Nogu Svelo!, a Russian rock band formed in 1988 in Moscow, is all about experiments. Band’s leader Maxim Pokrovsky says it is impossible to label its music with one particular style. Indeed, the music of Nogu Svelo! combines rock, pop-punk, alternative and experimental rock. One of the distinctive features of the band’s songs is humor, sometimes with a touch of cynicism, absurdity, irony, and parody which appears as early as on the first albums Капризы манекенщиц (Models Whims, 1992) and 1:0 в пользу девочек (The Girls Lead 1:0, 1993). The song «Хару Мамбуру» ('Haru Mamburu’, 1993), from the album of the same name, written in an absurd fictional language, won the first prize in the Generation-93 festival. The ’90s and the ’00s were the most fruitful years for the band. The hits of 1997, «Лилипутская любовь» (‘Midget’s Love’) and «Московский романс» (‘Moscow Romance’), leveled up the band’s commercial success and popularity. Between 1992 and 1999, Nogu Svelo! released 7 albums, and another 6 were recorded in the next decade. Some of the biggest hits of these years were «Реки» (‘Rivers’, 2004), an anti-commercial electro-pop track «Рекламное место сдается!» (‘Your Ad Could Be Here!’, 2004), and «Идем на Восток» (‘We Are Going East’, 2005) – the Best Soundtrack according to MTV Russia 2006. IIn 2011, Nogu Svelo! came back with the album Обратная сторона ноги (The Back Side of the Leg) with more electronic sounds. In 2022, Nogu Svelo! released anti-war songs «Нам не нужна война» (‘We Don’t Need War’) and «Поколение Z» (‘Generation Z’) as a response to Russian-Ukrainian war.
