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Dmitry Matveyev / For MT
Lithuania-born Orlova said her sound is similar to that of someone crying behind a wall.
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Music Without Borders
Indie singer Alina Orlova performs Thursday at Apelsin.
By Sergey Chernov
Published: May 8, 2008
From uploading amateur recordings onto the Internet to releasing an album and performing in Moscow, Alina Orlova has come a long way in the past two years. The Lithuania-born singer, songwriter and artist, who sings in Lithuanian, English and Russian, will make her Russian stage debut at Apelsin on Thursday.
Orlova's indie fame in Lithuania started with her early recordings on the Internet. "At first, I performed alone, just piano and voice, but when I uploaded my songs, people got interested and started to invite me to play small concerts. I played in a cafe where I worked and other small places, and people came even without any advertising," said Orlova,19, in a telephone interview from Vilnius last week.
"I started to get offers from labels, but didn't want to hurry. Then I found musicians who I thought were right, and we recorded the album.
"Then I got a band that I perform with now, and I'm very glad because I had always been afraid that I wouldn't be able to explain to musicians or producers what I wanted, that we would fail to come to find a common language, but it all worked."
Orlova, who compares her sound to "someone's crying behind a wall" on her MySpace page, cites Nick Cave, Lou Reed, Talking Heads and David Bowie as her favorite singers.
"I prefer male vocals, for some reason," she said. "But I like Liz Frazer of Cocteau Twins and [U.S. female duo] CocoRosie. I like strange female vocals, but listen more to male [vocals]."
Based in Vilnius since she graduated from high school last year, Orlova was born Alina Orlovskaya in the town of Snieckus, built on the Visaginas Lake for workers at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in 1975.
"It drew specialists from all over the Soviet Union and has it remained very Russian and very different from the rest of Lithuania," said Orlova, whose mother was born in Voronezh and met her Lithuania-born, Polish father in Kazakhstan before moving to Lithuania.
"They moved to Lithuania, because it's in the Baltics, and everything is beautiful and good here," she said.
Despite the proximity of the nuclear plant, the area boasts beautiful natural surroundings of lakes and pine forests, prompting Orlova to cite "birds" as her influence on her MySpace page.
Although five out of seven schools in town were Russian, Orlova's parents, who didn't speak Lithuanian, sent her and her brother to a Lithuanian one, she said, hence her command of both languages.
While in school, Orlova also took classes in piano and art. "I must have had a need for writing songs. I started to compose some songs and lyrics when I was very young," she said. "It was very naive and funny in the beginning, but then I grew older and something serious started to come out of it, and it took a distinct form."
Orlova's debut album, recorded over eight months and released in January, is titled "Laukinis Suo Dingo," or "The Wild Dog Dingo," named after a Soviet Russian book for school children about innocent teenage love. "I remember this book very vaguely," she said, "It didn't impress me greatly, but the title has stayed."
Although she sings mostly in Lithuanian, Orlova also writes songs in English and Russian. She said the Lithuanian audiences have no problem listening to her Russian songs, despite the political conflicts between the two countries.
"I know that many young people listen to the Russian songs without understanding the words and react normally. There's no problem with it."
Alina Orlova performs at 8 p.m. Thursday at Apelsin, located at 15 Malaya Gruzinskaya Ulitsa. Metro Krasnopresnenskaya. Tel. 253-0253.
Copyright © 2008 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
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May 8 - 15, 2008 
