There are worse abuses in the world, but the fact that Voice Letter, Ersatzmusika's debut album, was ignored by the press and public, can be described as 'slightly scandalous'. This group deserves to be heard by a larger audience, but admittedly, they just don't really make music for that same large audience. Ersatzmusika's songs have a nightclub-like quality. It's just a sneaky nightclub, hidden
… somewhere in the concrete basement of a Soviet flat. A hidden place to drink or, as the legs still allow it, to shuffle a sad tango. The group consists of a couple of Russians who have fled to Berlin. Irina Doubrovskaja sings her melancholic songs in Russian brine English. Fortunately, it's not all sadness, as the gallows humor in It's The Russian Beat proves. Immediately the best song on this fascinating record. (PdK)more
