The State Theatre

Just about the only Russian rock band (lemme reiterate here, rock) to nurse out a sound that resists an easy matchup with a Western source, Auktyon are consistently and wholly original. Sure, they've traveled from psycho theatrics to lo-fi trickery to Beck and back, but with the constants (vocalist Lenya Fedorov's crusted-molasses voice, the clearly relished fret buzz, the tragicomic horns, and the truly bizarre stage presence of clowning percussionist Garkusha) still in place after 15 or so years, they are quiet simply the best music out of today's Russia. - Village Voice

This Saint Petersburg eight-piece has been playing together in something like its current form since the mid-80s, and I can't imagine the typical capitalist gets it any more than the Soviet bureaucrats did. Nevertheless, the band's augmented its devoted Russian fan base with an auxiliary chapter in Portland won over by a roof-rocking North by Northwest appearance in 2000, and it's well established on the European art-rock circuit. If one wanted, one could place these guys alongside Prague's late, lamented Plastic People of the Universe in a pan-Slavic tradition of wild-ass pre-perestroika hairiness. But really, the profligate frenzy of Auktyon - very high-energy, very strangely arranged, very globally crossbred and sweatily choreographed - belongs in its own category. - Chicago Reader

Auktyon are a legend in their homeland and a cult band in continental Europe where they spend half of their time touring. In spite of having been around for more than two decades they remain an ever-developing creative laboratory. Their sound keeps changing all the time and now, complete with assorted percussion, multi-reed player, a trumpeter and a tubist, it approaches tight jazzy arrangements of Charles Mingus or Radiohead Kid A style. - London Times