pain and confusion. The anger and sense of betrayal experienced by protesters is echoed in the ghostly cry of the crowd reverberating throughout “Cadence” while aural funnel clouds acquire a tornado like force in “Irreducible unit” bringing the listener directly into the eye of the storm. The sudden increase of intensity reflects the cohesion of the Georgian people with no signs of abating.

It is said that history repeats itself. Back in 2013, on the other side of the Black Sea, Ukrainians occupied Maidan square in Kyiv from November 2013 to February 2014 to oppose President Yanukovych’s sudden and arbitrary decision not to sign the European Union – Ukraine Association Agreement, forging instead closer ties with Russia. Recording the demos and violent dispersal of protesters in what came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity, the Ukrainian artist Zavoloka produced the EP Volya [freedom]. Metal rhythms from the riot streets, the sound of burned police cars, gas grenades explosions and the molotov cocktails produced a symphony of blood and fire.

Similar in intent but divergent in outcome, Street Life feels like the flip side of Volya. Whereas Zavoloka focuses on tempo, most notably in tracks like “Sylia,” to celebrate the “liberty napalm of transformation,” Beridze looks at timbre to makes us dwell in the “ceaseless possibility of rebirth, translation and remembrance” (to use a phrase from the liner notes to her album Mapping Debris from 2021).

Both artist bear witness to pivotal moments in their countries’ history but if Volya felt open ended in its succinct stance, Street Life seeks resolution, or some form of release. Steering away from both persuasion and propaganda, while still showcasing the large-scale solidarity of the Georgian people, Natalie Beridze takes on an elegiac tone for the album’s closing track. Reminiscent of “The Boy Who Wakes the Universe”, the single Natalie Beridze released as a fundraiser for Ukraine in the aftermath of the Russian full-scale invasion (2022), “Symbol inside” functions as a transcendental hymn, voicing Ernest Renan declaration that “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.” It is not by accident that this is also the only track with added instrumentation and electronics. “By altering the voice of reality, you alter reality itself,” Beridze states.

Fittingly, the album is dedicated to David Lynch. (Gianmarco Del Re)